Archive for April, 2018

Windows Admin Center is here

Ever since the first incarnations of Server Core in Windows Server, people have looked at ways to manage ‘Windows Server without GUI’ with a GUI. Today, the newest method of managing Windows Server, dubbed ‘Windows Admin Center’ was released and it promises an entirely new way to manage Windows Server, both ‘Installations with a GUI’ and ‘Server Core installations’.

Let’s take a look!

 

Our strange obsession…

Quoting ‘Graphical is for women’ doesn’t even begin covering admins’ strange obsession with graphical management tools to manage all aspects of Windows Server. We’ve seen tools like CoreConfigurator pop up early on in the Server Core lifecycle, but being capitalized on by Smart-X. We also saw other tools, and I even provided instructions on how to run hvconfig on Server Core installations, before sconfig came to Server Core installations.

However, the industry has mostly moved on. Drivers and other tools no longer rely on having a GUI present to allow installation or configuration. Even Microsoft’s own Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) have moved on, although some notable exception apply, like AD FS Management and driver management.

 

Windows Admin Center

Microsoft now offers a brand new toolset, that has been available for the last year as private previews and public previews, codenamed Project Honolulu: the Windows Admin Center.

In contrast to other tools out there, Windows Admin Center offers its experience in full HTML5, so it’s usable in any of the popular browsers admins use today. Windows Admin Center is a locally deployed and can be used to manage servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure, and Windows 10 PCs. It comes at no additional cost beyond Windows and is ready to use in production.

Download Windows Admin Center now.

 

Concluding

While you could use any 3rd party tool to remotely manage your Server Core installations, but wouldn’t you rather use this free tool from Microsoft?