Perform remote administration with RSAT
Tuesday, September 02, 2008 01:09 PM
Remote administration of server environments is a critical part of rights delegation and agile support. The Remote Server Administration Tools are now available for Windows Server 2008 that run on Windows Vista Service Pack 1.
Administrators with Windows Server 2003 and prior versions of Windows Server have come to enjoy the ability to run Active Directory Users And Computers (ADUC) and other administration tools from their Windows XP-based workstations.
Now Windows Server 2008 administrators running Windows Vista Service Pack 1 can use the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) to perform these remote administration tasks locally instead of taking up a remote desktop connection session to a server with the tools installed.
Microsoft provides the RSAT as a free download. It's fairly straightforward to install the RSAT (get instructions in the Microsoft KB article 941314), but it may require a reboot or an update to Windows Installer.
You cannnot install the RSAT if you're using Windows XP or if you're on a system with Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2000 administrative tools locally installed.
Once you install RSAT, you must enable it for use in the Control Panel. Figure A shows the RSAT snap-ins being enabled.
Figure A
Once you enable the selected snap-ins, the local Administrative Tools folder contains the selected snap-ins for use locally. At this point, the tools are ready for use on the Windows Vista system.
Figure B shows the Administrative Tools displayed.
Figure B
Note: The use of RSAT will depend more on delegated roles to usernames than the ability to do an explicit run as with administrative alias accounts.
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