It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the Dark Times are here. Well as the world is progressing to more colorful UI and Management operations we have our IT people who are going more and more towards the dark black screen, all thanks to the Docker, Kubernetes, and Unix.

There days people are adopting operating system that has very small attack vector which makes them more resilient to cyber Attacks. You might or will come across an environment which is completely based on the Windows Server Core Installation as it is small, Fast and reliable.

Windows Server Core is a minimal installation option available in the Windows Server operating system. It provides a low-maintenance server environment with limited graphical interface capabilities, designed to reduce the attack surface and resource overhead.

In This article we are going to learn how we can easily manage a Windows Server Core Installation.

Using Command Line: sconfig

Lets take a scenario where you have just recently installed a Windows Server Core and now you want are stuck on how to manage the very basic tasks which are required after the server installation like configuring the Network, or Joining to Domain etc.

Of course you can learn all the netdom commands and netsh commands which can make you invincible, but we have another way which Microsoft has added to make our life easier.

sconfig

this is a command line tool which can help you to configure all the basic settings which is required on windows server.

This tool can help you in Joining the Server to AD Domain, Enabling the Remote Management, configuring Network etc.

This tool should be your first step in order to manage a Windows Server Core.

Once you have entered the Basic Network Settings and joined the Machine to the Domain you can go with other UI Based tools as below.

Enable Remove Management

• From the List select Option 4 and then 1 which will enable the Remote Management.

Or you can use the command line option as well

• At the Windows Server Core command prompt, enter the following command:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Remote Administration" new enable=yes 

• Enter the following command:

netsh advfirewall set currentprofile settings remotemanagement enable 

Once this is done you can manage the other Tasks like Installation of roles or Storage using the below steps.

Using Server Manager UI:

Now sine you have enabled Remote Management on the Server you can use your Server Manager to Connect to the Server Core Installation and your Core Server is Joined to the Domain.

You can Open Server Manager from any Jump Host and Follow the below steps:

• Select All Servers

• Right Click and Select “Add Servers”

• Under Name you can search the Name of the Server and Click Find Now. (In my case its storage)

• Once you have Selected the Name and Clicked the Highlighted Triangle, you should be able to see the Server in the Server Manager.
• Now you can simply Click File and Storage Services to Manage the Disks and Volumes.

• From here you can create New Volumes, Rescan the Storage and even work on ISCSI Target if this is ISCSI Target Server:

• You can use the same console to Install the Roles and Feature as well.

• Select the Server

Now you know how you can manage your Server Core with Two Different Options.