Best Practices Analyzer: Run it on your server roles, not your loved ones

We in Windows Server are sorry to report a disturbing trend among IT professionals. Ever since Windows Server 2008 R2 was first released as a public beta, and Best Practices Analyzer for Windows Server roles was first available, we’ve been getting some alarming dispatches from the IT management front.

An IT consultant from the Austin, TX area reported that he was now uncomfortably bunking on a worn cot in his garage after running Best Practices Analyzer on his wife. “It worked so well on Remote Desktop Services, especially with the April update that added new Best Practices rules–I thought I’d try it out at home, see what I would get. Well, unfortunately, it found that my wife’s somewhat dated ‘mom jeans’ were ‘noncompliant,’ and when I chose not to use BPA’s feature that allows you to ignore results you don’t need to see, I…well, I’m on this cot. Should’ve ignored those results.”

We heard a sad one from an IT pro in Portland, OR, who, after installing the Best Practices Analyzer update for Hyper-V when it came out, was so impressed by how much time it saved her configuring her enterprise’s virtual machines that she decided to try it out on her dad. “I just meant to tease him,” she said. “Naturally, the first result it returned was ‘Noncompliant–Lose the mullet, public service announcement, the ’80s are over.’ Dad, he didn’t think it was funny at all. In fact, he’s growing the mullet out even longer in protest. It’s not pretty. And he’s not really speaking to me right now, I just get a harumph out of him every once in a while, but the only way I can tell is that the mop of hair surrounding his face stirs a bit when he does it.”

The release of BPA updates for DHCP, NPAS, and AD DS provoked a similar wave of doleful tales. The worst involve IT pros running scans on their teenaged children. Let’s just say that, from our e-mail, we’ve learned a few interesting new hand signals that your children are using when they want to indicate to you roughly the same general concept: I would like to communicate my indifference to your information in the strongest possible terms. Hoo boy, are we learning a lot.

Fortunately, when you use new Best Practices Analyzer update packages for File Services, WSUS, AD RMS, or Application Server, you’ll never receive such responses from your server roles. You’ll never know the pain of having your mother run a BPA scan on your own life, and having her *snif* carefully fold her exported and printed Warning results that show you’re not getting any younger and it’s time to settle down and give her grandchildren, tuck the results into a pink-flowered envelope, and mail them to you. No, *choke*, at least you won’t suffer that.

Friends, please; we’re telling you this for your own good: BPA scans are absolutely awesome on 12 of the server roles that are running on Windows Server 2008 R2. But they’re a really lousy idea for your personal life. Thanks, and happy scanning. On servers.