Not everyone likes the chilly climate of the server room or the mesmerizing humming of racks, stuffed with server hardware. For these pseudo-admins, Microsoft releases remote management tools. (They work wonders for managing Server Core installations, too!) The latest incarnation was released two weeks ago and works with Windows 7. History of ...

One of the new and interesting features in the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC), mentioned a few days ago, is the ability to utilize a virtual Windows XP with Service Pack 3 environment for application compatibility. This feature is called Windows 7 XP Mode and builds on Windows Virtual PC 7. The new Virtual PC now offers features like clipboard ...

Microsoft products cover a multitude of technologies, and thus are managed by a multitude of management attitudes, vision and scenarios. In the past Microsoft products lacked a common vision on management, but Microsoft is slowly changing this. All Windows Server products will be manageable through: Server Manager (locally on Full ...

Windows Server 2008 brings the successor to ye old NTBackup. The role that can be installed separately includes both a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) as command line tools. In Server Core the role doesn't add the MMC, but sure adds the command line tool wbadmin.exe In this post you'll find: What's new in Windows Backup Backup ...

I've showed you some common commands for IPv4 networking in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. Now that you know the commands to change your network settings I feel it's time to perform some tweaks to make your commands just a tiny bit shorter. As an added bonus you might be able to distinguish your Network Interfaces better, which might protect ...

In the first part of this series I explored the basic settings of IPv4 on Server Core installations. Now it's time to dive a little deeper and explore the tabs behind the Advanced button on the General tab of the Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) Properties screen. I mentioned being able to let IP traffic flow isn't very useful when you don't ...

Networking services are a big part of the services you can make your Server Core box perform. Having properly configured network connections are prerequisites to offering these services, so I feel it's time to explain how to properly configure the networking connections on Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008. I'll start with ...

Not all system administrators feel comfortable on the command line and most system administrators don't feel comfortable behind the console of their servers in their airconditioned and windowless (no pun intented) serverrooms for longer periods of time. I believe it's time to look at the ways you can remotely manage your Server Core boxes. These ...

Windows Server 2008 Server Core doesn't have a graphical event viewer. There is a tool called wevtutil.exe that allows you work your log magic on the console, you can use the Event Viewer on another (graphical) machine to open the event logs of your Server Core box, but you might also opt for a nice event log subscription that forwards ...

After playing around with Server Core for a while I'm beginning to wonder how to perform certain administrative tasks. Today I found myself wondering about software management after reading a post on the Microsoft TechNet forums and decided to put my thoughts on paper.   Executables and MSI packages Basically there are two ...