Saturday, April 12, 2008

RSAT: the AdminPak for Windows Server 2008

An AdminPak (a.k.a AdminPack, Admin Pack) for Windows Server 2008 has been released. Windows Server 200x administrators are familiar with the "Administration Tools" or adminpak.msi that they used to install on their management workstations for connecting remotely via MMC to servers instead of having to login them via RDP.

Windows Server 2008 did not have the adminpak built in to the RTM media. These are called the "Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT)" and were released separately on March 24. The RSAT are available as a free download at Download Center.

RSAT contains the following tools:

Role Administration Tools:
  • Active Directory Certificate Services Tools
  • Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools
  • DHCP Server Tools
  • DNS Server Tools
  • File Services Tools
  • Network Policy and Access Services Tools
  • Terminal Services Tools
  • Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Services Tools

Feature Administration Tools:

  • BitLocker Drive Encryption Tools
  • Failover Clustering Tools
  • Group Policy Management Tools
  • Network Load Balancing Tools
  • SMTP Server Tools
  • Storage Manager for SANs Tools
  • Windows System Resource Manager Tools

The following tools are fully supported for managing computers running Windows Server 2003:

  • Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools
  • Active Directory Certification Authority Tools
  • DHCP Server Tools
  • DNS Server Tools
  • Terminal Services Tools
  • Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Services Tools
  • Group Policy Management Tools
  • Network Load Balancing Tools
An immediate thought: Managing computers running Windows Server 2008 Server Core is now easier. Once the server has been set up and configured to allow remote MMC connections, all you need to do is install RSAT on your workstation and connect to your Server Core machine using the RSAT tools. Your non-GUI Windows Server now has a remote GUI :)

Note that you can install the RSAT tools only on a computer running Windows Vista with Service Pack 1. Read more about it on the Windows Server blog.
Posted by Shijaz at Saturday, April 12, 2008
Tags: , ,

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the information about RSAT. I would like to know how can you manage Windows 2008 server from a Windows XP machine not using Remote Desktops (only 2 connections) I work as a trainer and sometimes 10 students must access a W2k8 machine

03 December, 2008 02:52
crm17 said...

Thank you for this post! It was one of the easiest to find and clearest I found when looking for the new adminpak.

08 January, 2009 21:14

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