Benefits for Improved Management

Windows Server 2003 adds a series of tools and new utilities to improve system management. The tools help network administrators recover from system failures, automate server installations, install software updates and patches from a centralized location, and conduct remote system and server management. These tools and utilities are covered in detail in Chapters 3 and 33.

Automatic Server Recovery

Automatic Server Recovery (ASR) is a system recovery utility built into Windows Server 2003 that allows a server administrator to rebuild a failed server without having to reinstall the operating system or even conduct basic server system configuration steps. ASR effectively takes a snapshot of a server, including the operating system, specific system configuration parameters, and even hard drive stripe set information so that if a server fails, as long as the replacement server has the exact same system configuration, ASR can be used to reinstall the system back to the state it was in before the failure.

When restoring data, ASR does a track-by-track restoration of information, so hard drives do not need to be formatted or restriped. Before ASR, at a minimum, an administrator had to install hardware components, restripe hard drives, and load the Windows operating system. With ASR, all an administrator needs to do is plug in hard drives to a server, boot to the Windows Server 2003 installation CD, and choose to do a system recovery. ASR is covered in more detail in Chapter 33.

Remote Installation Service for Servers

New to Windows Server 2003 is a server tool called Remote Installation Services for Servers, or RIS for Servers. RIS for Servers allows an organization to create images of server configurations that can then be pushed up to a RIS server that can later be used to re-image a new system. RIS was standard with Windows 2000, but it supports only the re-imaging of desktop systems.

RIS for Servers can be used a couple of different ways. One way organizations have leveraged RIS for Servers has been to create a brand-new clean server image with all of a company's core utilities installed. Every time the organization needs to install a new server, rather than starting from scratch with an installation CD, the organization can use the template RIS server installation. The image could include Service Packs, patches, updates, or other standard setup utilities.

RIS for Servers can also be used as a functional disaster recovery tool. After a server is configured as an application server with the appropriate program files and parameters configured, such as Exchange, SQL, Terminal Services, or the like, an organization can then run the RIPrep utility to back up the application server image to a RIS server. In the event of a system failure, the organization can recover the server image right from the state of the system before system failure.

Note

Creating RIS images for production servers requires planning and testing before relying on the system function for successful disaster recovery. Certain applications require services to be stopped before RIPrep is run. Chapter 33 addresses steps to conduct system server recovery.

RIS for Servers is a versatile tool that helps organizations quickly build new servers or recover from application server failures. Besides being covered in Chapter 33 on disaster recovery, RIS for Servers is also covered in detail in Chapter 3 on new system installation.

Out-of-Band Management

To facilitate the management of a failed server, Windows Server 2003 includes an Out-of-Band Management function that provides for a modem or null modem cable connection to an RS-232 serial port on a Windows Server 2003 for command-line management of the server. As an example, when previous versions of the Windows operating system failed, commonly known as blue-screened, an administrator needed to actually work from the console of the server. Normal remote administration tools like Terminal Services do not work when a server is in a system fault state.

Out-of-Band Management allows an administrator to log on to the system, conduct an image dump, or reboot a server. The administrator also can boot a server in safe mode and remotely modify system parameters before rebooting the system to full operation mode.