Managing Windows Server 2012 : Server Manager (part 1) - Launching and Working with Server Manager - Adding server roles and features

Server roles are dedicated functions a server provides. Common roles include DHCP, DNS, File Services, and IIS. In Server 2012, there are 19 server roles you can deploy. Features enhance server roles and are often required for deploying roles.

To add a server role, open Server Manager and click “Add roles and features” under “Configure this local server.” The “Add Roles and Features” wizard opens (Figure 2).

Click Next and then select the installation type. Here you can choose to install roles or features or set up a Remote Desktop Services scenario-based installation for deploying a Remote Desktop Session Host server. For now, we’ll focus on adding a single server role. I’ve selected “Role-based or feature-based installation” in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Add roles and features

Figure 3. Installing a role

The wizard then prompts you to select the destination server. Roles and features can be added to the local server, a remote server, or a virtualized server. In Figure 4, the local server is selected as the destination.

Figure 4. Role will be installed on the selected local server

The next step is to select the role or feature you want to install. In Figure 5, I’ve selected the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) role to install on the local server.

Required components needed to deploy a role or feature are automatically displayed during the installation of that specific role or feature. For example, to install the IIS role as part of creating a WSUS server, you must install the .NET 4.5 Framework component. Windows will display and provide the option of installing all the components needed to install a role (Figure 6).

Figure 5. Selecting the WSUS role

Figure 6. Required features for installing the WSUS role

The wizard displays any information administrators need to know about installing the service. For example, as I am adding the WSUS server roles, the wizard offers useful information advising that at least one WSUS server in the network needs to be able to download Microsoft updates from the Internet and that WSUS server-to-server and server-to-client communications should be set up to use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). The last step of the WSUS role installation asks me to select where either locally or remotely downloaded updates should be saved (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Final step of WSUS role installation

As shown in Figure 8, the wizard will confirm all software being installed and ask if you want to restart the destination server automatically if required.

Click Install to begin the role installation process. (See Figure 9.)

Figure 8. Confirmation

Figure 9. Start of role install

In the Server Manager console, I now have two additional items in the left pane of the Server Manager dashboard: IIS and Windows Server Update Services (Figure 10).

Figure 10. The WSUS role and required components are installed

What’s very helpful in Server 2012’s Server Manager is that you aren’t left to your own devices to figure out how to configure a newly installed role. Notice in Figure 10 the yellow triangle with the exclamation point. This is a notification indicating that you need to take some additional action after installing the WSUS role. Clicking the triangle displays more information. In the case of the WSUS role I installed, I need to do some post-deployment configuration to get the role to work properly. The notification features a “Launch post-deployment tasks” link that’s useful in configuring newly added roles.