How can I get full functionality out of MMC?
January 21, 2008 1:42 PM 
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Help me better use MMC (Microsoft Management Console) for server maintenance tasks.
I manage several servers. Each server has a bunch of stuff available under Administrative Tools. I can open these locally on each machine to maintain the various items, or, I can use one machine and add these snap-ins to one master MMC.
This is what I currently do. I have the Active Directory snap-in for our domain, I have several DHCP snap-ins, and a couple Event Viewers.
However, with the Active Directory snap-in, I cannot access some property pages on the master console that I would be able to access if I were directly working on the server.
For instance, I cannot see a user's Dial-In tab on my master console, but I can see it if I use the same area on the domain controller. Likewise, I don't have any of the user's Exchange tabs on the master console, but these are available if I'm working directly on the Exchange server.
What accounts for these differences, and how can I reconcile them?
Look into seamlessrdp from a linux box (http://www.cendio.com/seamlessrdp/) - it's free and it's very useful to run command line stuff/scripts/mmcs/etc., on a target machine. Some further reading (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=363649&highlight=virtualbox+rdesktop and http://collegegeek.org/index.php/2007/03/31/windows-applications-in-linux/)... I set up a script to add/remove the required target directory via a scheduled task for some additional security. I also include a tab-able command line tool like console.exe to allow for tab-able console sessions.
For AD DC console only tools/scripts - this trick can be very helpful.
HTH
posted by mctsonic at 2:05 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]