The User Interface

The Application Center user interface provides access to the product feature set via a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in, the Web browser, and the Microsoft Windows command prompt. (For more detailed information about the MMC, see "MMC version 1.2" later in this chapter.) The MMC provides full access to the product feature set, but access to cluster administration and monitoring tasks is also possible—although to a lesser extent—by using Microsoft Internet Explorer and the Application Center command-line tool. Table 3.1 compares these three interfaces.

Several administrative tasks can be accomplished via parameterized commands that are executed from the Windows command prompt. These commands, which are described in detail in Chapter 11, "Working with the Command Line Tool and Scripts," provide a robust command subset that supports both remote and automated cluster administration.

Table 3.1 A Comparison of the Application Center User Interfaces

Task	MMC snap-in	Web browser	Command-line tool
Create a cluster	Yes	No	No
Add/remove server	Yes	No	Yes
Restart a server	Yes	No	No
Reset Web services	Yes	No	No
Connect to server (controller or member)	Yes	No	No
Change the cluster controller	Yes	No	Yes
Set offline/online	Yes	No	Yes
Set server drain time	Yes	No	Yes
Change load balancing options	Yes	No	No
Edit cluster IP addresses	Yes	Yes	No
Specify load balancing address	Yes	No	Yes
Change load balancing weight	Yes	No	Yes
Change component services routing	Yes	No	Yes
Change request forwarding options	Yes	No	No
Synchronize the cluster	Yes	No	Yes
Change synchronization options	Yes	No	No
Disable server synchronization	Yes	No	Yes
Applications (view, create, edit, delete, rename, and synchronize)	Yes	No	View applications on controller
Deploy applications	Yes	No	Yes
Add/remove performance counters	Yes	Yes	No
View events	Yes	Yes	No
Edit event properties	Yes	No	No
Monitoring (edit, enable, disable)	No	Yes	No

As you can see, each interface has its merits. The command-line tool, for example, is particularly useful for automating cluster tasks through the use of scripting—a topic that is covered extensively in Chapter 11.