Through the graphical user interface

Activating Windows Server 2022 from the GUI is very simple. It starts in my favorite place: Server Manager! Here’s how to activate Windows Server 2022 through the Server Manager console:

1. Starting in Server Manager, click Local Server in the left-hand side of the menu.

2. To start the activation process, click the Not Activated hyperlink next to Product ID.

   A dialog box will launch automatically asking for the product key.

3. Enter your product key and click Next.

   You’re prompted to activate Windows.

4. Click Activate.

   You get a confirmation that Windows has been activated.

5. Click Close.

   You’re left on the Activation screen shown in Figure 5-1, where you see that your version of Windows is now activated.

Through the command line

You can activate your copy of Windows Server via the command line as well. You may want to do this because you prefer to be a Command Prompt ninja, or maybe because you have Server Core installed and don’t have a choice.

Either way, first, you have to install the key. You do this with the Windows Server License Manager script, slmgr.vbs.

To use slmgr.vbs to install the key, you use the command with the parameter -ipk. Just replace <productkey> with your 25-character license key, including the dashes:

slmgr.vbs -ipk <productkey>

You get a dialog box that tells you the product key installed successfully. Click OK.

After the license key is installed, you use the same script with the -ato parameter to do an online activation of your copy of Windows. You do that with the following command:

slmgr.vbs -ato

If the activation was successful, you get a dialog box that says the product was activated successfully, as shown in Figure 5-2.

Working with the Folder Options dialog box

The Folder Options dialog box lets you change quite a few things. To access it, open File Explorer, click the View tab, and then click Options and select Change Folder and Search Options (as shown in Figure 5-3).

The Folder Options dialog box has three tabs: General, View, and Search.

The General tab

The General tab (shown in Figure 5-4) lets you adjust the general behavior of folders. You can set File Explorer to open by default to Quick Access (default) or to This PC. You have the choice when you open folders to make them open in the same window (default) or a new window. Tired of double-clicking to open a folder? Change it to a single-click. You can even set Quick Access to display frequently used folders (default), frequently used files, or both.

The Search tab

The Search tab (shown in Figure 5-6) controls the behavior of the search function when searching through folders and files on the operating system. By default, the only choice selected here is Include System Directories in the When Searching Non-indexed Locations section. Other options include searching compressed files, file names, and contents. And you can tell Windows Search not to use the index during its search. Use that last option with caution — the process could take a while to complete depending on how much data it needs to go through.

Setting your Internet Options

You can set your Internet Options in two ways: through the Control Panel, or you through the Network & Internet screen.

I’ll start with the Control Panel method. Follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Windows System, and then click Control Panel.

2. Click Network & Internet, and then click Internet Options.

   The Internet Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 5-7, appears.

There are seven tabs on the Internet Properties dialog box:

• General: The General tab allows you to set your own home pages, specific the startup behavior for Internet Explorer, define how you want web pages to be displayed in tabs, delete your browsing history, and tweak items related to appearance.
• Security: The Security tab allows you to set the security level for individual zones — the Internet, the Local Intranet, Trusted Sites, and Restricted Sites.
• Privacy: Allows you to specify if websites are allowed to track your location, how you want the pop-up blocker to function, and whether you want InPrivate mode to disable toolbars and extensions.
• Content: The Content tab focuses on various content-related features. You can work with certificates, control how AutoComplete functions, and look at the settings for any RSS-related feeds.
• Connections: Allows you to set up an Internet connection and specify a proxy within the local area network (LAN) settings area.
• Programs: The Programs tab lets you set default behaviors for clicking links and editing HTML files. It also lets you manage any add-ons you have installed and set programs that you want to use for things like email. You can set the file types that you want Internet Explorer to open as well.
• Advanced: The Advanced tab gives you a way to set more granular settings within Internet Explorer (IE). You can customize how IE will react to scripts, change which cryptographic settings you want it to use, and more.

The newer method of setting Internet Options is accessed via the Start menu, and the Settings icon, which looks like a gear. From there, you can select Network & Internet from the new Settings menu. I cover this area in greater detail in Book 4, Chapter 1.

Focusing on your Personalization settings

Personalization settings have gotten a lot of attention in Windows Server 2022. In fact, they have their own section in the new Settings menu. To access the Personalization settings, click the Start Menu, and then click the gear icon to access Settings. From there, click Personalization.

There are several different locations you can customize:

• Background: This section allows you to set the background with a picture, a solid color, or a slide show. You can set the background to fill, fit, stretch, tile, center, or span.
• Colors: In this section, you choose what your accent colors will be for things like your Start menu. You can choose specific colors, or you can select Automatically Pick an Accent Color from My Background, and new colors will be set anytime the background color changes. You can set where the accent color shows up, and you can select a light or dark app mode.
• Lock Screen: Here, you can set a custom image on your lock screen. You can choose from stock photos or choose your own.
• Themes: Much like in Windows 10, you can set themes in Windows Server 2022. These themes affect the background, colors, sounds, and what your cursor looks like.
• Fonts: The Fonts section allows you to search, view, and install new fonts. If you like a particular font, you can click it to see the font faces that are available, as shown in Figure 5-8 with the Courier New font.
• Start: The Start section allows you to customize what appears on your Start menu. You can choose to show more tiles or apps, or even let the Start screen take over the entire screen (as in Windows 8).
• Taskbar: The Taskbar section allows you to change the behavior of the taskbar. You can lock it or hide it, and you can choose to replace Windows PowerShell with the Command Prompt when you right-click the Start menu.

Reporting problems

The troubleshooting utility is still located in the Control Panel. To access the Control Panel, click Start, click Windows System, and then click Control Panel. From there, click System and Security, and then click Review Your Computer’s Status and Resolve Issues (in the Security and Maintenance section). Potential issues are broken out into Security and Maintenance issues, as shown in Figure 5-9.

Setting your Regional and Language Options

The Regional and Language Options are set in the new Settings menu under Time & Language. You can reach this by clicking the Start menu and then clicking the gear icon to access Settings. This allows you to set the date and time, the region, the language, and speech settings.

Working with the Performance Options dialog box

The Performance Options dialog box is pretty straightforward.

There are two ways to get there:

• Click Start, then click Windows System, and then click Control Panel. From there, choose the System and Security section, and then click System. Click Advanced System Settings. On the Advanced tab, click the Settings button under Performance.
• Click the Start menu, and then click the gear icon to access the Settings menu. Click System, click About, click System Info, and click Advanced System Settings. On the Advanced tab, click the Settings button under Performance.

Either way, you get a screen similar to Figure 5-10.

There are three tabs in the Performance Options dialog box:

• Visual Effects: Allows you to adjust the amount of visual effects that Windows uses. On a server, this should normally be set for performance rather than flashy screen transitions.
• Advanced: Allows you to set whether performance should target better performance for programs or background services, and allows you to adjust the amount of virtual memory being used.
• Data Execution Prevention: Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is a great feature for protecting your system against malicious code, but it can cause performance issues with some applications. Typically, your vendor will let you know if DEP needs to be disabled, and you can whitelist that program.

Performance Monitor

Performance Monitor allows you to gather information in real time and collect that information into a log for later review. It looks at what impact running applications on your system have to your system’s overall performance. You can access Performance Monitor from Server Manager by clicking Tools and then clicking Performance Monitor.

Performance Monitor is the perfect tool to track basic performance metrics across your central processing unit (CPU) and random access memory (RAM), although it contains quite a few more counters than just CPU and RAM. You can monitor performance for most of the hardware, software, and services running on your system.

In Figure 5-13, I’ve started Performance Monitor with the default % Processor Time and have added Interrupts/sec.

One of the best things about Performance Monitor is that you can schedule collection. Say, for instance, that there is always a slowdown on your system between 10 p.m. and midnight. You can schedule performance monitor to run and analyze the data to determine where the issue lies and then see the results when you come in the next morning.

One of the downsides of Performance Monitor is how granular the counters are. It can be difficult to locate the counter that will give you the information that you need, so you may need to play with it a bit to find the right counter.

To add a counter to Performance Monitor, follow these steps:

1. Open Performance Monitor and click Performance Monitor.
2. Click the plus (+) sign in the menu bar.
3. On the Add Counters screen, expand Processor and select Interrupts/Sec.
4. With Interrupts/Sec highlighted, click the Add button and then click OK.
5. Double-click your new counter, select a color different enough from the default counter’s color, and then click OK.

Resource Monitor

Resource Monitor is more useful for troubleshooting issues that are causing your system to hang or even potentially causing it to crash. You can see at a glance which processes are using the most resources or are using the largest amount of disk, network bandwidth, or memory. You can click the individual tabs for CPU, Memory, Disk, or Network to get more details on each. I actually like using this utility to troubleshoot performance issues as well. I find that it presents performance issues in a very helpful manner. See Figure 5-14 for an example of what Resource Monitor looks like.

Task Manager

Task Manager has been around in the Windows operating system for a very long time. It provides a quick glance at CPU, network, and memory utilization, and it allows you to stop running processes or applications ungracefully if they aren’t responding.

There are two ways to access Task Manager:

• Right-click the taskbar and choose Task Manager.
• Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and choose Task Manager from that screen.

After you open Task Manager, you see a screen similar to Figure 5-15.

Most System Administrators come into Task Manager with one thing in mind. They have an application or a process that isn’t responding and they need to terminate it. Here’s how to do that in Task Manager:

1. With Task Manager open, select the unresponsive application.

2. Click End Task.

   The application or process will be stopped.

Terminating programs through Task Manager is an ungraceful shutdown. It may lead to data loss and should be used as a last resort.

System Backup

After you’ve installed Windows Server Backup, you can launch the console from Server Manager. Choose Tools⇒  Windows Server Backup. You’re be presented with a screen similar to Figure 5-16.

System Restore

Restoring items is nice and simple through Windows Server Backup. Here’s how to recover a file that was deleted:

1. From Server Manager, choose Tools⇒  Windows Server Backup.
2. On the right-hand menu, click Recover.

3. On the Getting Started screen, select where the backup is stored.

   In my case, I’ll choose This Server.

4. Click Next.

5. Choose the available backup that you need.

   This will be done with a calendar that has available dates, and a drop-down box with times.

6. Click Next.

7. Select what you want to recover.

   In my case, I deleted a file and a folder, so I’m going to choose Files and Folders.

8. Click Next.

9. Browse the tree until you find what you’re looking for.

   In my case, that looks like Figure 5-17.

10. Click Next.

11. On the Specify Recovery Options screen, select the recovery destination and how the restore should react if it finds items with the same name in the destination.

    In my case, I’ll choose Original Location and Overwrite Existing Versions.

12. Click Next.

13. On the Confirmation screen, click Recover.

    You can watch the progress of your recovery.

14. When the recovery is complete, click Close.

Managing storage

Much of the storage management tasks in Windows Server 2022 can be performed from the File and Storage Services area in Server Manager. From here, you can manage the volumes, disks, and storage pools associated with your server. If you would like to learn more about configuring and managing storage, check out Book 2, Chapter 2.

Managing disks

Managing the disks on your system is done through the File and Storage Services area in Server Manager. After you click File and Storage Services, just click Disks and you can manage the physical and logical disks, as well as the related volumes. By right-clicking the drive, you can create a new volume, bring an offline disk online, or take an online disk offline, or you can reset the disk. If you right-click the volume, you have a lot of options similar to the old Disk Management utility (which you could still use if you wanted to). You can see these options in Figure 5-18.

Defragmenting drives

As a disk is used and data is created and deleted, data on the disk becomes fragmented. This can cause performance issues on hard disk drives (HDDs). You’ll need to defragment your disk to resolve this issue. By defragmenting your HDD, you’re taking all the scattered data and combining it so that it occupies a single contiguous space. Solid-state drives (SSDs) can benefit from the optimization as well if they support TRIM, which allows the operating system to tell the SSD drive when blocks of data are no longer needed. To defragment or optimize your drive, follow these steps:

1. From Server Manager, choose Tools⇒  Defragment and Optimize Drives.

2. Select the drive that is fragmented and click Analyze.

   The analysis will return with recommendations on whether you need to optimize it.

3. If needed, select Optimize and the drive will be defragmented.

Disk defragmentation used to be something that a System Administrator had to do manually, but in recent server operating systems, it’s scheduled automatically to run once a week, as you can see in Figure 5-19.

Discovering task status

If you want to know what the status of a task is, you can check the Status column after selecting Task Scheduler Library or any of the folders contained within the Task Scheduler Library. Here are some of the statuses that you may encounter:

• Ready: The scheduled task is ready for its next scheduled execution.
• Running: The scheduled task is currently running.
• Disabled: The scheduled task will not run.

Using preconfigured tasks

Windows Server 2022 comes with quite a few predefined tasks that you can choose from. For instance, Disk Cleanup runs automatically when the system starts to run low on free space. You can see in Figure 5-21 that the Status is Ready, and it gives you the last run time as well.

You can change the schedule that the task runs on or even delete the task if you want. There are several tabs that you should understand:

• General: The General tab contains information about the task, including who authored it and what account it will run under.
• Triggers: This tab is used to automate the task. Here, you can create a schedule if you want the task to run on a certain day at a certain time, or if you want the task to kick off when other events occur like logon, startup, or when a certain event occurs.
• Actions: The Actions tabs contains what you want the task to actually do. Typically this will be starting a program of some kind, though you can still use the deprecated options of sending an email or displaying a message.
• Conditions: The Conditions tab can place conditions on when the task will be allowed to run. For instance, you may require that the task only be able to run after the system has been idle for a predetermined amount of time.
• Settings: The Settings tab allows you to tweak settings related to how the task can run and what it should do if it runs into a failure.
• History: The History tab tells you if the task has been running successfully. If it runs into an error, it can give you valuable information on what caused the error.

To edit a preconfigured task, simply double-click the task and make your changes, and then click OK. For example, say I want to schedule the SilentCleanup task to run every evening. I would follow these steps:

1. From Server Manager, choose Tools⇒  Task Scheduler.
2. Expand the Task Scheduler Library.
3. Go to the DiskCleanup folder and double-click SilentCleanup.
4. Click the Triggers tab and then click New.
5. Under Begin the Task, select On a Schedule.
6. Change the settings area to Daily and select the time you want it to run at.
7. Under Advanced settings, select Stop Task if It Runs Longer Than and select a reasonable time frame.
8. Click OK to save the trigger.

Now the task will run every day at 7:00 p.m. in my case. You can see what this looks like in Figure 5-22.

Creating your own tasks

Maybe the preconfigured tasks aren’t what you need to do the job. Maybe you have a custom script that you need to run on a schedule. This is where creating your own tasks can be very helpful.

To create your own task, select the Task Scheduler Library. You have the choice of creating a basic task or simply creating a task. Here are the steps to create a task:

1. From Server Manager, choose Tools⇒  Task Scheduler.
2. Click Task Scheduler Library.
3. Select Create Task from the right-hand menu.
4. On the General tab, give your task a name, select which user account you want it to run under, and select which OS you want to configure it for.
5. Click the Triggers tab and then click New.
6. Under Begin the Task, select On a Schedule.
7. Change the settings area to Daily and select the time you want it to run at.
8. Under Advanced settings, select Stop Task if It Runs Longer Than and select a reasonable time frame.
9. Click OK to save the trigger.
10. Click the Actions tab and select Start a Program.
11. In Program/Script, click Browse and select the script that you want the task to run.
12. Add any arguments you may need, and click OK.
13. Click OK to save the task.

There you go, you created your first task!

Figuring out firewall rules

To use RSAT, the remote servers need to be running WinRM and the Windows Firewall must allow port 5985 so that RSAT can communicate with the remote server.

Connecting to the server

To manage a server with RSAT, you need to connect to it first. Follow these steps to add a server to Server Manager on a Windows 10 PC:

1. Click Start, open Server Manager, and click All Servers.
2. Right-click All Servers and choose Add Servers.
3. Search for the name of the system.
4. Select the server(s) that you want to add and click the arrow to move the selected server(s) to the Selected box.
5. Click OK.
6. Right-click the newly added server and choose Start Performance Counters.

After you follow these steps, your server will show Online under manageability (shown in Figure 5-24), and you can now manage your server remotely through the RSAT tools.

Managing your servers

To manage servers that have been added to the RSAT version of Server Manager, simply right-click the server and choose what you want to do. There are a ton of management options available to you from the Server Manager interface. You can add roles and features, restart the server, or run AD tools if the remote system is a domain controller. You can even run a remote PowerShell window. See the available options in Figure 5-25.

Focusing on firewall rules

Windows Admin Center needs port 6516 open on the server that it’s running on. When connecting on the same system, you can simply open Microsoft Edge and type https://localhost:6516. If accessing it from a remote system, you need to type https://<server name>:6516.

Connecting to a server

The default page that Windows Admin Center opens to is the All Connections screen. This screen is where you can add systems. I’m running this on a Windows 10 PC, and my PC shows up in Windows Admin Center already. Follow these steps to add a new server:

1. Click Add, and then click Add Server Connection.
2. Select Add One Server and enter the server’s name.
3. Click Submit.

Adding servers is that simple. The connection will automatically be set to use the credentials of the logged-in user. If you don’t want it to use those credentials, select the system and choose Manage As. Enter the account you do want to use and click Continue. In Figure 5-26, you can see that both my Windows 10 PC and Windows Server 2022 system are using the administrator account.

Using Windows Admin Center to manage your servers

From Windows Admin Center, click the name of the system that you want to manage. This changes your view to the Server Manager view, shown in Figure 5-27.

From here, you can manage the system, check its resource utilization, and more. You can do everything you could do in the traditional Server Manager, with several new additions. The newest version of Windows Admin Center includes lots of new Azure functionality, including the ability to manage Azure Kubernetes clusters, Azure Backups, Azure Security Center, and more.