Exercise 2: Becoming Familiar with Server Manager
Overview
In this exercise, you use a Virtual Machines from the lab environment, ADDSVM1, to execute several management and monitoring tasks.
Time Estimate
20 minutes
Task 1: Login to the Azure Management Portal
In this task, you will use your Microsoft or Organization account to login to the Azure management portal to start the lab exercise.
1. Open your browser and navigate to http://portal.azure.com
2. Enter the Microsoft account associated with your Microsoft Azure subscription.
3. Navigate to ‘Virtual Machines’ in the left hand pane and locate the virtual machine (vm) called ADDSVM1.
4. Ensure that the vm is running, if not click ‘Start’.
5. When the virtual machine is in a running state, click Connect.
6. Open the file in the pop-up window in your browser and click Open to open the RDP connection file and connect.
7. Enter the credentials ‘demouser‘ and ‘Demo@pass123 to connect.
8. When prompted with the following security dialog box, click Connect.
9. If prompted with the following security dialog box, click Yes.
In this task, you used your Microsoft or Organization account to login to the Azure Management Portal and opened a Remote Desktop connection to your lab machine.
Task 2: Working with Windows Server Manager
In this task you will step through some of the common administration tools found in Windows Server Manager.
1. After logged on as the user, the Server Manager console should open automatically.
Note: This machine has already been configured with several Server Roles to speed up the lab. It is not a default Windows Server 2016 installation. Although the setup should be identical to our lab deployment, it might happen that the Server Manager console shows different information.
2. From the Server Manager, notice the different areas in the portal:
– Quick Start
– Roles and Server Groups
– Action Menu in the upper right corner
– Server Role Menu in the upper left corner
3. Click on Local Server in the upper left corner. This opens the server properties page.
4. Notice the Windows Firewall section, which says “Public:on”. Click on “Public:on”. This opens the Windows Firewall settings for this server. Verify the Windows Firewall configuration is enabled by default (green status) for the 3 default networks Domain, Private and Guest or public networks. Having the Windows Firewall enabled is a Microsoft best practice.
5. Close the Windows Firewall configuration window, which reverts you back to the Server Manager console.
6. Select the Network Interface Card from the server properties, called “Ethernet 2”. Click on the link that says “IPv4 address assigned by DHCP”. This opens the Network Connections window, showing the NIC. Double click on the NIC to open its properties. Once opened, click on the Details… button. This opens the Network Connection Details window.
7. Close all 3 windows, by which you revert back to the Server Manager console.
8. From the Local Server view, scroll through the Events section of Server Manager. Notice the logs are a combination of System and Application log information.
9. From the Local Server view, scroll through the Services section of Server Manager. This provides a quick view of all system and application services, and their running state.
10.
Besides giving the view, it can also be used in an interactive way. From the list of Services, look for the Windows Defender Service. This service runs the built-in Windows Server anti-malware engine. Select the line. Right-clicking on it, opens a context menu with several action buttons:
11.
Click on Stop Services. Wait a few seconds. A notification/error message is shown, informing you one or more services cannot be stopped.
12.
Click on the More… link at the right of the red bar.
13.
This opens the Services Task Details and Notifications window, giving you additional information about the reason why the service cannot be stopped. Close this window.
14.
From the list of Services, select Windows Firewall. Stop this service.
Note: Since stopping the Windows Firewall service actually stops the Remote Desktop integration (amongst general network connectivity), you are losing the remote connection to your machine. This is expected behavior.
15.
From the Azure Portal, select your ADDSVM1 again, and press the Restart button in the portal window.
Note: Since the Windows Firewall service is configured to start automatically, it will be enabled again after the reboot. Allowing a remote connection again to the VM.
16.
Click the Connect button in the Azure Portal again, to initiate the Remote Desktop connection to ADDSVM1, and log on using demouser as user account, and Demo@pass123 as password.
17.
Wait for the Server Manager console to open again.
In this task, you walked through some of the more common Windows Server Manager tools.
Summary
In this exercise, you used a Virtual Machine from the lab environment, ADDSVM1, to execute several management and monitoring tasks.