Archive for May 2013

 
 

Getting Started (Again)

By now, you guys know that what we do best is get started and what could be better than getting started with SharePoint 2013?

Well, in this case, we’re actually had minions do all the hard part so now we just need to connect to it and see what trouble a robot can cause. Then, of course, we’ll try to recreate the whole thing ourselves.

First, we’ll want to get the RDP admin client running so we can log onto all of our servers via Windows. This tool is actually part of the Server 2008 Admin Tool package and you can get it for Windows 7 here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7887

You can struggle with the applicability piece but I’ve got Win7 x64 Enterprise so I download and run the .msu file. It thinks it’s just an update and so it just runs and it took several minutes.

Then it’s done. So now you have to go into Control Panel and click on Turn Windows features on or off. Select the Remote Services Administration options and click OK.

Selecting the Remote Desktop Services Feature

Selecting the Remote Desktop Services Feature

This will also take a moment. When it’s done, you can go Start | Run and enter MMC to open a generic console. Select File | Add Remove Snap In. Select the Remotes Desktops, click Add and OK.

Adding the Remote Desktops Snap-in.

You end up with the MMC running the RDC snap-in.

The Remote Desktop Connections Console.

The Remote Desktop Connections Console.

Right click on the Remote Desktops root and select New window from here. This will set your root and now you’re going to want to save your MMC with the RDC snap-in installed so go ahead and be sure to give it a smart, robot-like name. I’ll just leave mine on my desktop.

Finally you can configure each connection to use peculiar user names by right clicking on the root and selecting Add New Connection. Give it an IP address, computer name and user ID. If you check Allow me to save credentials, it will remember your user name but not that 64 character password.

Add a New Connection

Add a New Connection

Then just click on your new connections and log on.

Open Session and Log On

Open Session and Log On

And you end up with a cute little RDP session in that cute little window.

An Open RDP Session

An Open RDP Session

Then you realize the remote desktop won’t resize so you have to be sure to expand the MMC window BEFORE you make the connection. So right click and select Disconnect. Expand the size of the MMC and start over.

Open Session - Full Screen

Open Session – Full Screen

Now, just repeat the process for all the servers in your farm. Then you can add all your coworkers’ computers, all your computers at home and all your VMs and all the VMs running on your VMs.