Manage multiple
servers with PowerShell Server Manager
PowerShell Server Manager allows administrators to
manage multiple servers, Windows roles and features -- all from a single
console.
Administrators
for large Microsoft environments that use Windows Server 2008 or
higher likely have had to manage Windows roles. Windows Server has roles and
features that allow admins to add, remove or modify features by clicking a
checkbox. However, clicking checkboxes isn't the most automatic way to manage
servers. This is where Windows PowerShellcomes
into play.
Windows
Server Manager is a graphical user interface (GUI) that creates a single area for managing server
identities and system information. The interface allows admins
to point and click on various tasks. While this works for environments that
have a few one-off servers, it doesn't work for environments with mass
deployment of servers. Shifting to the command line can simplify things.
PowerShell has a module calledServerManager that contains useful cmdlets to help the administrator manage roles and features (Figure 1).
PowerShell has a module calledServerManager that contains useful cmdlets to help the administrator manage roles and features (Figure 1).
PowerShell Server Manager module
In
this example, there are two aliases and five actual cmdlets and functions. To be more
concise, we will use the cmdlet/function names here. To start, determine all
the roles and features available on a given system. To do so, use Get-WindowsFeature.
When
you use the Get-WindowsFeature without parameters, it returns all
roles and features on a system -- whether or not they are installed. Figure 2
shows a handful of the features available on the test system.
An example of some the Get-WindowsFeature
options
To
get only the features that are currently installed, use the Where-Objectcmdlet
(Figure 3).
The
Where-Object cmdlet calls up installed features
What
do you do when installing a new Windows feature? You can use theInstall-WindowsFeature.
For example, if I want to install the SNMP service on my
local machine, I’d use the Install-WindowsFeature cmdlet
with the Name parameter. The feature has been successfully installed (Figure
5).
The
SNMP service is installed
When
removing features, use the Remove-WindowsFeature cmdlet.
You can remove features just as easily as you can install them using the same
parameter name of Name (Figure 6).
Remove Windows features using the
Remove-WindowsFeature cmdlet
The
UI notes that you must restart the server to finish removing a feature. If
you’re using this in a script, you might not want to do that manually. TheInstall-WindowsFeature and Remove-WindowsFeature have
Remove parameters that you can use in case the server automatically restarts
(if it needs to) after running each cmdlet.
This
is fine if you have a single server, but manually keying this in for several
servers would be similar to doing it through Server Manager. Using PowerShell's
remoting feature, admins can use the ComputerName parameter to point the task
at any remote computer (Figure 7).
Use the ComputerName parameter to point to
the task at any remote computer.
What
if you want to install a Windows feature on 100 servers? This isn't a problem
if you have them in a text file. If you have a CSV file with a header
of ServerName -- and all the names of the servers under that -- you can read
this CSV file with PowerShell’s Import-Csv cmdlet and start any Windows feature
cmdlet.
Import-Csv
C:\Servers.csv | foreach { Install-WindowsFeature -Name 'SNMP-Service'
-ComputerName $_.ServerName }
This
command would read every server name from the CSV and install the SNMP service
on each computer at once.
