Comments on: RSAT, the Adminpak replacement, is finally available

By: Predashen

Predashen — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:09:54 +0000

Finally !

thank you very much for the article ,it worked like a charm !

By: Christopher

Christopher — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:35:34 +0000

Michael ADUC exists on Vista but it doesn’t have tabs for Exchange Management (Exchange Advanced, Exchange General). XP was the same way, so the corrective course was to install the Exchange Admin tools which included an msc for ADUC that included the exchange admin tools.

As I type this, I now realize that my previous post was inaccurate. Sticking with convention, the RSAT should not include an ADUC with exchange management tabs. We should install the exchange management tools on Vista, and use the ADUC that is delivered with it. Herein lies the last piece that I’m missing in order to use Vista for domain management in the way that I currently use and therefore prefer. (admitting that I could always just RDP to the Exchange server; but my current tools are far less cumbersome than an RDP session) I suppose what I need is an updated Exchange 2003 admin pack that works with Vista.

Note to those that have been down this path; there IS a way to manually copy over the exchange 2003 admin tools and register DLL’s and such and some of it works. But those highly convenient tabs that I use all day long are still missing from ADUC.

The lack of this tool doesn’t really impact my organization. XP SP2 + 97 patches is working just fine for us. There are no compelling reasons for me to upgrade to VistaME, and there are many incompatibilities and a giant cost of upgrading that compel me to stick with XP.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:04:12 +0000

Leonardo, yes many admins prefer managing servers by logging on via RDP. Actually, this was Microsoft’s excuse when IT pros started complaining that the malfunctioning of the Adminpak under Vista. I was surprised how many came to my blog in the hope of finding a solution to their problem. I think Adminpak and RSAT are useful if you are managing many different servers. You can have all your tools in just one console. So you can connect to all your servers with just a mouse click.

Amy, yeah “finally” was also my first thought when I read about it.

Christopher, hmm you are right, ADUC is not in the list. I just noticed this now because I installed the Adminpak tools before. Did you install RSAT on a Vista machine without Adminpak? Is ADUC really not included?

Aaron, I also like complaining about Microsoft, but I don’t think that it makes me a better admin. Actually, I think it will prevent me from getting the highest decoration available for a Windows IT pro, i.e. I will never become an MVP. As to the hypervisor, I am not complaining about that. It is not ready for prime time, so they shouldn’t release it yet. In my view, they should release Windows Server 6.5 together with Hyper-V.

Jay, do you mean the Terminal Services Profile tab in ADUC?

By: Jay Rogers

Jay Rogers — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:19:20 +0000

I agree with all points mentioned. Is there anyway to at LEAST get the Terminal Server Profile Tab.
They really should make all products have some type of managment with vista (like Exchange 2003 stuff too.

Definitely hurt it’s adoption in corporations.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:37:13 +0000

Much of the time I think people just complain about Microsoft because they think it makes them sound like a better admin. As if being mad about something makes you an expert.

Having said that, on this issue I agree 100% with your complaint. It was definitely a bad call to make SP1 available without some kind of adminpak.

In addition, I’m still attempting to understand how they can release Server 2008 while Hypervisor is still only at RC1. Hypervisor is one of their huge selling points but it still isn’t in it’s fully matured stage.

Today it’s 29 days since Server 2008 launch…

By: Christopher

Christopher — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:21:49 +0000

They’re, getting warmer…but are still missing ADUC with Exchange 2003 tabs.

By: Amy

Amy — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:40:36 +0000

FINALLY!!!!! I have been waiting impatiently for these tools since the beta versions of Vista!

By: Leonardo

Leonardo — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:11:03 +0000

I’ve tried out adminpak over 9000 years ago when W2K Server was released, so I don’t remember much about the experience except one thing: It was too slow, particularly when handling the Event Log.

A terminal services session has been my management method since, and will continue to be unless I find some compelling reason to switch to, or even implement RSAT as alternative.