Microsoft IT Health Scanner Released!

Microsoft Essential Business Server team is excited to announce the release of Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner, the new diagnostic tool designed for administrators of small or medium-sized networks who want to assess the overall health of their network infrastructure. When run from a computer with the proper network access, the tool takes a few minutes to scan your IT environment, perform more than 100 separate checks, and collect and analyze information about the following: 

ü Configuration of sites and subnets in Active Directory

ü Replication of Active Directory, the file system, and SYSVOL shared folders

ü Name resolution by the Domain Name System (DNS)

ü Configuration of the network adapters of all domain controllers, DNS servers, and e-mail servers running Microsoft Exchange Server

ü Health of the domain controllers

ü Configuration of the Network Time Protocol (NTP) for all domain controllers

This tool is based on the well-known EBS Preparation Wizard, which the EBS team has originally built for customers who were deploying Essential Business Server 2008 (see more on Preparation Wizard here). Very soon, however, the team noticed that Preparation Wizard was widely used, not just by customers who were deploying EBS, but anyone with Active Directory in their network who wanted to verify the health of their environment. That should have come as no surprise – after all, Preparation Wizard ran over 100 different checks which were based on most common issues resolved by Microsoft Customer Support Services over the past 10 years!

Building on the success of the Preparation Wizard, the team is now introducing the Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner. Just like its predecessor, Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner scans your network, identifies various networking and provides links to knowledge based articles that explain how to correct these issues. The one main difference is that the new tool is completely EBS-agnostic. That is, if in order to run Preparation Wizard, the administrator had to answer several questions specific to EBS deployment. Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner, on the other hand, requires no prior EBS knowledge to run. And of course, this new tool is completely free!

Go give it a try!

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=155170

Thanks!

Julia Kuzminova
EBS Program Manager

http://blogs.technet.com/essentialbusinessserver/archive/2009/06/29/microsoft-it-health-scanner-released.aspx

 

IT Network Health Scanner Demo powered by EBS

As you may have picked up earlier this month we announced a tool that can help you support your IT network by discovering network issues and reporting how to resolve them.  Before you download it from here check out the video below.  Thanks to David F our Technical Product Manager for putting this together.

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Nick King – Product Manager

Posted: Thursday, July 23, 2009 7:43 PM by EssentialBloggers

Filed under: ebs, Preparation Wizard, Health, IT Scanner

http://blogs.technet.com/essentialbusinessserver/archive/2009/07/23/it-network-health-scanner-demo-powered-by-ebs.aspx

 

Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner

Brief Description

The Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner is designed for administrators who want to assess the overall health of their Active Directory and network infrastructure. The tool identifies common problems that can prevent your network environment from functioning properly.

On This Page

Quick Details

Overview

System Requirements

Instructions

Additional Information

Related Resources

What Others Are Downloading

Related Downloads

Quick Details

File Name:
HealthScanWizard.msi

Version:
2008

Date Published:
7/6/2009

Language:
English

Download Size:
2.6 MB

Estimated Download Time:
7 min 56K
Dial-up (56K)DSL/Cable (256K)DSL/Cable (768K)T1 (1.5M) 7 min

Overview

The Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner is a diagnostic tool that is designed for administrators of small or medium-sized networks (recommended up to 20 servers and up to 500 client computers) who want to assess the overall health of their network infrastructure. The tool identifies common problems that can prevent your network environment from functioning properly as well as problems that can interfere with infrastructure upgrades, deployments, and migration.
When run from a computer with the proper network access, the tool takes a few minutes to scan your IT environment, perform more than 100 separate checks, and collect and analyze information about the following:

  • Configuration of sites and subnets in Active Directory
  • Replication of Active Directory, the file system, and SYSVOL shared folders
  • Name resolution by the Domain Name System (DNS)
  • Configuration of the network adapters of all domain controllers, DNS servers, and e-mail servers running Microsoft Exchange Server
  • Health of the domain controllers
  • Configuration of the Network Time Protocol (NTP) for all domain controllers

If a problem is found, the tool describes the problem, indicates the severity, and links you to guidance at the Microsoft Web site (such as a Knowledge Base article) to help you resolve the problem. You can save or print a report for later review. The tool does not change anything on your computer or your network.

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System Requirements
  • Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista Service Pack 1; Windows XP Service Pack 2

          Note: make sure that you have installed the latest service packs and Windows operating system updates.
  • Required Software: .NET Framework 2.0
  • Minimum Screen Resolution: 800 x 600

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Instructions
  1. Click the Download button on this page to start the download.
  2. Do one of the following:
  • To start the installation immediately, click Run.
  • To save the download to your computer for installation at a later time, click Save.
  • To cancel the installation, click Cancel.

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Additional Information

The computer where you run this tool must be joined to your Active Directory domain. You must use an account that is a member of the Domain Admins group (or, when prompted, provide appropriate credentials) to scan the network environment.
This tool uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to collect information from the servers on your network. Before you scan the environment, make sure that WMI is enabled on the servers and that Windows Firewall is configured to allow traffic on the TCP ports that are required for remote WMI access. In most cases, these are TCP ports 135 and 445 as well as dynamically assigned ports in the range 1024 to 1034.

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Related Resources
  1. The Microsoft EBS Team Blog
  2. Windows Essential Business Server
  3. Windows Essential Business Server Technical Library

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What Others Are Downloading

Others who downloaded Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner also downloaded:

  1. Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit
  2. IT Manager: Platform Solution Blueprint – Security
  3. Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server
  4. Risk and Health Assessment Program for Active Directory – Scoping Tool v1.1
  5. DPM 2007 Configuration Analyzer

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Related Downloads

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http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dd7a00df-1a5b-4fb6-a8a6-657a7968bd11&displaylang=en

Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (EBS) – Stages of Deployment and Deployment Timeline

The EBS product is unique in that it is intended to provide a complete Windows based IT infrastructure for medium sized companies that is deployed all at once as a single product. During the course of the EBS deployment Windows 2008, Exchange 2007, System Center Essentials,Forefront Threat Management Gateway along with unique EBS software are installed and configured in a “best practices” deployment across three servers.

There have been questions about how to approach planning the timing of the deployment of EBS, and where in the deployment timeline are there logical “break points” where a user can pause before continuing with the deployment.  To phrase the question another way, people have been asking how long can a user can “take a break” between the different deployment stages and between the tasks that are within the stages.

Here is a framework for thinking about the logical stages of EBS deployment with rough estimates of time for each of the stages and where “break points” exist during the deployment process.

Note that your mile will vary on the timing of completing the tasks within the stages.  These times are used as examples for planning purpose only.

EBS “Stages of Deployment”

  EBS Deployment Stages


Figure 1  EBS Deployment Stages

There are three major stages that occur during an EBS deployment (see Figure 1 – EBS Deployment Stages).

1.       Stage 1 – Prepare Environment and Plan for the Deployment

2.       Stage 2 – Install the EBS server roles

3.       Stage 3 – Perform final Configurations steps & Migrate workloads to EBS servers

Stage 1 – Prepare and Plan

This is the stage where the user plans & prepares for the deployment and uses EBS’s Planning and Preparation Wizards to help with the process.

1.       Prepare Environment – Run the EBS Preparation Wizard to detect conditions in the Windows Server IT infrastructure that need to be corrected to ensure a successful EBS installation. The Wizard will detect blocking conditions in the existing environment and provide guidance on how to correct the conditions. The total amount of time to run the Preparation Wizard and detect and correct conditions is dependent on the state of the environment that the wizard is being run in. Some environments have many issues that need to be corrected before continuing.

 Timing - Plan on spending a minimum of three hours during the prepare environment phase.

 Break Point(s) – The user can run the wizard as many times as necessary (and take breaks between each run) to correct detected environmental conditions.

 

2.       Plan for EBS Installation – Run the EBS Planning Wizard to help you gather the parameters that will be required when you run the Installation Wizard. The Planning Wizard is useful to help you think through how EBS will be integrated into your environment. The output of the Planning Wizard is a checklist that can be used when running the EBS Installation wizard.

 Timing - Plan on spending a minimum of three hours during the planning phase.

 Break Point(s) –The Planning Wizard needs to be run within fourteen days of completing the Preparation Wizard.

Stage 2 – Install EBS

This is the stage where the user installs the EBS server roles (Management, Security and Messaging) on three servers.

1.       Install Management Server Role – Run the EBS installation wizard to install the Management Server role.

 Timing - Plan on approximately three hours to complete the Management Server installation wizard.

 Break Point(s) – The Management Server installation wizard needs to be run within fourteen days of completing the Planning Wizard.   

2.       Install Security Server Role – Run the EBS installation wizard to install the Security Server role.

 Timing – Plan on approximately two hours to complete the Security Server installation wizard.

 Break Point(s) – The Security Server installation cannot be completed until the Management Server install has completed. There is no enforced timing between when the Management Server has completed and when you need to start install of the Security Server.  

3.       Install Messaging Server Role – Run the EBS installation wizard to install the Messaging Server role.  

Timing – Plan on approximately two hours to complete the Messaging Server installation wizard.  

Break Point(s) – The Messaging Server installation cannot be completed until the Security Server install has completed. There is no enforced timing between when the Security Server has completed and when you need to start the install of the Messaging Server.

Stage 3 – Configure and Migrate

This is the stage where the user performs the configuration tasks that complete the EBS deployment and to migrate data from existing workloads to the newly installed EBS environment.  

1.       Configure EBS – Perform the configuration steps to complete the EBS deployment such as configure System Center Essentials (SCE) and configure EBS licensing (CALS).

 Timing - Plan on approximately two hours to complete the Management Server configuration tasks  

Break Point(s) – The initial licensing configuration must be completed within 30 days. Otherwise, there are no dependencies or forced timing for completing the individual configuration tasks.   

2.       Migrate to EBS – Perform the steps to migrate the data from existing workloads to the equivalent workloads running in EBS.

 Timing – The timing for migration is variable and depends on which workloads you are planning on migrating to EBS.  For example, if the user plans on continuing to use an existing DHCP service, then there is no need to plan for the DHCP migration.   Another timing variable to consider is how big the data sets are that you are migrating.  For example, the timing of theExchange mailbox migration is dependent on the size of each user’s mailboxes and how big the existing Exchange mailbox database is.  Plan for a minimum of three hours to complete the Management Server migration tasks.  

Break Point(s) – There are no dependencies or forced timing for completing the individual migration tasks.  The user can complete them on a schedule that makes the most sense for their business.


http://blogs.technet.com/essentialbusinessserver/archive/2009/06/06/windows-essential-business-server-2008-ebs-stages-of-deployment-and-deployment-timeline.aspx

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