With Quest Software's release of Quest Site Administrator for SharePoint, administrators now have a comprehensive tool for managing multiple Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 servers and Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 across the enterprise. Quest will add support for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 in first quarter 2007.
Installing Quest Site Administrator for SharePoint was comprehensive, with compatibility checks that ensured that previously installed software applications were compatible with Site Administrator. My only concern was with the Report Server virtual directory page. The default setting points to http://myserver/reportserver. This poses no problem if the administrator chooses the default configuration during the installation of Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, but if another directory name is chosen, the Site Administrator installation will fail.
At the management console, which Figure 1 shows, the navigation tree contains the three main components that help you manage your SharePoint servers. They are Enterprise SharePoint, for discovery and maintenance of SharePoint servers; Report Manager, for reports about the usage and viability of these servers; and Policy Manager, for the creation and application of policies for these servers.
Site Administrator provides a consistent UI for administrators by framing all SharePoint Web administration and reporting functionality within one management console, reducing the time required to find and maintain Web sites on multiple servers. The reporting features provide a good overall view of the status of all managed servers. For the full-length version of this review, go to http://www.windowsitpro.com and enter InstantDoc ID 94601.
| Summary Quest site administrator for sharePoint PROS: Simplifies management of multiple SharePoint servers |
