Thread: Server Management in Datacenters

One major aspects of datacenters is manageability of servers and services on them. Many ISPs. even today. rely on manual steps to perform routine management tasks. However. for a datacenter having Microsoft servers. there is a better option available for you to manage it. Microsoft offers two solutions to manage your servers and services one for Windows-based Hosting (WbH) and the other for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration (HMC). Both perform almost similar actions but target different parts of the Microsoft hosting scenarios. WbH targets services comprising Web Servers (IIS 6/7). database servers (SQL Server 2005/2008). and Web portal services (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0) while HMC targets Exchange 2007. SharePoint 2007 and Office Communication Server 2007.

So what do $he solutions mean to you and how can you use them? At the basic leveL both consist of a number of different components providing number of services for managing the datacenter. Refer to the block diagram for the components and their explanations below. The components are common for both WbH and HMC. however. the scripts and tools that exist in each solution works with the targeted set of services only. Let's have a look at these components?

ADS: ADS short for Automated Deployment Services is a Windows component that allows administrators to quickly deploy multiple Windows servers over the network with any custom configuration. Using ADS you can set up base images including any application and configuration you want and then register them with the ADS. To deploy servers. all you need is to connect them to your internal network and turning them on. You will then be prompted about which image to install and once you do so. all the servers will get installed over the network in a matter of minutes rather than hours or days you you would require otherwise.



Active Directory: This allows you to perform centralized management of your servers. services. configuration. policies and users. By adding the servers into an Active Directory based network. you can easily set up policies for different classes of servers. setup. deploy software and configure them. centrally manage sers. their services. rights and much more.

MPS: This stands for Microsoft Provisioning Service and is used to provision different services on different servers. For instance. you can use MPS to create organizations (clients). users. Web sites. databases. SharePoint portals. Exchange mailboxes. DNS information etc. on different servers all from a single interface. The MPS itself comes with a sample Asp.Net based website where both the datacenter administrators and the administrator of an organization can login to manage settings. The datacenter administrator can of course administer all the organizations that are present in the Active Directory view and manage all the services. When the organization administrator logs in to the same website he will have options to add users in his organization only.