Microsoft® Windows Server 2003: Administrator’s Companion

Emergency Management Services and Headless Servers

Emergency Management Services (EMS) is a new service that permits Windows administrators to do what UNIX administrators have long been able to do—remotely manage servers under virtually all circumstances, and even run so-called “headless servers” which don’t have any locally attached keyboards, mice, or monitors.

Although this functionality is incredibly useful, it’s not self-explanatory, and requires some preparation. The following sections provide an overview of EMS and so-called out-of-band management, discuss the requirements for EMS, and tell you how to set up EMS and how to use it to manage and recover unresponsive servers.

EMS Overview

Ideally, an administrator should be able to remotely ...