GuidesUsing Reg.exe to Exclude Servers from Remote Installs

Using Reg.exe to Exclude Servers from Remote Installs

ServerWatch content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.





by Dana Daugherty

Does your organization want to avoid
installing the SMS client on its server systems? It is
possible to exclude your SMS Login Points (NT Domain
Controllers) from having the client forcibly installed. I’ll
show you the process to make this happen.
Does your organization want to avoid installing the SMS client on its server systems? It is possible to exclude your SMS Login Points (NT Domain Controllers) from having the client forcibly installed. Dana Daugherty’s latest article details the process for making this happen.

For us, this process is needed because we have a policy
of not installing SMS clients on our servers. SMS
automatically installs a client on each SMS Site System
initiated by SMS Winnt Server Discovery Agent. SMS
Login Point,
of course, are considered Site Systems. Every
NT Domain Controller in our domain serves as an SMS Login
Point. This “feature” is not configurable through the admin
console. This procedure also works for excluding certain
servers from NT Remote
Installation
.

*One Note: Our enterprise is a Single NT
Domain model. You may need to make
some adjustments based on your domain model.

The process is a two step
approach:

  • Edit the HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftSMScomponentsSMS_Discovery_Data_ManagerExcludeServers
    key on each of PRA’s SMS servers. This key should list
    all BDCs where you do not want the SMS client to be
    automatically installed.

  • Add an empty text file named SMS to the
    WinntMS directory.

The first step works about 80% of the time, thus
the need for the second step the remaining 20% of the time.
The second method works 100% of the time, but if an engineer
waits until a server is online usually the client has already
started the installation process. The second method is also
necessary in cases where servers are renamed.

The Process Works Like
this:

I’ve exported the registry key listed
above from our Central Server. Prior to building a new
server, the server support guys edit this exported key. They
let me know they’ve added new servers to the key. I import the
updated key back to Central Server. I then edit the
same key on the SMS Servers at the other sites.

To
automate the process of remotely editing other SMS servers, I
wrote a batch file that utilizes reg.exe from the NT
Server resource kit. This allows me to remotely copy the value
from the
HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftSMScomponentsSMS_Discovery_Data_ManagerExcludeServers
key on CHOSMS
. I have tested this batch file and have used
it to update the registries of each SMS Secondary Site Server.
The batch file is located on CHOSMS at c:utilitiesregcopy
named copexclud.bat.

Once the new server is online the engineer adds
the empty SMS text file to winntms as an additional layer of
prevention.

Here is the code for the batch file that I use
to automate the editing of remote SMS server registries. Add a
line like this for every server you want to remotely
edit. Place the batch file in the same directory as
reg.exe.

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

Latest Posts

Related Stories