What you really have to do is enable remote management: Well, restarting the firewall service won't help. Restart the Windows Firewall service on the computer that you are managing. But if you try to connect remotely to change the firewall settings, you'll get the message ' The Windows Firewall with advanced Security snap-in failed to load. It is also possible to remotely manage the firewall settings using the MMC snap-in on a Vista machine. This tool can only be used to disable the firewall and to enable exceptions for Windows programs. You'll also see the 'simple' Windows Firewall tool from the Control Panel. You can launch it by typing 'firewall' on the Start search prompt. For this, you have to use the ' Windows Firewall with Advanced Security MMC snap-in'. If you run third party applications on your servers, you have to configure the firewall yourself. For instance, if you configure your Windows server as a domain controller, the corresponding ports are opened automatically. Whenever you add a new role to your server, the firewall is automatically configured, accordingly. Windows Server 2008 firewall has a nice feature which alleviates this problem. They make your network more complicated, therefore, more prone to errors. However, this applies to all security measures. Please, check out a former discussion on 4sysops about the pro and contra for personal firewalls.Ī disadvantage certainly is when one of your applications fails to work due to an incorrectly configured Windows firewall. This corresponds to the general trend to enforce security inside the perimeter network. The more barriers you have, the more secure your network is. I fully agree! Think of it as another line of defense.

It seems that Microsoft's software engineers are thinking that Windows Firewall brings some extra security on servers, too. Only an upgraded Windows Server 2003 will maintain its operational state.

It is interesting to note that the firewall in Windows Server 2008 is activated by default.

Windows firewall management tool