Remote Management

Administrators can access servers for remote management of Active Directory domain controllers either via remote desktop or from their own workstation with PowerShell. In addition to PowerShell, other tools for managing Active Directory on workstations are also available and work with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, as well as with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. If you want to manage Windows Server 2012 from workstations with Windows 8, you must first install the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 8 [1].

The management tools for Active Directory can be found under Role Management Tools | AD DS | AD LDS Tools . The commandlets for managing Active Directory are available here (e.g., the Active Directory module for Windows PowerShell). In Windows 8, the remote management tools are already activated. If these are not seen immediately on the start page, the "All Apps" view can be called up with the Ctrl+Tab keyboard shortcut. In Windows 7, the tools are found in the normal Start menu.

If you want to manage a server running Windows Server 2008 R2 or 2012 services that are not activated, you can also install the management tools there. No patches are necessary, and the corresponding tools can be activated directly in the Server Manager.

Installation is done in the Server Manager under Features | Add Features | Remote Server Management Tools | Role Management Tools .

In Windows Server 2012, they can be reached under Management | Add Roles and Features . Administrators can also perform the installation of the management tools on servers using PowerShell.

For this, you can download the appropriate commandlets for server management with Import-Module Server Manager. The command Get-WindowsFeature displays the available features. The installation of features is then completed with the Add-WindowsFeature <Features> command, for example:

Add-WindowsFeature RSAT-AD-PowerShell,RSAT-AD-AdminCenter

These commands work in PowerShell 2.0 of Windows Server 2008 R2 and in the new PowerShell 3.0 of Windows Server 2012.

PowerShell in the Network

To manage a server remotely via PowerShell, remote management must be activated on the server with the Enable-PSRemoting -force command, which also configures the Windows Firewall. Disable-PSRemoting -force will then deactivate remote management of a server on the PowerShell.

In remote PowerShell sessions, you can use same commandlets that are used on local servers. However, not all commandlets allow remote management, and this depends on whether the commandlet supports the -Computer Name option. You can use the

Get-Help * -Parameter ComputerName

command to call up a list of all these commandlets.

If the help commandlet is called up, PowerShell can update itself, as was possible in PowerShell 2.0 if the -online option was used with the get-help commandlet. PowerShell 3.0 offers the new update-help commandlet, which updates the help files. The command calls up help directly from the Internet.

Another new feature in PowerShell 3.0 is the show-command commandlet, which opens a new window with all the PowerShell commands that are available (Figure 4).

Figure 4: PowerShell 3.0 in Windows Server 2012 offers a new function that lists all available commands.

PowerShell can also start a remote session on a server. This works best with the PowerShell Integrated Script Engine (ISE), which is already activated in Windows 8. In Windows 7, it must be activated manually. Once started, a connection can be opened with File | New Remote PowerShell Tab ; then, you can enter the name of the server and user with which you would like to connect.