Windows Server 2012 - The Basics (Part 4)
This
article concludes the series on Windows Server 2012 basics by further
discussing the Server Manager.
If you
would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:
Introduction
Throughout
this article series, my goal has been to explain how to perform the most basic
and common configuration tasks using Windows Server 2012. In this article, I
plan to wrap up the series by walking you through a few more techniques.
Working with Roles and Features
In the
previous article I walked you through the process of installing roles and
features onto Windows Server 2012. I want to wrap up this series by showing you
what to do after the roles and features have been installed.
If you
look at Figure A, you will see the Server Manager dashboard. There are several
items on this screen that are worth paying attention to.
Figure A: This is the Server Manager dashboard.
The
first thing that you will probably notice is the big, orange section near the
center of the screen. This section is designed to help you to quickly get the
server configured. As you can see in the figure, this section contains links
that you can click to add roles and features, add other servers to manage, or
to create server groups. As you have seen throughout this series, all of these
tasks can be performed manually, but if you forget how to do so then you can
simply click on one of these links to get the ball rolling.
The
next thing that I want to point out is the column on the left. This column
lists a number of different Server Manager views. At the moment the Dashboard
view is selected, but you can switch to a different view by clicking on the
view.
Some
of the views that are listed are standard for Windows Server 2012. The
Dashboard, Local Server, All Servers, and File and Storage Services views are
created by default. There are also views that may exist as a result of the way
that you have configured your server. For example, in the figure above the AD
DS, DNS, and Hyper-V views exist as a direct result of installing the
corresponding roles and features. The bottom two items on the list are Lab
Servers and Production Servers. These are actually computer groups that I
manually created at an earlier time.
I want
to delve into views a little bit more, and talk about how the views relate to
the roles and features that are installed. Before I do that though, take a look
at the lower portion of the screen capture shown in Figure A. This section
contains a series of boxes for the roles and server groups that exist on the
server.
As you
can see in the figure, each box corresponds to a specific role or server group.
The boxes are color coded. Boxes display green to indicate that there are no
issues related to the particular role or server group. Conversely, the red
boxes indicate that there are issues that need to be addressed.
These
boxes are designed to help make it easy for you to resolve the issues that have
been detected. If you look back at the figure, you will notice that each of the
red boxes contains a number just to the right of the box name. This number
reflects the number of issues that need to be resolved.
If you
look beneath each box’s header, you will see a series of categories listed
(Manageability, Events, Services, Performance, BPA Results). A red flag to the
left of a category indicates that there are issues related to that category
that need to be resolved. For example, in the screen capture the Lab Servers
server group has two manageability and one service related issue that need to
be addressed.
Before
I show you how to examine these issues, I need to quickly clarify one thing.
The Server Manager has a way of making these issues seem critical because of
the way that the issues are displayed in red. In most cases however, you will
likely find that the issues that have been detected are anything but critical.
To
attempt to resolve an issue, simply click on the issue category. This causes
Windows to display a detail view. For example, when I click Manageability under
Hyper-V, Windows displays the screen shown in Figure B.
Figure B: This screen was displayed when I clicked the
Manageability container in the Hyper-V box.
As you
can see in the figure above, the dialog box identifies the source of the
problem. In this case the server needs to be restarted.
There
is however, one more important piece of information displayed in this dialog
box that might not be readily apparent from the screen capture. If you look
closely at the alert that is being displayed, you will notice that the server
name and the server’s IP address are both listed as a part of the alert. The
reason why I bring this up is because in the screen capture above the alert
that is displayed actually pertains to a remote server that is not even powered
on at the moment. Therefore, when you see alert message is displayed in the
Server Manager dashboard, you cannot automatically assume that the alerts are
for the local server. Often times, the alerts pertain to remote machines
instead.
Obviously,
correcting this alert would have been as easy as turning on the server that is
mentioned and then allowing it to reboot. What if the problem had been more
serious though? If the problem had been more serious than the alert should have
at least given a hint as to the cause of the problem. The dialog box also
contains a Go To Hyper-V button that could be used to open the interface that
is needed to correct the problem (in this case the Hyper-V view).
Now
that I have shown you how the alert boxes work, I want to go back and talk a
little bit more about the views that I mentioned earlier. As previously
mentioned, many of the views are specifically related to roles or features that
have been installed on the server. When you click on a role or feature related
view, Server Manager displays a number of pieces of information related to that
view. You can see an example of this in Figure C.
Figure C: Selecting the Hyper-V view causes Server Manager to
display information related to Hyper-V.
As you
can see in the figure above, selecting the Hyper-V view causes Windows to
display the Hyper-V servers, and events and services related to Hyper-V. If you
were to scroll down, you would find the Best Practices Analyzer, the
Performance Monitor, and information about the Hyper-V role. All of these tools
can be accessed in other places throughout the operating system, but Server
Manager puts them all together in one place for you.
Conclusion
Throughout
this article series, I have discussed some of the most common management and
configuration tasks that you will have to perform when you are first getting a
Windows 2012 server up and running. As you can see, the general configuration
process for Windows Server 2012 really isn’t all that different from earlier
versions of Windows Server. It is simply the new user interface that takes some
getting used to.
If you
would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:
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