Windows Small Business Server 2011 : Using the Native Consoles (part 2) - Using Server Manager, Directly Opening Native Consoles

10/11/2013 4:51:08 AM

2. Using Server Manager

A good way to see the entire management interface for any server, regardless of the number of roles installed, is to use the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Manager. This combines administrative, management, and monitoring functionality into a single console, giving you a single place to manage and monitor all the functionality of your SBS server that isn’t managed and monitored from the SBS Console.

The most important part of the Server Manager console, shown in Figure 8, is the Roles section. Here you have not only a summary of the events, messages, and general health of the roles that are installed on your server, but also direct access to the individual management consoles for each role.

Figure 8. The Roles page of the Server Manager console

We’ll use the Server Manager console to take care of a bit of configuration we need to do on our hp350-sbs-02.sbsexample.local server—configuring the printer and a couple of key workstations for DHCP reservations. This is something that simply can’t be done directly from the SBS Console. And we could manually configure each of them with static IP addresses, but we prefer to use DHCP whenever possible. So the best solution is a DHCP reservation. It ensures that key workstations are always at the address we expect, but if we need to make a major change to the network addressing, it’s all handled at one location, saving us from having to go around and manually configure individual devices or workstations.

To open the DHCP console in Server Manager and add a DHCP reservation, follow these steps:

Open the Server Manager if it isn’t already open, and click Roles in the left pane.
Expand the Roles section and then expand the DHCP Server section by clicking the little plus sign to the left of the section you want to expand.
Drill down to the IPv4 Address Leases for your SBS server, as shown in Figure 9.
Right-click the device that you want to give a DHCP reservation to—in our case, the HP 3505 Color LaserPrinter that is in the Engineering office (ENG-PRN-01)—and select Add To Reservation from the menu, as shown in Figure 10.

Figure 9. The IPv4 Address Leases for our EXAMPLE network

Figure 10. Converting a DHCP lease into a DHCP reservation
If the DHCP lease is successfully converted to a reservation, you’ll see the message shown in Figure 11. Click OK.

Figure 11. The DHCP lease conversion message

3. Directly Opening Native Consoles

Although using the Server Manager console to access the management consoles for the roles and features on your server is a simple way to get at all of them from one location, we often find that it is awkward to navigate when a lot of roles are installed, and we also hate giving up any of our screen real estate for that left pane. So our solution is to simply open up the native management consoles directly. The GUI way is to open the Start menu and click Administrative Tools. This gives you a list of the available Administrative consoles, as shown in Figure 12.

The other way is to open them directly, either from the Run menu or using a Cmd or Windows PowerShell window. Our preference is to keep a Windows PowerShell window open on the desktop, and use that. Table 1 has a list of the management consoles, along with a couple of keyboard shortcuts for Control Panel applications that are easier to get at from the command line.

Figure 12. The available Administrative consoles on a Windows Small Business Server 2011 server

Table 1. Command-line shortcuts
COMMAND LINE	CONSOLE OR APPLICATION
Adsiedit.msc	Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI) Editor^[2]
Azman.msc	Authorization Manager
Certmgr.msc	Certificates Manager
Certsrv.msc	Certificate Authority Manager
Certtmpl.msc	Certification Templates Console
Comexp.msc	Component Services Console
Compmgmt.msc	Computer Management Console^[3]
Devmgmt.msc	Device Manager^[4]
Dhcpmgmt.msc	DHCP Console^[5]
Diskmgmt.msc	Disk Management Console^[6]
Dnsmgmt.msc	DNS Manager Console^[7]
Domain.msc	Active Directory Domains and Trusts
Dsa.msc	Active Directory Users and Computers^[8]
Dssite.msc	Active Directory Sites and Services
Eventvwr.msc	Event Viewer^[9]
Fsmgmt.msc	Shared Folders (File Services Manager)
Fsrm.msc	File Server Resource Manager
Gpedit.msc	Group Policy Editor
Gpmc.msc	Group Policy Management Console^[10]
Gpme.msc	Group Policy Management Editor^[11]
Gptedit.msc	Group Policy Starter GPO Editor
Lusrmgr.msc	Local Users and Groups Manager (Not for use on a domain controller)
Napclcfg.msc	Network Access Protection (NAP) Client Configuration Console
Nps.msc	Network Policy Server Console
Perfmon.msc	Performance Monitor^[12]
Pkiview.msc	Private Key Infrastructure (PKI) Viewer
Rrasmgmt.msc	Routing and Remote Access Manager
Remoteprograms.msc	TS RemoteApp Manager^[13]
Rsop.msc	Resulting Set of Policies Console
Secpol.msc	Local Security Policy Console
Servermanager.msc	Server Manager Console^[14]
Services.msc	Services^[15]
Storagemgmt.msc	Share and Storage Management Console^[16]
Storexpl.msc	Storage Explorer Console
Tapimgmt.msc	Telephony Console
Taskschd.msc	Task Scheduler^[17]
Tpm.msc	Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Management
Tsadmin.msc	Terminal Services Manager^[18]
Tsconfig.msc	Terminal Services Configuration^[19]
Tsgateway.msc	Terminal Services Gateway Manager
Tsmmc.msc	Remote Desktops Console
Virtmgmt.msc	Hyper-V Manager^[20] (Note: this manager is not on your default path, but is installed in C:\Program Files\Hyper-V if present.)
Wbadmin.msc	Windows Server Backup Console^[21]
WF.msc	Windows Firewall with Advanced Security Console^[22]
Wmimgmt.msc	Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Manager
Appwiz.cpl	Control Panel: Programs and Features^[23]
Desk.cpl	Control Panel: Display Settings^[24]
Firewall.cpl	Control Panel: Windows Firewall
Hdwwiz.cpl	Control Panel: Add Hardware Wizard
Inetcpl.cpl	Control Panel: Internet Properties (Internet Explorer)
Intl.cpl	Control Panel: Regional and Language Options
Main.cpl	Control Panel: Mouse Properties^[25]
Mmsys.cpl	Control Panel: Sound
Ncpa.cpl	Control Panel: Network Connections^[26]
Powercfg.cpl	Control Panel: Power Options
Sysdm.cpl	Control Panel: System Properties^[27]
Telephon.cpl	Control Panel: Phone and Modem Options
Timedate.cpl	Control Panel: Date and Time

^[2] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[3] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[4] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[5] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[6] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[7] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[8] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[9] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[10] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[11] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[12] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[13] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[14] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[15] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[16] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[17] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[18] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[19] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[20] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[21] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[22] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[23] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[24] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[25] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[26] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.

^[27] These are the items we use regularly and that we think are worth learning. Also, .MSC is part of the environment variable PATHEXT, allowing you to skip typing the .msc part of the program name when you want to open one of the management consoles.