Windows Server 2008 Internals

Course:  WINTL
Duration:  5 Days
Level:  III
Course Summary

This 5-day instructor-led class, aimed at IT Professionals, describes the internals of the Windows operating system kernel (both 32-bit and 64-bit and updated for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2) and related core components and mechanisms such as memory management, thread scheduling, interrupt processing, time accounting, security, and crash dump analysis. It shows you how to dig into the system with advanced troubleshooting tools, such as the Kernel Debugger and key tools from Sysinternals such as Process Explorer and Process Monitor.

If you're an IT professionals deploying and supporting Windows servers and workstations, this class will help you troubleshoot difficult problems as well as understand the true meaning behind key system performance counters. You will also benefit by being able to understand the platform more deeply, which enables understanding performance tradeoffs as well as being able to debug system level issues more effectively.

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Topics Covered In This Course

Concepts and tools

  • Windows O/S versions
  • Foundation concepts and terms
  • Digging into Windows Internals

System Architecture

  • Requirements and design goals
  • O/S Model
  • Overview
  • Key system components

System Mechanisms

  • Trap dispatching
  • Object manager
  • Synchronization
  • System worker threads
  • Windows Global flags
  • Kernel event log tracing
  • WOW64
  • User-mode debugging
  • Image loader
  • Hyper-V
  • Kernel transaction manager
  • Hotpatch support

Management mechanisms

  • The registry
  • Services
  • WMI
  • Windows Diagnostic Infrastructure

Processes, threads, and jobs

  • Process internals
  • Protected Processes
  • Flow of CreateProcess
  • Thread internals
  • Worker factories
  • Thread scheduling
  • Job objects

Security

  • Ratings
  • System Components
  • Protecting objects
  • Account rights and privileges
  • Auditing
  • Logon
  • UAC
  • Software restriction policies

I/O System

  • Components
  • Device drivers
  • Processing
  • Kernel-Mode Driver Framework (KMDF)
  • User-mode driver framework (UMDF)
  • PnP manager
  • Power Manager

Storage Management

  • Terminology
  • Disk drivers
  • Volume management
  • Drive encryption
  • Volume Shadow Copy Service

Memory Management

  • Introduction
  • Services
  • Kernel-mode heaps (System Memory pools)
  • Heap manager
  • Virtual Address Space layouts
  • Address translation
  • Page fault handling
  • Stacks
  • Virtual Address descriptors
  • Driver verifier
  • Page frame number database
  • Physical memory limits
  • Working sets
  • Proactive memory management (superfetch)

Cache Manager

  • Features
  • VMM
  • Size
  • Data structures
  • File system interfaces
  • Fast I/O
  • Read ahead and write behind

File systems

  • Formats
  • Architecture
  • Troubleshooting
  • Common log file system
  • NTFS design goals
  • NTFS file system driver
  • NTFS on-disk structure
  • NTFS recovery support
  • Encrypting file system security

Networking

  • Architecture
  • Network functions
  • Multiple redirector support
  • Name resolution
  • Location and topology
  • Protocol drivers
  • NDIS drivers
  • Binding
  • Layered network services

Startup and shutdown

  • Boot process
  • Troubleshooting startup and shutdown
  • Shutdown

Crash dump analysis

  • Why?
  • BSOD
  • Troubleshooting crashes
  • Error reporting
  • Online error analysis
  • Basic crash dump analysis
  • Crash troubleshooting tools
  • Advanced crash dump analysis
What You Can Expect

You will learn:

  • How to properly configure Windows
  • To optimize performance and troubleshoot Windows operating systems
  • Principles required for device driver design
  • How the operation and performance of each system mechanism is reflected
  • the various system monitoring tools
  • How to perform problem analysis without necessarily learning how to
  • troubleshoot or debug windows
Recommended Prerequisites

Attendees should be familiar with basic operating system principles, such as virtual memory, multitasking, processes & threads, file systems, etc. Experience administering or developing on Windows systems is also required.

Training Style

This 5 day hands-on version of the class in which labs that allow students to gain practical experience delving into Windows OS internals and troubleshooting system problems. The tools used include the Microsoft Kernel Debugger, tools from Sysinternals as well as other Microsoft support tool sets.

Unlike most hands-on classes there are no scheduled "lab periods" in this class. Instead, the experiments in this class are "continuous" throughout all 5 days – after the topics have been explained, the students will go use the appropriate tool to explore that area.

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Every student attending a Verhoef Training class will receive a certificate good for $100 toward their next public class taken within a year.

You can also buy "Verhoef Vouchers" to get a discounted rate for a single student in any of our public or web-based classes. Contact your account manager or our sales office for details.

Schedule For This Course
There are currently no public sessions scheduled for this course. We can schedule a private class for your organization just a couple of weeks from now. Or we can let you know the next time we do schedule a public session.
Notify me the next time this course is confirmed!
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