How to Deploy Nano Server

What is Nano Server ?

Nano Server is the next foundation of Windows Server, stripped down to its essence for speedy operation to support Micro service style architectures and cloud optimized applications.

It is similar to Server Core mode in Windows Server, but significantly smaller, has no local logon capability, and only supports 64-bit applications, tools, and agents. It takes up far less disk space, sets up significantly faster, and requires far fewer updates and restarts than Windows Server. When it does restart, it restarts much faster.

Nano Server is ideal for a number of scenarios:

As a “compute” host for Hyper-V virtual machines, with cluster environment or not
As a storage host for Scale-Out File Server.
As a DNS server
As a web server running Internet Information Services (IIS)
As a host for applications that are developed using cloud application patterns
Run cloud applications in a container or virtual machine guest operating system

As mentioned Nano Server has a very small footprint and the first version show some great improvements versus the Windows Server:

93% lower VHD size
92% fewer critical alerts
80% fewer reboots

To achieved this goal Microsoft removed some parts of Windows Server like:

GUI Shell
32 bit support
MSI support
RDP
Some default Server Core components

You will ask me how we manage Nano Server after removing the GUI. The answer is simple and is the best practice senario for managing servers for a long time called Remote Management. Nano Server will offer some advanced remote Management features as follows

WMI
PowerShell
PowerShell Desired State Configuration
RSAT Tools
System Center and other Management tools
Web-based management tools (Using Azure)

Deploying Nano Server

Before deploy Nano Server you must have a Windows Server 2016 TP 4 host or virtual machine.

You can install the following packages for Nano Server

Lets walk through the steps how to deploy a Nano Server

First copy the Nano Server resource folder to the VM or Physical MachineMount the Windows Server 2016 TP image and navigate to the following location
D:NanoServer (D: mounted drive it may different with your environment)

Create a Nano Server Host

#Import the Nano Server module
Import-Module .NanoServerImageGenerator.psm1

#create a nano sever image
New-NanoServerImage -BasePath .Base -MediaPath D: -TargetPath .NanoImageNanoServer.vhd -GuestDrivers -Containers -AdministratorPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -String 'Pa$$w0rd' -Force) -ComputerName NanoServer -ReverseForwarders -EnableRemoteManagementPort

Boot from Nano Server VHD
In this example I created a VM in Hyper-V using the Nano Server VHD

Inside the Nano Server

Nano Server Login

As you see above there are no PowerShell or CMD prompt to manage so the only option to manage this is by using remote management tools next step I’ll Show we connect it.
Manage Nano Server using remote management tools
Before connect to Nano Server using PowerShell make sure you add the host to the TrustedHost list
```
Set-Item WSMan:localhostClientTrustedHosts -Value 'servername or IP, servername or IP'
```
Enter to Nano Server Host
In this i used the new PowerShell feature called PowerShell Direct that packaged with version 5.
```
Enter-PSSession -VMName 'Nanoserver test' -Credential (Get-Credential)
```
If you notice the following image you will see the prompt has changed to [NanoServer Test]: PS C:Windows>