Windows Server Core is the epitome of Microsoft’s shift toward GUI-free. But since you can’t beat a good dashboard, here’s how to access the GUI remotely.
Windows Server Core is the epitome of this GUI-less mentality, where it’s not possible to add a GUI to the server itself.
Microsoft gives us other ways to manage our Windows servers using languages like PowerShell, but you still can’t beat a beautiful dashboard showing useful metrics and windows where you can quickly tweak settings, rather than learning complicated syntax.
What are we to do since Server Core doesn’t have this ability? We get our GUIs remotely.
Command-line junkies have known for a long time that much of what’s available via the Windows Server GUI is available remotely by querying a server’s WMI/CIM repository. The PowerShell command Get-CimInstance can open up a wealth of information if you know how to use it correctly. Windows Admin Center also leverages WMI/CIM and other technologies to remotely — not locally — manage Windows Server.
That said, how do we get our hands on Windows Admin Center and begin shunning GUIs with Windows Server Core? I’m glad you asked!
We first need to open up a PowerShell console and establish a PowerShell Remoting session to the server. To do that, we use the Enter-PSSession command and optionally provide a credential. If the local computer and the server are in the same domain, passing a credential wouldn’t be necessary.
$cred = Get-Credential Enter-PSSession WAC01 -Credential $cred
Installing #WAC on Server Core
Establish a remote connection to the target server by using PowerShell Remoting. This will allow you to perform the installation straight from the remote PowerShell session.
| 123 | Enter-PSSession -ComputerName RemoteServerCoreHost -Credential mydomain\myuser |
Once you are connected, create a temporary directory where the Windows Admin Center binaries will be downloaded into.
| 123 | New-Item -Path C:\Downloads -ItemType directory |
Download Windows Admin Center binaries from Microsoft.
| 123 | wget “http://aka.ms/WACDownload” -outfile “C:\Downloads\WindowsAdminCenterCurrent.msi” |
Initiate the installation of Windows Admin Center using the following parameters (using a self-signed certificate and port 443).
| 123 | cd C:\Downloads ; msiexec /i WindowsAdminCenterCurrent.msi /qn /L*v log.txt SME_PORT=443 SSL_CERTIFICATE_OPTION=generate |
However, there is always the option to use a different port such as a certificate that you currently own. Make sure you specify the certificate thumbprint in the on-liner below.
| 123 | cd C:\Downloads ; msiexec /i WindowsAdminCenterCurrent.msi /qn /L*v log.txt SME_PORT=443 SME_THUMBPRINT=(ssl certificate thumbprint) SSL_CERTIFICATE_OPTION=installed |
Examine the installation log and verify that the installation was successful. If yes, you will find the following message contained in the log as shown below.
| 123 | Get-Content C:\Downloads\log.txt -Tail 20 |
This install may take a bit, but once it’s done, it will automatically initiate a server reboot and the install will be finished. For more information on this process, check out the Microsoft install documentation.
