Friday, October 08, 2004

Editing the SBS Admin Console

The SBS Admin console is a pretty cool idea, all your admin consoles in one place,
launched at login for you. You don't have to do anything else, just log into your box, and start the administration.

But what if you have SQL, Want to manage DHCP? What if you use AD contacts? All of these things are not in the admin console (well Contacts, are, but they are buried in the AD Users and Computers snap-in).

You can go ahead and right click the .msc file in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\SmallBusinessServer\Administration called itprosbsconsole.msc and choose Author. Any changes you make to this console are saved and launched on startup.

Some good ideas are:

  • Add a new query node for Contacts

  • Add the DNS, DHCP, ISA, SQL snap-ins to the advanced section

  • Change the startup section to save time

  • Make the console not open up full screen


Personally, I think it makes administration a little easier. If you actually use Power Users, you can do the same thing with the mysbsconsole.msc located in the same directory.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yo Sean,

Cannot save... how so?

Jeff L SBS MVP

Sean Daniel said...

You shouldn't have to save, just close the console and it will save for you.

Jonathan said...

Totally badass. Integrated WSUS 3.0 in my SBS 2003 R2 Console. Maybe that'll clear up the persistent update error ghost. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Sean, any idea if one can install the console on a client (like other consoles can be).
I like the setup of the SBS console, but would like to have it on a client. I can get the AD and Exchange stuff on a client, but do not know how to replicate the "non-advanced" items from the SBS console.
Thanks,
Mike

Sean Daniel said...

Hi Mike,

I haven't heard of that being done before, so I'm not sure it's possible.

Sean