Windows Server 2008 R2: Active Directory and Server Manager Remoting
Internet Explorer was used to access the TechNet-Virtual Lab in order to use the Active Directory and Server Manager Remoting for Windows Server 2008 R2. The Tech-Net Virtual Lab offers curious users and potential customers an opportunity to try Windows Server products for free. The Virtual Lab may have been essentially designed for IT Professionals and Developers because those are the two choices under the Drop Down menu titled ‘Job Role’ at the top left of the Home page with the URL address technet.microsoft.com. The Virtual Labs are available for brand new applications including Cloud and Cloud Services, Windows 8.1 Enterprise Evaluation, Office Visio Professional 2013, Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials and for the System Center a new application named Manager and Endpoint Protection. The Windows Server 2008 R2: Active Directory and Server Manager Remoting was located under the ‘Previous Versions’ product list.
The drop-down menus are a feature that worked very well throughout the assignment almost from the time the TechNet home page was opened to the end of the labs. The first drop-down menu was the most sophisticated and was located on the home page for the TechNet Virtual Labs. At first the page only shows a few lines of print with black fonts over and under a red box with white letters. The red box reaches from the left margin to the right margin; it has the exclamation “Explore Virtual Labs!” in large letters at the top of the red box which is an intuitive signal to click there.
The one point that was confusing was that the drop-down menu under Window Servers opened to five choices all in blue fonts and all with a checked box at their right side. Clicking on the title of the product did not open any other options; instead four of the boxes needed to be unchecked. I left the check in the box for the Windows Server 2008 R2, that allowed the mouse to click on the product name and then I was able to access the correct lab. Before the virtual labs could be opened the hard drive was checked to make sure all the necessary software had been downloaded so the lab would run on my computer. One application was needed on my computer so the active directory would run. The download time was very fast. The lab manual directed the user to click on DEN-DC-01.
The virtual lab was designed around the example of a bank. During the lab the different sets of data were well organized under drop down menus at the left of the screen in order to save space. The drop-down menus make it easier for the user to find the exact data needed; there is no problem created by cluttering the working space with lots of opened and unopened files.
The look of the software application is very clean and official looking. There are no fancy, distracting tabs. The sizes of the working spaces (the panels) are compatible with the type of data they hold. On the right side the column is narrow where the user can pull down the active directory and use the drop down menus or the search column space to find the data they want. The assignment in the manual suggested what to put into the search column space, but I thought it was easier and faster to simply use the dropdown menus. Although I did use the search option three times and it worked well, my style is to go right to the drop-down menus and make my choice from there.
An advantage for a user is that the Active Directory Administrative Center is task-oriented which means the person manipulating the data or inputting information does not need to know where the object can be found in the directory structure. This is great for the bank tellers, accountants, managers, etc. who only need to input data and understand the output they read from the monitor in order to accomplish their jobs.
The application has a lot of commandlets (200 cmdlts) which is possible according to the manual because the Active Directory Power Shell is the foundation with the Active Directory Administrative Center built on top of it. After opening the web page we were directed to change the password which only took a few seconds. The web page is divided into different sections or ‘panels’ that are separate from each other. In other words if you are going to be working for sometime on one section you can close the others and enlarge the workspace you need. For example the lab directions said to ‘click the contents pane’ so that only the contents pane remained on the monitor. That is an example of how easy it is to remove the navigation panes so only the contents pane remains on the page for performing tasks. Search-based navigation and breadcrumbs have been added to the application so that objects can be found without having to know where in the directory they are located. The search tool is like other search tools; the breadcrumbs help the user because you can back track and return to previously opened pages. The PowerShell made moving through the directory easy because of the Cmdlets which were short lines of code that could be accessed by highlighting and pressing F8.
In the second section of the lab we started with the server manager DEN-DC-01 but then we connected to another computer virtually by typing the destination ‘DEN-SRV-02’ and clicking ‘OK’. The Server Manager controls the two locations so 01 could represent the main bank and 02 could represent a branch of the bank. The two can access the same information when needed. An administrator can find the applications that are installed, which ones are running and check the overall health of either one of the servers. Drop down menus on the upper right panel were expanded. The menu labelled ‘Roles’ shows what roles have been installed on the remote server. The Features list the features installed, etc. The Diagnostics when expanded gives the user the ability to view any of the servers from a remote server so you can review the health. The manual reports that from a remote server the Service Core can be managed which includes monitoring of the information in roles and features; while at the same time partitions, schedule tasks, accounts, etc. can also be managed. The point is that a user does not need a Terminal Server and Remote Desktop in order to manage and monitor these elements.
The objectives of the lab were successfully reached. Firstly the simplified version for management of the Active Directory Administrative Center and AD Power Shell were used with no problems arising. Secondly the Server Manager Remoting was tried and was also very simple to use. Few keystrokes were needed and the pathways for finding data seemed direct, and not difficult to follow. Banks with smaller bank branches scattered around a city or the country would find the applications very helpful.
