Top 15 Windows server tools
Over the years, Microsoft has given us a staggering number of tools to help with server administration. In this article we will discuss the Top 15 of them.
Robocopy, or “Robust File Copy”, is a command-line directory replication command. It was introduced as a standard feature of Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7, and has been available as part of the Windows Resource Kit starting with Windows NT 4.0
- user data moves for when a user changes departments (we associate the home folder with departments for organizational reasons).
- most uniquely, deleting data that I cannot otherwise delete due to illegal characters or paths that are too long (greater than 255 characters). Simply use robocopy /MOVE /COPYALL to move that data somewhere else, then format the volume and the data is gone.
- server expansions, retirements, replacements and consolidations.
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System Center Capacity Planner
Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner (SCCP) is formally being discontinued, as it no longer supports the current versions of Microsoft applications it was designed for. The most recent version, SCCP 2007, is no longer available According to Microsoft, the System Center Capacity Planner is being replaced by the System Center Configuration Manager Designer. System Center Capacity Planner was designed to help make sure your proposed server deployment will be able to handle the anticipated workload.
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Best Practices Analyzer
The Microsoft Exchange Best Practices Analyzer is designed for administrators who want to determine the overall health of their Exchange servers and topology. The tool scans Exchange servers and identifies items that do not conform to Microsoft best practices.
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PowerShell
Windows PowerShell is a command-line shell and scripting language that is designed for system administration and Automation. Built on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Windows PowerShell enables IT professionals and developers to control and automate the administration of Windows and applications. You can download PowerShell 2.0 from Microsoft.
File Server Migration Toolkit use Distributed File System (DFS) to maintain Universal Naming Convention (UNC) paths and to simplify the consolidation and migration process
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Microsoft Application Compatibility Manager
The Microsoft Application Compatibility Manager is part of the Application Compatibility Toolkit. It’s designed to ease the transition from one version of Windows to the next by compiling an inventory of the applications running on your desktops and determining whether each one is compatible with the new version of Windows.
PowerGUI a graphical interface and script editor for Windows PowerShell developed by Quest Software. It easily allows to script some common administrative tasks. More of all, the PowerGUI website supplies you with different additional functionality and add-ons in file systems, Active Directory Domain Services, network management, Hyper-V and so on.
The Server Core Configurator simplifies the provisioning process by providing a simple GUI you can use for the initial configuration. It is completely open source so it can be amended and change to fit your requirements, this version has been a year in the making and has been written in powershell with a reference to Winforms so that a GUI format is displayed.
This pair of tools (one used for modifications, one for queries) is simply the most useful, flexible and fully-featured command-line toolset to manage Active Directory Application Mode and Active Directory.
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LDIF Directory Exchange
The LDIF Directory Exchange utility is built into Windows Server. You can access it by entering LDIFDE in a command prompt window. Windows will display the command’s full syntax along with the various command-line switches you can use. LDIF Directory Exchange is a command-line tool for importing and exporting Active Directory objects. As with ADSI Edit. It allows you to do some amazing things. For example, you can export all the user accounts from a domain and then use the resulting text file to create those same user accounts in a different domain.
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Microsoft File Server Migration Wizard
As time goes on, server hardware continues to improve. Some organizations are finding that they can decrease management costs by consolidating their aging file servers. The Microsoft File Server Migration Wizard (Figure G), which is included in the File Server Migration Toolkit, helps organizations merge the contents of aging file servers into DFS root.
Ever have a performance problem, but don’t know what performance counters to collect or how to analyze them? The PAL (Performance Analysis of Logs) tool is a new and powerful tool that reads in a performance monitor counter and analyzes it using complex, but known thresholds. The tool generates an HTML based report which graphically charts important performance counters and throws alerts when thresholds are exceeded.
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DCDIAG
Although domain controllers are usually fairly reliable, problems do occasionally occur — particularly with regard to Active Directory replication. The DCDIAG utility is included with Windows Server. It lets you run a full series of diagnostic tests against malfunctioning domain controllers.
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ADSI Edit
ADSI Edit allows you to manually edit the Active Directory database. It gives you free rein over Active Directory. ADSI Edit is most useful for working with Exchange Server deployments.
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Security Configuration Wizard
The Security Configuration Wizard analyzes the way in which your servers are configured and then recommends how you can change various aspects of the configuration to make them more secure. It is designed to help you to reduce the attack surface of your servers. The Security Configuration Wizard is included with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but you can also download a Windows Server 2003 version.
