Real World Computing

With SQL Server sorted internally, I next had to configure my firewall to allow exceptions, and this is where you need the instance ID for SQL Server. If you didn't note it on installation, head back to Start, find SQL Server and run the SQL Server Configuration Manager: select SQL Server Browser from the right-hand pane, then right-click the instance name and select Properties from the pop-up menu. Once this dialog opens, click on Advanced and you'll see a list containing the instance ID. Having already installed SQL Server once before MAPS, my instance ID was MSSQL.2; otherwise, it would have been MSSQL.1. Armed with the correct instance ID, fire up the Windows firewall, click on Exceptions | Add Program | Browse and look for the executable of the SQL Server instance you're using. If you've gone with a default installation, it will be something like:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft QL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Binn\sqlserver.exe

Now add an exception for the SQL Browser service, which will be:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\sqlbrowser.exe

That's it for the machine hosting MAPS: you can now, if you wish, install Accelerator on up to three "helper" systems, which I didn't bother with since I'm only going to be checking three servers (but I did look at the documentation and it's easy enough). What I did need to do, however, was set up the remote systems so their firewalls would permit remote access to Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). There are a number of ways to do this, and I'll leave it to you to choose the best for your setup: scripting or Group Policy would be the easiest for many systems, or you could opt for a quick manual job as I did. There's a fair bit to do, as you need to be sure remote administration is enabled in the firewall, that file and printer sharing is enabled, and that a number of TCP/UDP ports are opened up. Once again, the documentation takes you clearly through the process (which is slightly different if you're in a workgroup environment).

Then, on my Windows Server 2003 host system, I went to Add/Remove Programs | Windows Components and added the Windows Installer Provider and made sure the Remote Registry service was running - it's needed for examining the roles a server runs, and also to enable the running of the Performance Metrics wizard.

Select reports

I was now ready to start, so I went back to MAPS and ran the Assessment wizard to find out which of my servers could handle an installation of Windows Server 2008. Other items I could have checked in this survey include finding out which systems would be capable of running Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007, checking apps for virtualisability via Microsoft SoftGrid, or getting a list of SNMP-enabled devices. If you decide to go with the latter option, make sure you read the relevant section in the documentation for suggestions and caveats, and check out the MAPS tool for a full list of everything you can achieve.

I opted for a simple check on three servers and deliberately "broke" two as I wanted to see how the tool would handle rejection. I also wanted to see whether it would tell me what was wrong with each one, or just offer a list of suggestions as to what might be the problem.

I started by selecting my report and proposal to be a simple assessment of server hardware and workload for migration to Windows Server 2008. I chose to use Active Directory and a specific IP address range to identify the target machines, although with such a short list to check I could have entered the computer names manually - I could also have opted to import their names from a file, and yet another option is used if you're looking at a workgroup or a Windows NT domain. I included that one (it's a default), as I wanted to see what would happen when it found a system running Windows Vista Home Premium in the mix (it simply said Access Denied).

Continued....