How To Deploy
Windows XP Professional
From careful planning to the
use of remote installations,
O
ur hard disks have barely stopped spinning from a Windows 2000 rollout, and
yet once again the upgrade season is upon us. According to Microsoft, Win
dows XP brings a new level of reliability to small and midsize organisations.
unattended scripts and disk
TCP/IP
cloning, there are numerous
As with Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional employs TCP/IP as its standard
ways in which organisations
network protocol. A Home Network wizard (Figure 1) should be of particular
benefit to small companies that cannot match the levels of support offered by larger
can efficiently deploy
organisations. The wizard is useful for creating peer to peer networks in a small
Windows XP Professional.
office environment. It is capable of recognising computers running disparate ver
sions of Windows before placing them in a workgroup. The wizard also detects
network capable printers and makes them available to the workgroup.
By Dave Cook
IT Journalist
For a Windows XP Professional based computer to connect to NetWare or Macin
tosh servers, system administrators must use a protocol that is compatible with the
server. NWLink is the Microsoft implementation of the Novell IPX/SPX (Internet
work Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packet Exchange) protocol, which allows admin
istrators to connect to NetWare file and print servers.
Planning
Unless organisations are currently running Windows 2000, migrating to Windows
XP Professional will require careful planning. The first step in the process is to define
project goals and objectives, ensuring that they are consistent with the long term
needs of the organisation and its users. Use a project plan to identify the most
important phases of the deployment process. Try to provide a clear and functional
outline, clarifying the scope of the project, setting out the time frame involved and
exactly which people or groups will be affected. When determining a project scope,
take the following aspects into consideration:
G
Determine and document the number of computers, departments, networks, and
locations that will be involved in the deployment.
G
Decide whether it will be a desktop operating system upgrade only. What
implication will the upgrade have on application servers, and will Active Direc
tory be involved?
G
Evaluate application requirements, making an inventory of all existing hardware
and software.
G
Assess present and future hardware and software standards, as well as support
issues.
G
Establish the network services in use, naming conventions, name/address reso
lution methods, security policy etc. Determine the impact of change if complex
networks are involved.
G
Check levels of interoperability, eg, the presence of NetWare, Unix or Linux
based computers.
G
Make a determined effort to standardise the desktop and administration envi
ronment before deployment. The simpler the operating system environment, the
less likely that problems will occur.
Tools
There are a number of tools available that are designed to help administrators
Issue 137:December 2001
PC Network Advisor
File: T1732.1
page 3
Tutorial:Windows
www.pcnetworkadvisor.com
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