Windows Server 2012 : Server Remote Management - Installing roles and features

1. Prerequisites for installing roles and features

To install a role or feature on a server running Windows Server 2012, the server must have access to the binaries for installing that role or feature. A new capability called Features On Demand allows administrators to completely remove the binaries for roles and features from a server running Windows Server 2012 to reduce the amount of disk space the operating system uses.

If the binaries for a particular role or feature you want to install on a server have previously been removed from the server’s system drive, Windows Server 2012 can obtain these binaries in several ways:

• By downloading them directly from Windows Update.

• By copying them from the side-by-side store (SxS) folder on a running installation of the same edition and service pack level as your server. To do this, share the SxS folder or a parent folder on the other server and then specify the UNC path to the shared SxS folder when using the Add Roles And Features Wizard or the Install-WindowsFeature cmdlet.

• By copying the entire side-by-side store (SxS) folder of an installation of the same edition and service pack level as your server to a shared folder on a file server on your network. Then specify the UNC path to this shared folder when using the Add Roles And Features Wizard or the Install-WindowsFeature cmdlet.

• By using a mounted Windows image from a Windows Image (WIM) file such as the Install.wim file in the \Sources folder on the Windows Server 2012 product media (ISO file).

• By using a mounted virtual hard disk file that includes an installation of the same edition and service pack level as your server.

You can use Group Policy to control whether removed binaries are downloaded from Windows Update or not, and you can specify the path where the binaries can be found if their associated roles or features need to be installed. The policy setting for controlling this behavior is as follows:

Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\Specify Settings For Optional Component Installation And Component Repair

Figure 1 shows the configuration options for this policy setting.

Figure 1. Group Policy setting for controlling installation of previously removed role and feature binaries.

Note

2. Installing roles and features using Server Manager

In previous versions of Windows Server, you could use the Add Roles Wizard and Add Features Wizard to install roles and features, respectively, on the server. Windows 2012 now includes a single redesigned Add Roles And Features Wizard that provides greater flexibility and control for installing roles and features on servers. This wizard provides an easy way for administrators of small to midsized organizations to install roles and features on servers running Windows Server 2012 in their environment.

To use Server Manager to install a role or a feature on a server running Windows Server 2012, begin by clicking the Manage menu and selecting Add Roles And Features to open the Add Roles and Features Wizard. The Select Installation Type page of this wizard shown in Figure 2 offers two options for installing roles and features on the server:

• Role-based or feature-based installation This option is similar to that used in previous versions of Windows Server for installing the specific roles or features you choose.

• Remote Desktop Services installation With this option, you can deploy a complete Remote Desktop Services infrastructure, either for session-based desktops or virtual desktops, on either a single server or multiple servers.

Figure 2. Windows Server 2012 offers two options for installing roles and features.

Choosing the first option on the Select Installation Type page leads to the Select Destination Server page of the wizard (shown in Figure 3), which you use to choose a remote server from your server pool on which to install roles and features. Note that this page includes an option for selecting an offline virtual hard disk instead of an online server. In Windows Server 2012, you now can install roles and features on offline virtual hard disks.

Figure 3. Select the server you want to install roles and features on.

On the Select Server Roles page, shown in Figure 4, you can choose one or more roles to install on the selected server. When you do this, the wizard might prompt you to install the remote Server Administration Tools for that role or feature plus any other management tools needed for managing the role or feature.

Figure 4. Selecting a role to install on the server.

The Select Features Page is next, and you use it to choose features to install on your server. Additional wizard pages might also be displayed to provide you with additional information or configuration options for the roles and features you decide to install on the server, or a list of role services to choose from for the particular roles you are installing.

When you reach the Confirm Installation Selections page, shown in Figure 5, you can select the check box if you want the remote server to be restarted if this is needed to complete installation of the selected roles and features.

Figure 5. The confirmation page of the wizard.

At the bottom of the Confirm Installation Selections page shown in Figure 5 is a Specify An Alternate Source Path link. Click this link if you previously removed any of the binaries for the roles or features you are installing on the server. Clicking this link displays a Specify Alternate Source Path dialog box for specifying the UNC path to the location where you can find the binaries needed to install the roles or features.

When a new role is installed on the server, a new page for this role is added to the Server Manager console. For example, Figure 6 shows the Print Services page, which appears once the Print And Document Services role has been installed on one or more servers in your server pool. A new tile named Print Services also appears on the Dashboard so that you can monitor events, services, and the performance of your print servers and confirm their manageability.

Figure 6. Each role on a managed server has its associated page in Server Manager.

The notification flag in the menu bar of Server Manager in Figure 6 indicates that one informational notification has been raised. Clicking this flag provides brief summary information concerning this notification, which indicates that installation of the selected feature has been successful.

3. Installing roles and features using Windows PowerShell

You can also install roles and features on servers running Windows Server 2012 by using Windows PowerShell commands. This approach can be useful for administrators who work in midsized to large environments that have many servers deployed—for example, in a datacenter. You can also use PowerShell to install roles and features on offline virtual disks.

The following Server Manager cmdlets can be used for managing roles and features using PowerShell:

• Get-WindowsFeature Retrieves information about Windows Server roles, role services, and features that are available

• Install-WindowsFeature Installs one or more Windows Server roles, role services, or features

• Uninstall-WindowsFeature Uninstalls and removes specified Windows Server roles, role services, and features

Important

Running Server Manager cmdlets

Server Manager cmdlets must be run elevated.

Retrieving a list of installed roles and features

You can use the Get-WindowsFeature cmdlet to retrieve information about roles, role services, and features available on a remote server. For example, the following command displays a list of all available roles and features and their current install state on server SEA-SRV-1:

Get-WindowsFeature -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1

To display a list of all installed roles and features on the server, pipe the output of the preceding command into the Where-Object cmdlet and use Where-Object to filter out everything except roles and features whose InstallState property is equal to Installed:

Get-WindowsFeature -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1 | Where-Object InstallState -eq Installed

You can narrow your results even further by using the –name parameter of the Get-WindowsFeature cmdlet to select only roles and features that begin with “Print”like this:

Get-WindowsFeature -Name Print* -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1 | Where-Object InstallState -eq
Installed

The output from running this command against server SEA-SRV-1 verifies that the Print Server role service of the Print And Document Services role is installed:

Display Name                                  Name                       Install State
------------                                  ----                       -------------
[X] Print and Document Services               Print-Services                 Installed
    [X] Print Server                          Print-Server                   Installed

Note

REAL WORLD Windows PowerShell 3.0 simplified syntax

One of the improvements in version 3.0 of Windows PowerShell is the simplification of the syntax for the Where-Object cmdlet. If you are an administrator who already has some familiarity with using PowerShell for managing Windows servers, you might have wondered about the syntax of some of the commands in this section. In particular, you might have wondered why the second example didn’t look like this:

Get-WindowsFeature - ComputerName SEA-SRV-1 | Where-Object {$_.InstallState -
eq Installed}

The reason is because Windows PowerShell 3.0 lets you eliminate the script block notation (the curly braces), the current object placeholder ($_), and the dot property notation. These improvements make PowerShell code easier to understand.

Installing roles and features

You can use the Install-WindowsFeature cmdlet to install roles, role services, and features available on a remote server. You can also use the alias Add-WindowsFeature to invoke this command. For example, the following command installs the DHCP Server role on server SEA-SRV-1:

Install-WindowsFeature -Name DHCP -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1

The output from running the preceding command looks like this:

Success Restart Needed Exit Code      Feature Result
------- -------------- ---------      --------------
True    No             Success        {DHCP Server}

To install the DHCP Server role together with the management tools for this role, add the –IncludeManagementTools parameter to the preceding command. If a restart is required for the installation of a role or feature to install properly, you can force this to happen by including the –Restart parameter in the command.

To install all of the Remote Server Administration features on this server, use this command:

Install-WindowsFeature -Name RSAT -IncludeAllSubFeature -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1

Note

MORE INFO For more examples of how to use the Install-WindowsFeature cmdlet, type Get-Help Install-WindowsFeature –examples in the PowerShell console.

Installing roles and features on multiple servers

Although Server Manager can be used to install roles and features only on a single server at a time, you can use PowerShell to install roles and features on multiple computers at the same time. You can do this by using the Invoke-Command cmdlet to run the Install-WindowsFeature command on multiple computers. For example, this command installs the XPS Viewer feature on servers SEA-SRV-1 and SEA-SRV-3:

Invoke-Command -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1, SEA-SRV-3 -ScriptBlock {Install-WindowsFeature -
Name XPS-Viewer}

The output from running the preceding command looks like this:

Success Restart Needed Exit Code      Feature Result                    PSComputerName
------- -------------- ---------      --------------                    --------------
True    No             Success        {XPS Viewer}                      SEA-SRV-1
True    No             Success        {XPS Viewer}                      SEA-SRV-3

Note

Installing and removing roles or features from multiple computers

You can use the Invoke-Command with the Server Manager cmdlets to install or remove roles or features on only up to 32 computers at a time. If you specify more than 32 computers, the additional computers will be queued. You can use the ThrottleLimit parameter to override this behavior.

Installing roles and features for which the payload has been removed

If the binaries for the role or feature you want to install have been removed from the server, you can use the –Source parameter to specify the location of the binaries needed to install the role or feature. If you don’t specify this parameter, the necessary binaries will be downloaded from Windows Update unless this behavior has been disabled using Group Policy. Note that downloading role or feature binaries from Windows Update can take some time.

4. Removing roles and features

Roles and features can be removed from a remote server by using either Server Manager or PowerShell:

• To remove roles or features using Server Manager, select Remove Roles And Features from the Manage menu and complete the steps of the Remove Roles And Features Wizard.

• To remove roles or features using PowerShell, use the Uninstall-WindowsFeature cmdlet or its alias Remove-WindowsFeature. For more help on using this cmdlet, type Get-Help Uninstall-WindowsFeature –Detailed at a PowerShell prompt.