Windows Server Core is an installation option introduce with Windows Server 2008. It provides the minimal environment for running specific server roles. I ll mentioned the roles that support in late in this post. In Server Core installation it not include any graphical interface such as desktop shell, GUI,Windows Explore,IE and MMC (Microsoft Management Control)
Lets jump in to how we configure Windows Server Core 2012 R2
How we launch command prompt in Server Core
In the boot after you log in to server it automatically prompt the Powershell command prompt if you accidentally close the prompt you will get excited how i can get it back because there no start button or GUI don’t get panic 🙂 follow following steps,
- Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete (If you’re using Hyper-V VM Ctrl+Alt+End)
- Select Task Manager
- In Task Manager select File,New Task(Run)
- In New Task dialog box,type powershell.exe and click OK.
Change the Server Core Administrator Password
After you initial password has set following are the command to change the administrator password
Net user administrator *
After enter the command it prompt for the password to enter,enter the password and press enter the it prompt for retype for confirmation process. It’s best practice to use a strong password using A-Z,0-9,Special Characters.
Changing the Server Core Machine Name
After installing of server core one of the step we had to follow is change the machine name. As a default it assign a name which start with WIIN-xxxxxx and same numbers and characters,remembering this hug name is hard,so it’s a good practice to change it, we can change it by using following command.
netdom renamecomputer <ComputerName> /newname: <NewComputerName>
Replace the <CurrentComputerName> argument with the existing host name (you can find the host name by the command hostname ) and <NewComputerName> argument with new host name we can show it as following
In above command i replace <CurrentComputerName> argument with %computername% in this it act as a placeholder and take the current computer name and replace it there.You must restart the computer to affect this change we can verify it by the command hostname.
The same function we can accomplish by using PowerShell
Rename-Computer -Name Server2012 -Restart
NOTE-Here i use a parameter called -WhatIf What it exactly do is it gives what will happen if this command executed
Assigning a Static IPv4 IP Address and DNS Settings
Another important configuration you have to do is assign IP Address and DNS settings,before we do that we have to know what are the network interfaces are used so to do that we can follow following command
netsh interface ipv4 show interface
The next step is to take a note of network interface name and unique ID that you must change the settings. ID is located at left column and it referred as Idx .
We can use the following command to change the IP Address of the destination interface
netsh interface ipv4 set address name =”<ID/Name>” source=static address=<IPAddress> mask=<SubnetMask> gateway=<DefaultGateway>
The final step is to configure the primary & secondary DNS entry to the interface we can do this by the following command
netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver name=<ID/Name> address=<IPAddress> index=1
There is another way to do this by using PowerShell lets look how it can be done
Get-NetInterface
New-NetIPAddress -InterfaceIndex 12 -AddressFamily ipv4 -IPAddress 193.168.10.200 -PrefixLength 24 -DefaultGateway 193.168.10.1 -Verbose
Set DNS Sever Using PowerShell
Set-DNSCliendServerAddress -InterfaceIndex 12 -ServerAddress 8.8.8.8,4.4.4.4
We can verify it by using following cmdlet
Get-DNSCliendServerAddress -InterfaceIndex 12
Get-NetInterface output details of all the inputs attached to the server
In New-NetIPAddress cmdlet -PrefixLength means the Subnet Mask of the network i shown it as slash notation -Verbose means it gives an output of details what happens
NOTE – i assumed this is a fresh installation and there are no any ip settings done if you have previous configurations and you want to change it you can use Set-NetIPAddress cmdlet
Adding the Server Core System to Domain
we can use the following command for the illustration
netdom join <ComputerName> /domain:<domain> /OU:<OUPath> /userd:<domain> <username> /passwordD:*
We can use PowerShell to do the same configuration
Add-Computer -domainName -OUPath “OU=OU,Domain=,DC=com”
Activating Server Core System
You can activate server core by using two simple steps lets look how we can do it
slmgr.vbs -ipk<ProductKey>
After entering the correct key we can use the following command to activate it
slmgr.vbs -ato
Using SCONFIG to Configure a Server Core Installation
Windows Server 2012 includes a utility to make the inertial configuration or core installation easier.The SCONFIG utility,which has been available since Windows Server 2018 R2 is very easy to use and preferred way to use.
We can execute this by running sconfig.exe in command prompt and we get a prompt as follows
That’s all for today lets see you in future post
Bye for now