Windows Admin Center is a new, locally-deployed, browser-based management tool set that lets you manage your Windows Servers with no Azure or cloud dependency. Windows Admin Center gives you full control over all aspects of your server infrastructure and is particularly useful for managing servers on private networks that are not connected to the Internet.
Windows Admin Center is the modern evolution of "in-box" management tools, like Server Manager and MMC. It complements System Center and Operations Management Suite – it’s not a replacement.
To get started get the latest version from the Windows insiders page.
Windows Admin Center also provides these solutions:
- Computer Management – Provides a subset of the Server Manager features for managing Windows 10 client PCs
- Failover Cluster Manager – Provides support for ongoing management of failover clusters and cluster resources
- Hyper-Converged Cluster Manager – Provides an all-new experience tailored for Storage Spaces Direct and Hyper-V. It features the Dashboard and emphasizes charts and alerts for monitoring.
So the installation is just a simple MSI file Downloaded here https://aka.ms/wacdownload
When not using a self signed certificate you can use your own certificate and add the thumbprint to the installation
You can also create your own self signed certificate and use a silent setup
New-SelfSignedCertificate -certstorelocation cert:\localmachine\my -dnsname MVP16core10.mvp.local
Silent setup for Installing Windows Admin Center
msiexec /i WindowsAdminCenter1804.25.msi /qn /L*v log.txt SME_PORT=443 SSL_CERTIFICATE_OPTION=generate
msiexec /i WindowsAdminCenter1804.25.msi /qn /L*v log.txt SME_PORT=443 SME_THUMBPRINT=F377B0BC731AFB1F93558C035155DE148C6214F3 SSL_CERTIFICATE_OPTION=installed
After installing and opening the webpage there is a welcome screen. guess we all do the Skip Tour.
Adding servers is really easy. do it manually or import a csv file
Now that Windows servers are added real time info is visible in the portal.
With the extra extensions new features are added to the Windows Admin Center WAC
Currently more and more add on extensions are added to the Windows Admin Center. this makes the tool even more important to use.
https://github.com/Microsoft/windows-admin-center-sdk/
There are some great extensions for Windows Admin center. like the Storage Migration preview or the DataOn extention. Or adding the login to the Azure AD.
In the services wen can add the Azure Active directory. Keep in mind once it set I couldn’t it set back to the local account.
For Connection to the Azure AD you need a little Powershell script download it here : https://aka.ms/WACAzureConnectScript
To allow the Windows Admin Center gateway to communicate with Azure to leverage Azure Active Directory authentication for gateway access, or to create Azure resources on your behalf (for example, to protect VMs managed in Windows Admin Center using Azure Site Recovery), you must first connect your Windows Admin Center gateway to Azure. You only need to do this once for your Windows Admin Center gateway – the setting is preserved when you update your gateway to a newer version.
To connect your gateway, you must run the New-AadApp.ps1 PowerShell script (there is also a hyperlink in the Windows Admin Center UI for this download, which is visible wherever you try to use an Azure integration feature for the first time), which creates a web application in Azure AD with the name "SME-gateway" and registers the application with the Windows Admin Center gateway. This allows Windows Admin Center to connect to Azure resources like Azure AD on your behalf. You can run the script from any computer that has access to the Windows Admin Center gateway and to Azure.
You need to install the AD powershell modules on the Server.
Install-Module AzureRM.Resources
Install-Module AzureAD
$cred = Get-Credential
.\New-AadApp.ps1 -GatewayEndpoint "https://mvp16core10.mvp.local" -Credential $cred
The Logon Box will appear and logon with your Azure Credentials.
Now that you are logged on you will see an App registration in your Azure AD.
If needed you need to give the App permissions
Close browser and login into the Windows admin center
Windows Admin center will ask you for the Azure AD credentials
Keep in mind for Connection to the On premise Windows Admin Center you need to have WinRM firewall ports open to the WAC and WinRM enabled. but this is logical. The connection is over a Public IP or better a Site to Site VPN or express route connection. Make sure your NSG is correct configured.
One on the nice options of WAC – Windows Admin Center is the HTML5 RDP connection. Quick and easy RDP into the VM.
Remember that I installed the extensions Storage migration service. ( this works only with server 2019)
The new Storage Migration servers will be added to the admin center. But optional server features must be added before usage.
the Above are the migration options. Migrate directly all your files to a Server 2019 or Azure Files storage
And on the Windows Server 2019 you must enable the following features.
.
And you need an orchestrator role therefore you need to install the RSAT Storage Migration Server tools
After this you can create a migration JOB to move all the files.
A full blog post from Ned Pyle gives in-depth details how to migrate the files
Next week there is the Windows Server Summit 2018 there will be more info about Windows server 2019 and Windows Admin Center.
Join the meeting!
Get started now
The Windows Server Summit is on June 26, 2018, but you can get started now by joining the Windows Insiders program and downloading the Windows Server 2019 preview. Don’t forget to also download Windows Admin Center, the evolution of Windows Server in-box management tools.
see you on June 26th!
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