1. Navigating Server Manager
To use the Server Manager console effectively, you need to be
able to navigate through its various controls, menus, and pages. This
section summarizes the most important things you need to know in this
area.
At the top of the Server Manager console (shown in Figure 1), you’ll find
the following controls and menus:
-
Back and forward buttons for navigating through the
history of the pages you previously selected -
A breadcrumb you can use to navigate quickly through any
hierarchical views -
A refresh button you can use to manually refresh the
console when its view becomes out of date -
The Notifications flag, which you use to view any alerts
or information about tasks being performed on the servers you
are managing -
The Manage menu, which you use to add roles and features
to (or remove them from) the servers you are managing, add
servers to the pool of managed servers, create new server
groups, and configure Server Manager properties -
The Tools menu, which you can use to access other
management tools, such as Microsoft Management Console (MMC)
consoles, the System Information and System Configuration
utilities, Windows PowerShell consoles and Integrated Scripting
Environments (ISEs), and so on. -
The View menu, which you can use to zoom your Server
Manager view in or out and show or hide the Welcome To Server
Manager information on the Dashboard. -
The Help menu, which includes a link to the Server Manager
forums on TechNet.
Note
Keyboard shortcuts for Server Manager
By default, Server Manager refreshes every 10 minutes by
collecting updated information for all servers being managed by the
console. You can change the refresh interval by opening the Server
Manager properties as follows:
-
Click the Manage menu on any page, and select Server
Manager Properties. -
In the Server Manager Properties dialog box, specify the
desired data refresh period in minutes.
You can also use this dialog box to configure Server Manager
to not start automatically at logon.
Note
REAL WORLD Monitoring your
servers
Because the refresh interval for Server Manager cannot be
configured to be less than one minute, Server Manager does not
really provide a real-time view of the status of servers on your
network. In addition, if you try to monitor too many types of
events on dozens of servers with Server Manager, you might get a
delayed response when you try to use Server Manager.
If you need real-time monitoring and easy monitoring of
hundreds or even thousands of servers in your environment, your
best solution is to deploy products from the Microsoft System
Center suite for this purpose, such as System Center Operations
Manager 2012 SP1 and System Center Configuration Manager SP1.
To use Server Manager, you select a page
such as the Dashboard, the Local Server page, the All Servers page,
or any additional role-specific pages that might be available. Figure 1 shows the
Dashboard page, which displays the following
tiles:
-
Welcome To Server Manager -
Local Server -
All Servers -
Any role-specific tiles like File And Storage
Services -
Custom pages for servers assigned to server groups you
created
Note
Hide or show the Welcome title
If you clicked Hide to hide the Welcome To Server Manager
tile, you can show this tile again by selecting Show Welcome Tile
from the View menu.
Tiles consist of a title bar with multiple thumbnails beneath.
A thumbnail reflects certain data collected
about the servers being managed. When something is wrong with a
server or server role, an alert is raised on the appropriate
thumbnail to allow you to take remedial action to correct the
problem. The five types of thumbnails displayed in tiles are
-
Manageability Indicates
whether servers are online or offline, whether Server Manager is
receiving reporting data from specified servers, and any issues
with being able to manage the servers. -
Events Displays alerts
whenever an event is logged that matches the severity levels,
event sources, or event IDs on specified servers during
specified time intervals -
Services Displays alerts
whenever problems arise with services on managed servers, and
lets you attempt to restart the affected services -
Performance Displays
performance alerts for different resource types (CPU or memory)
on specified servers during specified time intervals -
BPA Results Displays alerts
generated from running the Best Practices Analyzer against
managed servers
NoteIf the title bar of any of the tiles on the Dashboard (with
the exception of the Welcome To Server Manager tile) are colored
red, one or more alerts have been raised. For example, in Figure 1 the title bar
of the Local Server tile is colored red. A red box with the number 1
is also displayed next to the Manageability thumbnail in this title
to indicate that the alert has to do with the manageability of the
local server. To view more information concerning this alert, click
the Manageability thumbnail in this tile. To go directly to the
Local Server page, click the title bar of the Local Server
tile.
The Local Server page displays the following tiles:
-
Properties Lets you view
and configure various settings of the local server, including
computer name, domain membership, whether Remote Management or
Remote Desktop is enabled, the TCP/IP settings for the server’s
network cards, whether Windows Update is enabled, and more. (See
Figure 2.) -
Events Displays events
logged on the local server. -
Services Lets you view the
services for the local server, start services that are currently
stopped, restart running services, and perform other
service-related tasks. -
Best Practices Analyzer
Lets you initiate a BPA scan to determine whether any further
configuration needs to be performed for the local server to
function properly with all its installed roles. -
Performance Lets you
configure performance alerts on the local server so that alerts
will be raised when CPU usage exceeds a specified threshold or
available memory falls below a specified level. -
Roles and Features Displays
all roles and features installed on the local server, and also
lets you install additional roles or remove installed
roles.
The All Servers page of Server Manager, shown in Figure 3, is where you
can simultaneously manage multiple remote servers in your
environment. Initially, only the local server is displayed on this
page, but you can find other servers in your environment and add
them to this page to manage them.
The All Servers page displays the same types of tiles
displayed on the Local Server page. The difference is that on the
All Servers page, the Events tile (for example) shows events logged
on all servers being managed and not just events for the local
server.
Depending on what additional roles and features you have
installed on your server, other pages might be available on the left
side of Server Manager. For example, Figure 3 shows three
roles installed on server SEA-DC-1—namely, the AD DS role, the DNS
role, and the File And Storage Services role. If you select the File
And Storage Services page (shown in Figure 4), Server
Manager provides you with a hierarchy of additional pages for
managing servers, volumes, disks, storage pools, shares, and iSCSI
targets on your Windows Server 2012 file servers. By integrating
file-server management tools directly into Server Manager like this,
you can manage your Windows Server 2012 file servers without the
need of separately opening the MMC consoles used in previous Windows
Server versions for this purpose.
Note
REAL WORLD The future of
Windows server management
The new Server Manager of Windows Server 2012 clearly
represents the future for GUI-based management of Windows servers
for smaller organizations. In this release, Microsoft has
integrated the management of two roles into Server Manager: File
And Storage Services, and Remote Desktop Services (RDS). As a
result, you don’t need to use separate MMC consoles to manage
either file servers or servers running various RDS role services.
Instead, you can fully manage these roles from within the Server
Manager console. It’s likely that future releases of the Windows
Server platform will see even more roles and features have their
management functionality integrated into Server Manager, and this
should provide motivation for you to make sure you become
thoroughly familiar with how to use Server Manager.
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