We took a
little time in lab to identify some of the new features that are included in
the Developer Preview of Windows Server. So we configured a small lab detailed
below in Figure 1.
Figure 1
This early
release of the new Windows Server looks to be promising. The quick of ease of
configuration and navigation was instantly recognized even to our new added IT Professionals.
The Server Manager has been outfitted with a new dashboard as show in Figure 2.
Figure 2
Server
Manager is where Network Administrators will be spending most of their time
when installing, configuring and evaluating a network. So what’s new in Server
Manager and why the big hype? For starters you can perform tasks on multiple
servers at one time, deploy roles and features remotely, get current status of
your servers and roles and add remote servers and create custom server groups.
Giving an Admin more control over the environment that they are managing.
Adding a
role in the Developers Preview of Server can be easily navigated even if you
have never used Server 2008 or Server 2008 R2 before. There is now a pool that
identifies the servers on your networks that you have added. As you can see in
Figure 3 we have only our PDC ready to go so far.
Figure 3
The same lists
of roles are readily available with the Volume Activation Service and Remote
Desktop Services newly added. Figure 4 shows an outline of available roles to
install in this release.
Figure 4
The features
that are now available are numerous and too many to mention. Seeing is
believing and pictures are worth more than a thousand words. Figure 5 and 6
shows the complete list of features.
Figure 6
The
installation and straight forward and once completed the role that has been
installed needs to be configured. The ease of the navigation we just could not
get over. The walkthrough is so easy that a newbie to Active Directory Domain
Services. We are still eager to know what functionality does the Windows Server
8 functional level bring and will keep you posted. The best practices analyzer
(BPA) has been added to the role installation wizard. The job of this tool is
to verify that all necessary and required components are met before the role
goes on to be installed. If this feature is kept in the final version it will
prove to be a valuable asset to ensure that roles are setup and configured correctly.
Figure 7 shows the prerequisite check for the install for Active Directory.
Figure 7
Installing a
role from any server to any server is indeed a new nice feature. Given the
Server Core installations in a branch office. The addition and removal of roles
can be done once the servers of choice have been added to the server manager
group. This feature will indeed prove to be very helpful when managing
different boxes. At the time of this review only Windows Developer computers
were able to utilize this feature. Server 2008 R2 and below cannot. I am hoping
that they add it to final version. Figure 8-11 shows DC1 preparing MEM1 for
role install and completion.
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
As seen in
Figure 11. The post installation of a role can be done from the remote
computer. And Figure 12 shows the final result on Mem1 with DHCP and NPS ready
to go.
Figure 12
So far we
can expect some great new features to make our admin job a little less
stressful and more productive. Be sure to be on the lookout for Window Server
Developer Preview NAP enforcement of a Windows 8 client.
By Adnan Cartwright
Florida IT Server Group
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