WD Lesson - 9

Customizing MMCs

Microsoft Management Console

The MMC is a tool used to create, save, and open collections of administrative tools, which are called consoles.  

            The consoles are the programs used to host snap-ins (the management applications for administering the network services).

            The following fig. gives the example of a console tree with snap-ins:

Snap-Ins (stand-alone and extensions)

Snap-ins are applications that work within an MMC and are used to perform administrative tasks. There are two types of snap-ins:

i) stand-alone snap-ins :(referred as snap-ins) and provides one function or a related set of functions.

ii) Extension snap-ins :(referred as extensions) and provide additional administrative functionality to another snap-in.

Snap-ins and Extensions

Preconfigured Vs Custom MMCs:

There are two major categories of MMCs:

Preconfigured MMCs: are the default MMCs which contain commonly used snap-ins and appear on the Administrative tools menu.

Custom MMCs: are created manually for our convenience, to perform a unique set of administrative tasks.

Characteristics of Preconfigured MMCs:

1. These MMCs contain a stand-alone snap-in that provides the functionality to perform a related set of administrative tasks.
2. These MMCs are in user mode. So we cannot modify or save or even add any additional snap-ins.
3. These can be added by Windows server 2003 when we install additional components.

Characteristics of Custom MMCs:

1. These MMCs can be created and saved by combining the preconfigured MMCs even with any third party snap-ins to use again.
2. These MMCs are in author mode. We can distribute these to other servers.
3. These MMCs can be used from any computer to centralize and unify the administrative tasks.