Chapter 13 -- Security Administration with ADSI, WMI, and COM

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Chapter 13

Configuring a group of servers with each server running multiple applications can be time-consuming. This chapter introduces the developer and administrator to some of the functionality available in Microsoft Windows 2000 to help build custom tools to manage complex Web-based applications. It's the authors' view that the best way to manage Windows 2000 networks programmatically—that is, from scripts—is to learn the following technologies:

• Windows Script Host (WSH): http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting
• Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) or Microsoft JScript: http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting
• Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI): http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/library/howitworks/activedirectory/adsilinks.asp
• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI): http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/library/howitworks/management/wmioverview.asp
• Microsoft Component Object Model (COM and COM+): http://www.microsoft.com/com

When you use these technologies, there's little you cannot manage locally and remotely on a Windows network.

The main topics in this chapter are

• What is WMI?
• What is ADSI?
• Example management and security configuration code, including Windows 2000 settings, Internet Information Services (IIS) 5 settings, Microsoft SQL Server 7 and SQL Server 2000 settings, miscellaneous COM+ scripts, and common IIS security-related ADSI settings