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Getting to grips with Microsoft's IT Health Environment Scanner

Posted on 19 Nov 2009 at 14:18

David Moss conducts a network health check using Microsoft's free IT Health Environment Scanner

The Microsoft IT Health Environment Scanner is a tool designed to give you a quick health check on your network.

Aimed at the small-to-medium business with no more than 20 servers and 500 client systems, the Health Environment Scanner is one of the tools that appeared as part of Microsoft’s Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) 2008 platform, to which the tool will steer you once it’s completed its analysis.

Once its massive 2.6MB download has finished, installation takes a matter of seconds and you’re ready to run the tool. Before you can install it, however, you’ll need to check that you satisfy the usual software requirements: the latest service pack, which version of the .NET Framework, and the operating system is Windows Server 2003/2008, Vista, or XP – and you’ll need a minimum screen resolution of 800 x 600.

Since this is a tool for network checking you’ll be unsurprised to learn that the computer you install it on must be part of an Active Directory, and you need a Domain Admin’s account to run it.

The tool also employs Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to collect its data, so you’ll have to set up your firewall to pass traffic on TCP ports 135 and 445, as well as the range 1024 to 1034 inclusive.

The tool covers a wide variety of essential server areas. Each main heading in its results tree has a number of subheadings connected to that particular area - so, for example, under the main heading of Active Directory Site Configuration, you'll find the following items checked:

• Intra-site topology generation is enabled for the Knowledge Consistency checker
• Local Active Directory site contains only local subnets
• Universal group membership is cached
• Domain Controllers are holding roles
• Active Directory site is contained in a site link
• Connection translation is enabled and a global catalogue exists
• Interval for tombstone lifetime is set correctly
• Inbound replication is enabled
• Outbound replication is enabled (for writable domain controllers only)
• Infrastructure master is not a global catalogue server