Enterprise Management of NT Services

A problem faced by NT administrators is the management of NT based services in the enterprise. In the NT environment, services have particular startup states and run with varying degrees of security. Multiple NT domains, servers, and workstations providing services all add to the difficulty of managing NT services. Un-authorized introduction of some services can cause problems to end-users and even block network access. Proactive monitoring of NT services is essential to maintaining the availability of network resources.

A system administrator must be aware of the following service related issues: 1) current status and uptime of all critical NT services; 2) services authorized to be running on the network; 3) are there any un-authorized services currently running. A system administrator must perform actions based on facts about network services. However, in order to make quality decisions, information must be collected and monitored, prior to the administrator’s involvement. Each area of service management presents a unique challenge. These challenges are the motivating factor behind the tools described in this paper.