This tutorial demonstrates the step by step process for installing the Exchange Server 2010 Management Tools on a Windows 7 workstation. As Longhorn. Microsoft began work on Windows Vista, known at the time by its codename Longhorn, in May 2001, five months before the release of Windows XP. Windows Server 2003 (sometimes informally referred to as Win2K3, or just 2K3) is a server operating system produced by Microsoft and released on April 24, 2003. [7]. Have you ever wondered if there is a way to allow a Standard Domain User to install network printers on their Windows 7 client computer without being.Windows Server and SCCM 2. SP1 – Configuration Management with DCMCollaboration. The idea that we are better when we work together. Isn’t that something we often hear about, especially in IT? Well kids, I’m here to say it AGAIN! Within Microsoft, ‘collaboration’ and working with others across boundaries is critical given the breadth and depth of our technologies. In fact, management has made collaboration one of the key criteria of our annual reviews within the PFE org. In this post, I’ve lined out how to collaborate the use of one of the features of System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to keep tabs on your settings and configurations across your Windows systems while you sleep. Now, I’m a Platforms guy and this is a Platforms blog but OH! I love thee, Desired Configuration Management (a super- cool facet of SCCM). Taking Advantage of Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools. Another method for remote administration of servers from a client desktop computer is available by. Windows Server and SCCM 2012 SP1 – Configuration Management with DCM ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★. The Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack (adminpak.msi) provides server management tools that allow administrators to remotely manage Windows 2000 Servers. To keep me honest, I collaborated w/ a peer PFE whose focus is Configuration Manager, aka Config. Man. He promised to make sure I’m not tellin’ tales outside of school. I’ll walk you through using System Center Configuration Manager’s Desired Configuration Management (DCM) to keep tabs on the critical configurations set on your server fleet: Check Antivirus signatures, driver versions, VM Integration Services versions. Slipstreaming Windows 2000, XP SP1/SP1a/SP2/SP3, Server 2003 SP1/SP2 (Windows 2000/XP/2003) tutorial,tutorials,walk through, help, fixing, fix, fixes, support, repair. Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) enables IT administrators to remotely manage roles and features in Windows Server 2008 from a computer that is. **Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 with SP1 can be installed ONLY on computers that are running the Enterprise, Professional, or Ultimate editions of. Check Service Pack or other updates. Check certain file/folder/versions or details. Run a script/code and parse the output. You can check for the existence or the lack of something. You can make the settings required or optional/conditional. Your imagination might just be your only limitation with what you can check. First, a quick bit about Desired Configuration Management – DCM (http: //technet. DCM is designed around the idea of individual settings (called Configuration Items or CIs) combined into sets of settings (called Configuration Baselines or CBs) which are then ‘deployed’ to members of a ‘Collection’ within SCCM. Configuration Items in DCM have built- in versioning so if you change a setting, there is a whole UI dedicated to reviewing/comparing past and current values of settings, including export, restore, etc. This is known as ‘Revision History’ and is just one more of the really cool and powerful pieces of this DCM business. You might create a common collection of settings that are universal to all your Windows Server systems, then layer on top of that common base, OS- specific settings and lastly, app- /role- /feature- specific settings. This is but one way of doing it – you might have a different idea for how you’d design the solution. Step One – define the target settings and values.\NTDS\Parameters\Global Catalog Promotion Complete. Equals. 1Critical. NTDS – GC Ready?\NTDS\Parameters\DSA Working Directory. Equals. C: \Windows\NTDSCritical. NTDS – AD DIT path\NTDS\Parameters\Database log files path. Equals. C: \Windows\NTDSCritical. NTDS – AD Log path \Netlogon\Parameters\Sys. Vol. Equals. C: \Windows\SYSVOL\SYSVOLCritical. NTDS – SYSVOL path \NTDS\Diagnostics\1. Field Engineering. Equals. 4 or 5. Warning. NTDS – LDAP search logging \NTDS\Diagnostics\6 Garbage Collection. Equals. 1Warning. NTDS – Whitespace logging \Netlogon\Parameters\DBFlag. Equals. 0x. 20. 80. FFFFWarning. NTDS – Netlogon logging \Netlogon\Parameters\Sys. Vol. Ready. Equals. Warning. NTDS – SYSVOL status. Step Two – Setup your DCM folder hierarchy and storage view/structure. This requires some planning and a bit of thought, as well as the proper permissions in SCCM – which you might not have. Work with your SCCM resource to help you – remember the first word of this post? The UI splits up the Configuration Items (CIs) from the Configuration Baselines (CBs)For my scenario, I setup a ‘root’ folder for the Role (‘Domain Controllers’) and then a sub- folder for the OS version/SP level. Step Three – Create your CIs. The wizard in CM2. SP1 really shines here. I went through this process in CM 2. WHOA DADDY was it ‘rich’ with many, many, MANY pages in the CI wizard. Right- click the Configuration Items sub- folder and choose ‘Create Configuration Item’The Wizard will walk you through all the steps: Give it a consistent name and description so in 8 months or 8 years, when someone asks ‘who did this and what is it for?’ there are ready answers. I also created a ‘category’ for Domain Controller settings to help with filtering settings once I get 1. Tags in a Blog). Choose the OS version(s) the settings assessment will apply to and click Next…Click ‘Add’ to create a new Setting – you repeat this for each setting you want evaluated as part of this Configuration Item. You might combine multiple settings into one CI or you might have only one setting per CIChoose the desired options for the setting and click Next …There are options for Registry values, AD queries, files, script output, etc – LOTS of flexibility. One KILLER aspect to CM 2. SP1 here … the ‘Browse’ button above…For my registry setting, I can connect to either the local registry for common settings or a remote registry, where a specific setting can be found. You just browse out to what you want…Thank you to whomever put this in the product JI created two CIs but I wanted to change the ‘Severity’ from Informational to Critical, so I did: Notice the highlighted checkbox below about ‘Remediation’ – yes, you can even have DCM auto- repair settings if you so desire. I’m a bit more of a control- freak than that and typically, I’m scared stiff when someone mentions automatically changing ANYTHING but this is another example of the power of this tool. USE CAUTIONSummary … working …. Complete! Step Four – Create your Configuration Baseline(s)Again, use a solid naming convention when creating the CB folder structure. Right- click the proper folder and choose ‘Create Configuration Baseline’Provide a good name in- line with the defined naming standard and a solid description. Click the ‘Add’ drop- down and select – in this case – Configuration Items. Notice Software Updates is an option – you could specify that a certain Service Pack be an element of your Compliance Baseline? Select your CIs to add to your CB and click OK: Again, here I set the ‘category’ to Domain Controllers. Click OK to complete the Configuration Baseline creation; notice towards the bottom “Configuration Baseline Status” – “Deployed: No”Step Five – Deploy your Configuration Baseline(s)From the Ribbon, click ‘Deploy’Define the appropriate settings and click OKI selected: A target of 1. To log events (which can be captured by SCCM Alerting, and by SCOMI browsed to find the appropriate Collection I wanted to deploy to. I set the Schedule for every 6 hours (4x per day) but I’d likely be fine with once a day. One thing about frequency – these evaluation cycles can place a load on your systems so don’t go nuts. SCCM has a built- in protection to not re- evaluate less than 1. Step Six – Pick- up sticks. Then, after your Config. Man infrastructure and Agents have refreshed, you can check the individual systems and get a nice local Compliance Report and/or use the CM Console/Reporting. Now, the CB will show up as “Deployed: Yes” and “Compliance Count: ” numbers will be shown: To scan the Compliance state locally on a system, open up Control Panel > > Configuration Manager > > Configurations tab. Click to highlight the Configuration Baseline (in my case, there’s only one) and click ‘Evaluate’Notice, in my screenshot, it says ‘Compliant’ and shows the last evaluation date/time – awesome. If you are a bit impatient like me and you don’t see the Baseline listed, hop over to the ‘Actions’ tab, highlight “Machine Policy Retrieval and Evaluation Cycle” and click ‘Run Now.’Additionally, I can click ‘View Report’ and see a locally- rendered HTML report – more awesomeness. For comparison, here’s another DC that is NOT compliant: And the non- compliance issue/details are displayed further down in the Report…I only screen- shot’d the NTDS path failure but the GC non- compliancy was there, too. Within the SCCM Console, you can view the compliance: Via the in- box Compliance Reports…Via the Deployments details: Or via the Configuration Baseline details, too: I really love the DCM piece of Config Manager and the 2. UI and Wizards make it soooo easy even I can do it. What settings do you watch? How do you watch them today? Do you have experience using DCM? Happy trails and I’ll see you out there on the march towards a ‘well- managed infrastructure.’Cheers!
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September 2016
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