Windows Server blog by Kurt Roggen [BE]

Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) is a server management tool that is available only in Windows Server 2008 R2. BPA can help administrators reduce best practice violations by scanning one or more roles that are installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 and reporting best practice violations to the administrator.

Administrators can filter or exclude results from BPA reports that they don’t need to see. Administrators can also perform BPA tasks by using either the Server Manager GUI, or Windows PowerShell cmdlets.

Using Server Manager

Using PowerShell cmdlets – Get-BPAModel, Invoke-BPAModel, Get-BPAResult

New and/or updated BPA guidance will be made available through Windows Update.

By default, Windows Server 2008 R2 ships with built-in BPAs (5):

• Active Directory Certificate Services  (ADCS)
• Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS)
• DNS
• Remote Desktop Services (RDS)
• IIS

Some new BPAs (7) are now available as standalone packages and/or through Windows Update:

• Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)
• Network Policy Server (NPS) – including RRAS, NPS, HRA
• Hyper-V
• DHCP
• File Services (DFS-N, DFS-R, FSRM, NFS, SMB)
• Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS)
• Application Server

This covers up to 12 of the 17 server roles installable on a Windows Server 2008 R2.

Some BPAs are still missing for now:

• Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)
• Fax Server
• Print and Document Services
• Windows Deployment Services

For more information:

• Technet – Windows Server TechCenter – Best Practices Analyzers and Configuration Rules
  
  

Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) is a server management tool that is available in Windows Server 2008 R2. BPA reports best practice violations to the administrator after BPA scans the roles that are installed on Windows Server 2008 R2.  Administrators can filter out unnecessary information or exclude results from BPA reports. Administrators can also perform BPA tasks with either the Server Manager GUI, or Windows PowerShell cmdlets.

You can use Hyper-V Best Practices Analyzer to scan a server that is running the Hyper-V role, and help identify configurations that do not comply with best practices for this role. BPA scans the configuration of the physical computer, the virtual machines, and other resources such as virtual networking or virtual storage. Scan results are displayed as a list that you can sort by severity, and include recommendations for fixing issues and links to instructions. No configuration changes occur automatically by running the scan.

The Hyper-V BPA is available is standalone download package, but also available through Windows Update.

Download here

Related reading: Technet - Windows Server TechCenter – Best Practices Analysers