At what point do you need to decide whether your brand new server is going to be a Server Core, or a full Desktop Experience version with the traditional Windows graphical interface? It would be common sense to make this decision during the operating system installation process, right? Where you choose from the DVD installer which version of the OS you are putting into place? You are exactly right, except that in previous versions of Windows Server we had the capability to switch a live server back and forth between the two modes. If you had a full graphical version of a server running and wanted to change it over to a Server Core to get some enhanced security benefits, you could run a command and do just that. And the same is true in reverse; if you were running a Server Core and couldn't figure out how to configure something from the command interface, you could run another command which would change it over into the GUI version of the operating system. These commands were essentially just adding or removing some features within the operating system; basically you laid down or removed the graphical shell, which was the interface for Windows Server 2012.
Does that capability still exist in Windows Server 2016? It is not very common for Microsoft to implement new capabilities into an operating system and then yank them back out again later, but you never know until you try. Let's dig up those commands that could do the switching back and forth in the past, and test them out on a Server 2016. You may be surprised at the results.
Using our CORE1 server, which is already online, I am going to attempt to switch it from Server Core over to the Desktop Experience mode of Windows Server 2016, using some cmdlets that I know used to work in previous versions of the Windows Server operating system.
In order to test changing a Server Core into a Desktop Experience version of Windows Server 2016, I am opening up an administrative PowerShell window and going to use the following command:
- Add-
WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Shell, Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra.
- Uh oh, that's not a very pretty error message to see first thing in the morning. It appears my
Add-WindowsFeaturecmdlet is attempting to run, but it cannot find the role or features that I am specifying. I know that these cmdlets worked in Server 2012, so it's looking like they may have been removed for Server 2016. Just to confirm, let us try the other direction. I am logging into one of my Windows Server 2016 Desktop Experience servers, and I am going to try changing it over to Server Core with the following command: - Remove-
WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Shell, Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra.
- Well, unfortunately that error message looks very similar to the one we received when we tried adding the shell to the Server Core. Let's try just one more thing to make sure we have really lost this ability. In previous versions of Windows Server you could utilize these commands; alternatively, when swinging a server from the full graphical version over to Server Core, you could actually open up the Add/Remove Roles function and see those features listed right inside that screen. Let's walk through that wizard and check over the Features screen to see whether or not the one called User Interfaces and Infrastructure is even listed. As you can see in the following screenshot, it is no longer in our list of operating system features. It used to be listed right there, just below the TFTP Client.
As we have proven with this recipe, the ability to change a server between Desktop Experience and Server Core no longer exists inside Windows Server 2016. While it would have been shorter and easier to simply state this fact, taking you through the example proves the point, and it also gives you the commands that you need to switch older versions of Windows Server back and forth, if that is something you were not familiar with in the past.