Overriding Active Directory Service Discovery

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

RMS services and clients discover service locations by first looking in the local registry. If certain keys in the registry do not have a value, RMS services and clients look in Active Directory for the service connection point (SCP). This means that you can override the default Active Directory discovery setting if you type certain keys in either the server or client registry.

Note

If your RMS root cluster is configured so that the SCP is not published in Active Directory, you can use these keys to point your RMS clients to the correct location.

This section describes the registry entries, and provides details about how you can create them.

Overriding Service Discovery for Licensing-only Cluster Subenrollment

If you are provisioning a licensing-only cluster and you want it to subenroll with a different root cluster than the root cluster that you deployed in the Active Directory forest of the licensing-only cluster, you must override the discovery of both the subenrollment and account certification services.

Registry entry descriptions

The following registry entries are used to override the subenrollment and account certification services.

  • SubEnrollmentURL. This entry specifies the path to the root cluster that the licensing server uses when requesting its server licensor certificate.

  • GicURL. This entry specifies the path to the account certification service for this licensing-only cluster.

Entry details

On computers running the 32-bit version of Windows Server 2003, the full registry subkey path for the service discovery entries for licensing-only cluster subenrollment is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\DRMS\1.0

On computers running the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003, the full registry subkey path for the service discovery entries for licensing-only cluster subenrollment is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SoftwareWOW6432Node\Microsoft\DRMS\1.0

The following table lists the entries that you can add to override service discovery.

Name Type Value

SubEnrollmentURL

String

http(or https)://server_name/_wmcs/certification/subenrollservice.asmx

GicURL

String

http(or https)://server_name/_wmcs/certification/certification.asmx

Overriding Client-Side Service Discovery for Publishing

If your users will be publishing content from their computers, you may want to override the locations of the servers used for publishing depending on the topology used in your enterprise. The locations of the servers used for publishing are normally discovered by the client by using Active Directory. By adding the appropriate registry keys on the client computers, the clients will bypass those methods and instead use the URLs that you specify in the registry entry value.

Note

The client overrides listed in this sections should be created as keys and not individual entries. The value for these keys should be created in the default entry for each key.

Registry key descriptions

The following registry keys can be used to override automatic discovery of the RMS cluster.

  • Activation. This registry key defines the URL of the user activation service.

  • EnterprisePublishing. This registry key defines the URL of an RMS installation that you want this client to use for license requests.

  • CloudPublishing. This registry key defines the URL of the Microsoft-hosted licensing service that can be used if the client does not have access to an RMS installation but does have access to the Internet.

Key details

The full registry subkey path for client-side service discovery entries for publishing is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MSDRM\ServiceLocation\

The following table lists the registry keys that you can add on an RMS client computer to override service discovery.

Name Type Value

Activation

String

http(or https)://RMS_cluster_name/_wmcs/Certification where RMS_cluster_name is the name of your RMS cluster.

EnterprisePublishing

String

http(or https)://RMS_cluster_name/_wmcs/Licensing where RMS_cluster_name is the name of your RMS cluster.

CloudPublishing

String

http(or https)://FQDN_cluster_name/_wmcs/Licensing where FQDN_cluster_name is the fully-qualified domain name of your RMS cluster.

We recommend that you implement these registry keys by using either Systems Management Server or Group Policy to make sure that all of the clients in your enterprise are using the correct publishing servers.

Warning

Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on the computer.

An example registry file (.reg) can be used to import the proper registry keys on each server in the RMS cluster.

To import the proper registry keys on each server in the RMS cluster

  1. Copy the following example registry file into Notepad.

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSDRM\ServiceLocation]

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSDRM\ServiceLocation\Activation]

    @="https://<RMS_cluster_name>/_wmcs/certification"

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSDRM\ServiceLocation\EnterprisePublishing]

    @="https://<RMS_cluster_name>/_wmcs/licensing"

  2. Replace <RMS_cluster_name> with the name of your RMS cluster.

  3. Save the file with the .reg file name extension.

  4. Double-click the name of the file in Windows Explorer.

  5. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.. When a prompt appears asking whether you want to add the information to the registry, click Yes.