I met up with Otto Helweg and learned about some of the cool things you do out of the box with Vista and Server 2008 technologies around management, automation, and alerting. If you don't want or it doesn't make sense for your environment to fork over the cash for one of the full blown Microsoft SC* management software suites - this is a video you definitely want to watch. It's also interesting to see the types of things you can do on the fly, even if you already have a management/automation/alerting software in place.
Since this one is a little bit longer, I am including a breakdown of the video:
00:00 - Description of what he does in the Windows Server Customer Advisory Team (WinCAT)
01:20 - Tells us some of the management technologies he work to find solutions with: WMI, WinRM/WS web services for management (WS-man), Netnew, Windows eventing and forwarding, Task scheduler, powershell, group policy.
02:18 - Demo of triggering an event alert to centralized servers over the internet
04:33 - Whiteboard description of what happened. (see full description of this scenario below) DMTF = desktop management task force.
09:20 - Practical / Real-world application of where this scenario might be used
13:46 - Demo of WinRS doing a "dir /s" over an HTTP connection. How to make it
14:46 - How to make a secure connection using this
16:55 - Demo of subscribing to events using of a custom query filter and viewing them in the forwarded events log. Comparison and capabilities of Windows Server 2003 or below events to Windows Server 2008/Vista events. Description of the RenderingInfo section of the events. Attaching a task to an event. Showing the task automatically created in task scheduler.
23:22 - Triggers, Actions (now up to 32 serialized actions), in task scheduler.
26:43 - Recommended tips for how to get started with management technologies: Go to his blog (http://blogs.technet.com/otto), they are working on guides, some information on MSDN/TechNet.
Windows Server 2008 incorporates the most significant advance in enterprise management and automation technologies that assist IT in their efforts to achieve a “Dynamic Infrastructure” in the datacenter. This clip will not only show disparate in-the-box Windows Server 2008 management technologies, but demonstrate how they work together to enable new automation, alerting, and monitoring scenarios WITH NO CODE. These “Dynamic Infrastructure” foundational components include Task Scheduler automation, a new Windows Eventing and the Event Forwarding sub-system (with a peak at Windows Remote Shell).
These technologies will be presented in an enterprise context so they can be leveraged across a very large number of servers where automation, programmatic action, and alerting are critical. This demo will be enterprise management system agnostic, but provide the attendee with building blocks that will enable integration into existing IT monitoring systems. For this demo, the managed server is http://wsman.msft.net.
Demo steps include (easiest to follow along with 2 domain joined Vista/WS08 machines and a mutual Admin account):
· Use WINRS to connect to the managed server (winrs /r:<sever> cmd)
· Create a Windows Event subscription to the managed server using the local “Event Viewer”
· Stop and Start the Time Service (sc stop w32time) on the managed server
· Find the events in the local “Forwarded Events” log (note: you can increase the polling rate down from the default 15 minutes)
· Attach a Task to the forwarded events
This video takes this demo to the next level by managing a server that is outside the internal corporate network on a DMZ in the Internet. In addition, this managed server is in a workgroup and not domain joined.