You may have already read something about this and have probably already encountered the problem if you have migrated to Vista. There is no supported version of Adminpak for Vista and MS will not be releasing one. They say you should RDP onto the server you want to manage and then do your work there. Well that’s a crock of steaming $&!% if ever I’ve heard one. In the age where we want easier administration and dynamic infrastructure, the biggest player in server infrastructure is telling us that they want our job to be harder.
This seems to be a trend from MS as of late. Exchange 2007 shipped with some admin functionality not being added into the GUI. Lots of config tasks can only be done by using Powershell. MS might want to wake up and realise that not everyone in IT is or wants to be a programmer. The good news, I’m told, is that some of this functionality is going to be added back into the GUI by Exchange 2007 SP1.
There will be a replacement for Adminpak though. It is in development and is currently called Remote Server Administration Tools. It will not be released until at least the same as Vista Service Pack 1. That’s expected towards the end of this year possibly around the same time as Windows Server 2008 which is allegedly on schedule for business release at the end of the year.