Interesting URL trick-- How to Get a SharePoint Server on the Farm to Use Its own Local Central Admin Site

So I am in the end run for editing the book and I, of course, ran into something that has absolutely nothing to do with what I am doing...

...Bill Baer has a great little blog article about changing the URL address of a Sharepoint server's default Central Administration site.

I've always hated how, by default, even if you enable Central Administration on a second (or third, or fourth) sharepoint server in the farm, that server never actually points to its own Central Admin site's address.

Now I've always thought that I needed to add it in the Alternate Access Mapping, but according to Bill Baer, it's a registry thing. That each server has a hardcoded URL that it uses for its access Central Administration site. According to the blog entry, you need to change the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\WSS. Locate CentralAdministrationURL and edit the value to reflect the desired location.

Check out the blog entry at: http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2007/08/30/sharepoint-3-0-central-administration-url-on-multiple-web-front-end-servers.aspx