Should you upgrade your network to Windows .NET Server? If you are a network administrator, this second article in a series by Richard Coile gives you still more reasons why you should take the plunge.
This is the second of a two-part series on why you as a network administrator should think about upgrading your network to Windows .NET Servers. The first article focused more on the network and the behind-the scenes-items. This article focuses on the tweaks that have been made to the Windows operating systems to make your job easier.
We have all gotten the call that the network is down, and it can come at the most inconvenient time. With the advent of products such as PCAnywhere and Terminal Services for Windows 2000, along with other remote tools, you can do most of the emergency management of the network from the comfort of your home. I have found that I can actually get more done using remote management tools than I can when I am actually at work. Windows .NET Servers make it even easier to perform remote management of your servers, as you will see in this section.
Remote Desktop for Administration replaces the Terminal Services in Remote Administration mode that was included in Windows 2000. Remote Desktop for Administration does not require you to purchase extra licenses for client access. It allows you to access a server with any client that is running Windows 95 or higher. Remote Desktop for Administration should not degrade the performance of the server that the administrator is connected to. The Remote Desktop for Administration does not include the application-sharing, multiuser capabilities, or process scheduling that the full-blown version of Terminal Server includes when it is in Application Server mode. Remote Desktop for Administration now supports higher screen resolution and more colors than was supported in Windows 2000 Terminal Services.
Remote Assistance is another way to be able to remotely connect to XP clients or to other .NET servers. You will be able to view, chat, and control the client machine in real time. This gives an administrator the ability to help users through difficult tasks to perform or to help diagnose problems on client machines.