I've logged into a new Windows 2025 Server,
that's going to be a file server later on,
and I'm going to install something called Windows Admin Center.
Windows Admin Center allows us to remotely manage any computer,
any server that's a member of the domain or in which you have the
credentials. That's a Windows device.
It also allows you to connect to Azure Resources as well as any failover
clusters you might have.
I've done a search for Windows Admin Center download,
and I just want to make sure that you're connected to the microsoft.com site
and not connected to any third party.
And I'm going to choose to download Windows Admin Center.
Here, you can see it's downloading and when it's done,
go ahead and open and install it.
You don't want to install this on any server or computer that's running a web
server, and that's because it's going to use those same ports,
so it might cause some conflicts.
Now it's running the installation wizard.
I'll choose to accept the terms and click Next.
You can choose what diagnostic data you'd like to share.
Always a good idea to get updates prior to installation.
Here, I'll choose the defaults and click Next. I'm going to be using Port 443,
and as I mentioned earlier, if you have a web server,
then that could cause a conflict. And I'll choose install.
It's going to create a self-signed certificate,
which is going to cause an error with the web browser, but that's okay.
You should be able to get around it by choosing to go ahead and take the risk
and click Okay,
and then it will allow you to get onto the site anyway. You could purchase a
public certificate or you could trust this through group policy once it's a
member of an Active Directory domain to get around those errors.
Installation is complete and I can just click the link or go to the start menu
to launch the website.
I did get the message that you see at the top left that this is not a secure
site, but I do trust it since I created it.
Now I'll put in the administrator username and
password. And now it's launching
Windows Admin Center for the first time. By default,
it's going to add in the local computer that I'm on,
and then I can go ahead and add other computers if I'd like to as well.
I'll start out by clicking on the computer in which it's installed.
Take a look at the right-hand side.
You can see it's updating extensions. Extensions are additional ways that we can
manage servers that are not going to be included by default,
and that's because they end up using a lot more resources.
So you can add in extensions as needed, which I'll show you shortly.
On the left hand side here,
you can see a lot of different Azure types of features,
such as the ability to add in Azure backup if you'd like to back up the server
to the cloud, as well as other things like Kubernetes services,
file syncs, et cetera.
You can click on Events to get the event viewer just like you could if you
wanted to go to tools, event viewer, and server manager on that server.
But from here,
I can connect to any event viewer on any computer once I add those computers
into the homepage. If I have any files or folders shared,
you can see that information here,
and I don't have any file shares set up yet.
Here is the firewall,
and this would be the same Windows Defender firewall
that you would use on the server,
although it does look a lot different in the web version.
I'll click on Incoming Rules. You have incoming and outgoing,
and here's the list of allowed incoming rules along with their ports.
And there's many other types of features we can connect to,
such as packet monitoring, performance monitor, et cetera.
I'm going to go on the upper right-hand corner where the gear is,
and I'm going to click on that and choose on the left-hand side, extensions.
These are those things that had downloaded after I first logged in,
and here you can see a lot of different extensions that I could add in that are
not installed by default.
Some are for third party products, in case you have those,
such as Fujitsu as well as HPE.
Just as an example, I'll click on DNS
and you can see it's going to add the ability to manage DNS if I have it
installed on the server.
And I'll just choose the install option that you see here,
and it's going to go ahead and install the ability to manage DNS if it's
installed on the server.
I'll go back to where it says Windows Admin Center, select my server,
and after a refresh, here, you can see the DNS option.
I'm going to go back to the home screen and I'm going
to add in one of my other servers.
So I'll click on Add and take a look at the different things we can add.
We can add local servers in the upper left-hand corner,
Windows PC such as Windows 10 and 11.
We can add in any server clusters we might have,
which is when you allow multiple different servers to become server nodes
that share applications and make them highly available to users.
And then there's the option to add in Azure virtual machines. I'm going to click
on Add for servers,
and I'm putting in the IP address rather than the name,
and I'll choose the administrator and password and click on Add with
credentials. It resolved the IP address to the name,
so it's validating the information.
I'll click the checkbox and click Add.
And there's my other server, so I'll click to select that other server,
and now you can see I can manage that other server just as I could the local
one. Windows Admin Center is the tool of the future for managing local and
cloud Windows resources in your organization.