System Management

Some time ago I used Admin Tools and RSAT for Vista and it saved my time from using remote desktop to log on to several servers. Now it is available (RTM, not RC or something…) for Windows 7 x86/x64.

Using RSAT for Win7, you can manage the following roles and features from Windows Server 2008 R2, 2008 and 2003:

After installing it, you can enable the roles and features you want to manage, by doing the following steps:

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Programs.
2. In the Programs and Features area, click Turn Windows features on or off.
3. If you are prompted by User Account Control to enable the Windows Features dialog box to open, click Continue.
4. In the Windows Features dialog box, expand Remote Server Administration Tools.
5. Select the remote management tools that you want to install.
6. Click OK.

Now you’ll find the tools in Administrative Tools menu.
 

Let’s suppose you create a package with one program and want to advertise it only to a few selected platforms, including x86 and x64 Windows 7 systems. Because Windows 7 is not supported yet with Configuration Manager 2007 SP1, you cannot choose it from the supplied list of platforms. As a result of this, after receiving and downloading the package, the system will give you the following message:
Program rejected (wrong platform). Advertisement "XYZ12345" from site "XYZ" was rejected because the client's platform is not supported.

It is expected that SP2 will add support for Windows 7, but until then we can use the following workaround:

1. Create a collection with all Windows 7 systems
   select sms_r_system.ResourceID, sms_r_system.ResourceType, sms_r_system.Name, sms_r_system.SMSUniqueIdentifier, sms_r_system.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, sms_r_system.Client from sms_r_system where OperatingSystemNameandVersion like '%Workstation 6.1%'
2. Create a new program (for example Program for Win7) for the same package and select “This program can run on any platform” as a requirement.
3. Create a new advertisement and use “Program for Win7” program. Advertise it to Windows 7 collection created earlier.

That’s it. This may not be the best workaround, but it worked very well for me, at least until SP2 will RTM and I can install it in production.