Windows NT 5.0's Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 1.0 lets you manage all aspects of your NT network from one console. MMC currently ships with BackOffice products such as Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0, Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), and SNA Server. MMC will provide an extensible container for NT 5.0 management tools related to the operating system (OS), BackOffice products, and third-party services. Microsoft wants to give you one console to manage your whole environment. The company plans to modify its BackOffice logo terms to require vendors to provide MMC snap-ins that will manage vendors' products.
Adding snap-ins or pluggable modules to MMC lets you custom build a management tool to meet your systems management needs. You can customize MMC to create different views for each systems administrator. Choosing only the snap-ins you want lets you create custom tools (or documents, as Microsoft calls them) to perform a particular management function. In this article, I'll focus on how you can use this feature to create and share management capability on an NT 5.0 network. I'll review MMC's functionality and discuss how you can create custom tools and then distribute them to your systems administrators based on their functional need.
MMC Functions
MMC is a container with no management functionality, but it's expandable. You can potentially add snap-ins to perform any management task. Microsoft plans to leverage MMC to provide systems management tools for all aspects of NT 5.0 networks. MMC's snap-ins will replace existing management tools such as User Manager, Server Manager, Event Viewer, and Disk Administrator. MMC will also consolidate management-related tasks on other parts of the OS. For example, the System Service Management snap-in, or extension, will replace NT 4.0's Services Control Panel applet.
An extension is a kind of snap-in. In general, you can't install an extension by itself; you must first load a parent snap-in. An extension provides additional management functionality that's associated with the extension's parent and that you can enable under the parent's context. However, some extensions can stand alone. For example, you can extend the Computer Management snap-in that comes in NT 5.0 to include Device Manager, Event Viewer, File Service Management, and System Service Management, as Screen 1 shows. You can also load each of these extensions as standalone snap-ins, separate from Computer Management.
In addition to snap-ins and extensions, you can load objects such as folders, links to Web sites, and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) controls into your MMC console to augment management functionality. These objects let you create a custom management tool for direct access to important management information.
Screen 2 shows the management tool I created to monitor my workstation. In this tool, I loaded the Computer Management snap-in and enabled all available extensions. The Computer Management snap-in includes the Storage and Server Applications and Services monitoring utilities. MMC adds these utilities regardless of which extension you enable. I also loaded an OLE control under the Computer Management context called Sysmon Graph. This control is similar to NT's Performance Monitor (Perfmon) tool, and it lets me quickly track key objects and counters for my workstation. Finally, I added a link to Microsoft's Support Online Web site, because I often use this site to troubleshoot technical problems. When I click on this link, the Support Online site appears in my console's right-hand results window.
The Computer Management snap-in shows me information for my workstation only. To manage another server on my network, I need to load another instance of the snap-in and specify the server's name. I can also specify the server's name at the command line when I invoke the saved tool, as Screen 3 shows. For example, you might create and save a tool called events.msc to view event logs on a machine. When you create the tool, you can specify that the system can pass a given workstation or server name to the tool for monitoring. In this case, you'd type events.msc \\myserver, and the event logs for \\myserver would appear in MMC. You can also manage machines directly if you have the Directory Services Manager snap-in added. From this snap-in, you select the Computers container, right-click the machine you want to manage, and select Manage. You'll then see a new window with the Computer Management snap-in focused on the device you selected.
Creating a Custom MMC Tool
The process for creating a tool to perform a specific task is easy. As an example, I'll use the management tool I created in Screen 2.
To start an empty MMC, go to the command line and type
mmc.exe
When MMC appears, you'll start with a clean tool and a Console Root folder. To add a snap-in from the root, go to the MMC menu and select Console, Add/Remove Snap-in. From the Add/
Remove Snap-in dialog box, select Add to see a list of currently available snap-ins (e.g., Computer Management, as Screen 4 shows). The Computer Management dialog box asks whether you want to use the snap-in for your computer or another network computer. After you make your choice, you automatically return to the Add/Remove Snap-in dialog box, where you can select the Extensions tab. After you select the extensions you want for the snap-in, click OK to enable them.