Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Management Tools

In my crusade to only use remote desktop when I absolutely need to, I've downloaded and installed the Exchange Server 2007 Management Tools so that I don't have to use remote desktop to manage our Exchange Server. The download from microsoft is non trivial at 685 MB and 990 MB extracted (we got it in 38 minutes ^_^).

The Management tools require the following pre-requisites

• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
  
• MMC 3.0
• Windows PowerShell 1.0

After having installed the pre-requisites, we started up the installer from the Management tools download. It turns out that this download is actually the installer for Exchange Server 2007. Interesting. We only wanted to install the Management Tools so we picked "Custom Exchange Server Installation, clicked next, checked Management Tools and clicked next again. From there it double checked the pre-requisites and started the install.

So now no more having to log into the exchange server I can do it all from the newly installed Exchange Management Console on my workstation.

Creating Windows 2003 Trusts: The VMWare connection

We've been testing our software for Citrix compatibility lately and wanted to try out some Domain Trust situations to make sure that we either worked, not work and schedule a new feature, or could document a known issue.

Creating trusts between Windows 2003 domains is usually pretty easy.

1. Start up MMC
2. Add the Active Directory Domains & Trusts snap-in
3. Select your domain, right click and select "properties"
4. Click on the "Trusts" tab
5. Click "New Trust" and follow the wizard to create your trust.

This time however, I was having problems. I was creating the trust between a VMWare hosted domain, let's call it P, and a MS Virtual Server hosted domain, let's call it O. When creating the trust, I was getting the error "Local Security Authority is unable to obtain an RPC connection to the domain controller". I verified that DNS was working, RPC services were running on both domain controllers of domain P and O. So what the heck?

Enter Citrix Tools Shared Folders. It appears that if you have Citrix Tools installed with the Shared Folders option, it interferes with the trust creation. The fix is a simple as removing the option from the Citrix Tools install and then creating the trust.

1. Open Add and Remove Programs
2. Select Citrix Tools and click Modify
3. Mark Shared Folders to be removed and complete the wizard.
4. Create your domain trust

Now we haven't been using the Shared Folders option in Citrix Tools so we haven't added it back in, I suppose that you could re-add it after having created the trust and it'll probably just work. If you know for sure please chime in!

Administering Win2003 from XP Without RDP

I wanted administer Windows 2003 systems from Windows XP with out using remote desktop because it is in remote administration mode and didn't want to tie up rdp sessions. I tried just copying dsa.msc from a Windows 2003 machine to my XP workstation but that failed miserably. The ticket I was looking for was the Windows 2003 Administration Pack.

Download and install to get all the Administrative Tools usually only available on windows 2003 machines such as:

Active Directory Domains and Trusts
Active Directory Management
Active Directory Sites and Services
Active Directory Users and Computers
Authorization Manager
Cluster Administrator

No more need to use remote desktop just to administer AD.