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Need to manage a Microsoft Windows NT server remotely? First, you'll have to understand the factors that can have a negative affect on the server, then you must be prepared to optimize conditions to mitigate these effects. NT offers a few native tools for remote management. Additionally, a few third-party tools facilitate remote management. However, be aware that a few tasks-like making changes to the network protocol bindings or creating shared volumes-require a local touch. Let's examine some of the measures you can take to reduce the need to manage the server remotely, and discuss the various functions you might want to perform remotely.

The First Step

The first, and most solid, step in remote management is to reduce the need to manage the server remotely. Following are some steps that can be applied to various server and operating systems.

Online Standby Drive and RAID

Check if the server supports an online standby drive. When a drive failure occurs, the standby will take its place, and in most cases, the server will continue to function as if nothing happened. This can easily be achieved if the server is running RAID Level 5. As a rule of thumb, hardware standby solutions provide better performance, better recoverability and lower overhead on the server because they have onboard memory and processors for parity calculations and error corrections.

Redundant Network Cards

Next, determine if your server can be configured with a redundant network interface card. In the typical configuration, the second card remains off-line, though connected to the network. If the primary network card fails, communications are switched to the second card. This can provide a workaround for n etwork card failure. With the right baseline information, you can identify potential problems, and even predict fa ilures. Similarly, the data will aid in capacity planning. The more you know about your servers and their behavior, the better you can plan the design of the next server, and even expansion of the current one.

On the Road Again

Once you have a solid leg to stand on, it's time to determine what you can do to get you on the road again. Assuming your NT server hardware is sized and tuned correctly, let's look at the various functions you may want to perform remotely.

Remote Control

In many ways, the simple ability to remotely take over a server's keyboard and mouse and view its display, is one of the most effective remote-server management techniques. Since NT does not provide this capability, you must look to third-party products. Products in this arena include McAfee's Remote Desktop, Microsoft Corp.'s SMS and Symantec Corp.'s pcANYWHERE. But be warned, remote-control applications that display graphical information can be CPU-consuming.

Another issue to consider w ith a remote-control solution is security. While most of the big names out there now tie into NT's user access list, some do not.

In addition to software-based remote control, hardware-based solutions are available. Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Intel Corp. all offer plug-in boards that allow for out-of-band control of the server at the hardware level. These solutions do not depend on the OS and they can help get you back on your feet after the dreaded "blue screen of death." While the server is rebooting, the text-based boot up and operating system loading screens are displayed to the remote administrator.

New advances from Compaq and HP in the area of hardware-based solutions include the addition of graphical remote-control products, such as pcANYWHERE, that allow display of the graphical portion of the operating system boot process. But the caveat to many companies is sec urity and cost. All of the boards mentioned here maintain their own access control list, which is no t necessarily bad. But that does involve setting up an account and password for support staff. The remote-management boards are also quite expensive, ranging in price from $1,500 to $2,500 a piece. If you need of mission-critical remote support, however, these cards can be lifesavers.

Also included in the Windows NT Resource Kit is a remote console application (i386\netadmin\rconsole). Coupled with a corresponding server-based remote-console service, this application provides NT Administrator with the ability to execute commands at the command prompt and display the output as if it were on the remote server-basically, it's a remote command-line session. The telnet application included in the Resource Kit provides the same functionality and offers slightly better performance.

Inspect and Diagnose Server Hardware

In addition to remotely controlling your server, it is also critical that you be able to view server configuration and check on logs for memory, hard drives, disk controll ers and network card errors. Unfortunately, server hardware manufacturers don't follow any standards for publishing this type of data, so we often have to rely on the data provided by the server or locked into proprietary third-party tools. Products such as Compaq's Insight Manager do an excellent job of providing comprehensive server data and events the server. With the Insight agent and an SNMP console, gathered events can be recorded at the hardware level and forwarded to a network management console.