Best of Questions and Answers from TechNet Webcast: Windows Server 2008 R2 Technical Overview (Part 2 of 2)

Click to register for and view the recorded webcast. As promised, here are the “Best of Q&A” from the webcast I delivered on June 11, 2009, entitled "TechNet Webcast: Windows Server 2008 R2 Technical Overview (Part 2 of 2)

A BIG THANK YOU to Dan Stolts for assisting in answering questions during the webcast! This blog post is primarily a result of his efforts.

Thanks for attending! ...and if you haven't seen the webcast yet, you can click on the link above (or the picture to the left) to get to the registration page.

Also - Here the RESOURCES I pulled together for this webcast

I hope you find these useful!

Kevin

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Questions and Answers

“Is the Windows Management Service the service that manages the WMI protocols?”

No, WMI has it's own services structure. isolating these functions is important from both a performance (do not run it unless you need it), ease of use (disable, restart, easily), and security (no security foot print if not needed because the services are not installed/ disabled).

“Ok, then, in a nutshell, what does Windows Management Service do? When did it first become a part of windows server NT, 2000, 2003, or 2008?”

I may have misunderstood your first question. The term "Windows Management Service" is probably what threw me off. Windows Remote Management (WS-Management): Windows Remote Management (WinRM) service implements the WS-Management protocol for remote management. WS-Management is a standard web services protocol used for remote software and hardware management. (used to communicate with WMI) The WinRM service listens on the network for WS-Management requests and processes them. The WinRM Service needs to be configured with a listener using winrm.cmd command line tool or through Group Policy in order for it to listen over the network. The WinRM service provides access to WMI data and enables event collection. Windows Management Instrumentation: Provides a common interface and object model to access management information about operating system, devices, applications and services. If this service is stopped, most Windows-based software will not function properly. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start. This is the WMI Featureset.

“Can direct access client be run on other operating systems such as Windows XP or Vista?”

No, there is not a client for Windows XP or Windows Vista. To my knowledge there are no plans to make these as add-in clients. DirectAccess requires Windows 7 client and 2008 R2 server. (In the webcast, I explain more specifically why that is.)

“Is there a new version of the RDP client for Windows 7? If so, will it be backported to run on XP and Vista as well?”

Yes, there is a new RDP client in Windows 7 that supports enhanced multimedia, multi-monitor, and other new features. I don’t know what the plan is to make it available as an upgraded client for Windows Vista or Windows XP.

“When you are connected to a remote system via DA you can see their screen as they logged on but are you running your session with your administrative rights?”

When I connected in the demo using Remote Desktop, I was logging in with the same account that was already logged-in on the desktop. So it locked the desktop at the client side, and allowed me to continue that same session from the LAN-side. As far as it relates to DirectAccess, there, really is nothing special here (and that’s the big news, really). It’s just a remote desktop connection like any other – except that I was able to launch it from inside the LAN, and connect to that client that is somewhere online and on the Internet. And to be able to do it BY NAME is also pretty cool. (Remember the IPv6 addresses we saw in DNS for that client?)

“How will the direct access feature integrate with SCCM 2007?”

As long as your SCCM Management Servers are able to see the clients, I don’t know of any issues. It’s not so much a special integration as it is those machines appearing to be available. As long as you have your networking configured properly (the required IPv6 and IPSec parts), I don’t see why SCCM would have any issues; while gaining the benefit of having access to those clients more often.

“Did I understand right? DirectAccess requires IPv6?”

Yes. You heard right.

“Can you comment on this - with so many features in Win 7 require 2K8 R2, what would be the incentive for enterprise to upgrade sooner rather than later. My view, it just increases the overall complexity and scope.”

Well, of course every business and every person is going to have to make the decision for themselves based on the new features in either product (Server or Client), and then the additional features gain when you have both. There are great reasons to move to Windows 7. There are great reasons to move to Windows Server 2008 R2. And the added functionality you get with both is icing on the cake; but you will have to decide for yourselves whether things like DirectAccess and BranchCache are of great-enough value to your organization to justify rolling out both. (You probably can guess what my opinion is.. but it’s not coming out of MY budget.)