Overview of Change and Configuration Management and IntelliMirror

Believe it or not, you're expensive. Your salary, the percentage of rent your office takes up, the software you use that helps the business runit all costs money. Making those costs tangible is a difficult proposition. Some costs are hard to put into concrete numbers . How do you quantify the cost of sending a technician to a user 's desktop when they've inadvertently set the background color, the foreground color, and the font color to black and hit the Apply button?

Accounting for these costs is a constant challenge, and bringing these costs under control is even more difficult. The Gartner Group, in the early 1990s, generated a new strategy to help with this predicament and proposed a new TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) model. This philosophical model essentially attempted to take the voodoo out of accounting for computing services. Simply account for every nickel and dime spent around computing, and voil ! Instant accounting!

Note 

You can find more info on Garner Group's TCO model at www.gartnerweb.com/4_decision_tools/measurement/decision_tools/tco/tco.html ( shortened to http://tinyurl.com/57fl6 ).

Microsoft's first foray into aligning with the TCO philosophy was back in the NT 4 timeframe with their Zero Administration for Windows (ZAW) initiative. The first major technology set based on ZAW was called the Zero Administration for Windows Kit (ZAK).

Most organizations have two types of users: those who work on one application and one application only, and those who use a few apps (but seem to never stop playing with their Desktops). With those two types of users in mind, ZAK could be run in two modes: Taskstation, in which users were locked down to one (and only one) application, and Appstation, in which users could move between several strategically selected applications. ZAK's goal was noble: Reduce the user's exposure to the Desktop and the operating system. Once that was reduced, less administration would be required to control the environment.

Although ZAK was a respectable first attempt, only a few organizations really used ZAK in the way it was intended. The adoption of ZAK never quite caught on due to the intricacy of implementation and lack of flexibility. Surprisingly, Microsoft still has ZAK available for NT 4 (a free download) at www.microsoft.com/windows/zak/ .

With Active Directory as the backdrop to a new stage, a new paradigm of how administrators manage users and their Desktops could be created. Enter the Active Directory version of Zero Administration for Windowsnow known as Change and Configuration Management (CCM) and IntelliMirror. Again, recall that the Zero Administration for Windows program was an "initiative," not a specific technology. With Windows 2000, Microsoft renamed the ZAW initiative to Change and Configuration Management and introduced several new technologiesthe greatest being IntelliMirrorin order to move closer to the TCO philosophy.

You can't run down to CompUSA and buy a shrink-wrapped copy of Microsoft IntelliMirror for Active Directory, nor is there an IntelliMirror administration MMC snap-in. It's a collection of different technologies, implemented via Group Policy, that are designed to reduce overall administration.

In accordance with the TCO philosophy, each IntelliMirror feature tries to chip away at each of the sore points of administrating your network by implementing specific technologies. Figure 9.1 shows how Microsoft envisions the Change and Configuration Management initiative, the IntelliMirror features, and the specific technologies therein. IntelliMirror implementation isn't an all-or-nothing proposition as ZAK had been. Administrators can pick and choose the features and functionality they want to deploy and when they want to deploy it. Although some IntelliMirror features that I'll describe in detail here are available when using Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP workstation by itself (such as Offline Folders), most are actuated only when you have the marriage between Active Directory and Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows 2003 as clients (such as Redirected Folders).

   

Features

Benefits

Technologies

Change and Configuration Management

IntelliMirror

User Data Management

Increased protection and availability of people's data "My documents follow me!"

Active Directory Group Policy Offline Folders Synchronization Manager Disk Quotas Redirected Folders

User Settings Management

Centrally defined environment "My settings follow me!"

Active Directory Group Policy Offline Folders Roaming Profiles

Software Installation and Maintenance

Centrally managed software "My software follows me!"

Active Directory Group Policy Windows Installer Service

 

Remote OS Installation

Fast system configuration "Get Windows 2000 working on this machine"

Active Directory DNS DHCP Remote Installer Services


Figure 9.1: This is Microsoft's picture of the relationship between CCM and IntelliMirror.

Again, you built a bit of a foundation for your IntelliMirror journey in the last chapter when you implemented Roaming Profiles. This enabled the basics of the "My documents follow me" and the "My settings follow me" philosophies. In this chapter, we'll explore the implementation of some of the other IntelliMirror features: Redirected Folders, Offline Folders, the Synchronization Manager, and Disk Quotas.



Group Policy, Profiles, and IntelliMirror for Windows 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000
Group Policy, Profiles, and IntelliMirror for Windows2003, WindowsXP, and Windows 2000 (Mark Minasi Windows Administrator Library)
ISBN: 0782144470
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 110

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