Install Windows Server 2008By

Sysnetadmin.co.nr

With Windows Server 2008, you have the option of performing a Windows Server Coreinstallation, which provides you with the minimum set of tools to run Windows.

You are provided with a kernel and a command l ine to manage the server. It is slim andbare bones and allows you to configure Windows concisely. This type of installation isperfect for a datacenter. I am really excited about this feature.

Installation

When you first run through the installation of W indows Server 2008, you have twooptions for installation. They are:

Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (Full Installation) Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (Server Core Installation)

The following eight screen shots (Figures A-H) walk you through the installati on ofWindows Server Core which took approximately ten minutes to install.

Figure A

Figure B

Figure C

Figure D

Figure E

Figure F

Figure G

Figure H

After the installation, the main window for your new installation appears a nd you areready to login as shown in Figure I. The initial login is Administrator and blankpassword (Figure J). You are required to change the password and set an Administratorpassword on initial login.

Figure I

Figure J

Now that you are logged in (Figure K), you are ready to configure the date, time, andtime zone. In the command line type the following: controltimedate.cpl and set theoptions accordingly (Figure L).

Figure K

Figure L

If you need to configure and change the keyboard layout and settings, type the followingin the command window: control intl.cpl (Figure M).

Figure M

Let’s move on and change the server name. The default name is a bunch of randomletters and numbers and I would like to change the name to a local standard. You canview the current hostname by typing the following:

c:windowssystem32hostname

Now let’s use the name ssw -svr15. We will perform this option in the command line(Figure O) by typing the following:

c:windowssystem32netdom renamecomputer %computername% /NewName:ssw -svr15

Figure N

After choosing to proceed, the task completes successfully. You now need to reboot theserver using the shutdown command. For the proper syntax, type:

shutdown /?

After reviewing the syntax, (Figure N) type the following: shutdown /r (switch forshutting down and restarting the computer) /t 10 (wait 10 seconds to shutdown andrestart) /c “Changed Server Name” (add comment of max 512 characters). They totalsyntax will look as follows:

shutdown /r /T 10 /C "Changed Server Name"

Figure O

Let’s now configure our networking so we can join this server to a domain. In order tosee what interface you have to configure, ( Figure P) type

netsh interface ipv4 show interface

Figure P

The Local Area Connection that we are going to configure has an index value of two.Let’s proceed and configure TCP/IP for this connection. ( Figure Q) Type the followingcommand to set the TCP/IP information:

netsh interface ipv4 set address name="2" source=staticaddress=192.168.1.199 mask=255.255. 255.0 gateway=192.168.1.1

Figure Q

Follow the same example to configure DNS ( Figure R):

netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver name="2" address=192.168.1.1 in dex=1

Figure R

If you type ipconfig /all, you will see the newly added information ( Figure S).

Figure S

Let’s join it to a domain! In order to perform this function, we will take advantage of thenetdom.exe. (Figure T) The syntax is as follows:

netdom join ssw-svr15 /domain:watchtower /userd:Administrator/passwordD:Password01

Note: Do not forget to reboot the server using the following command:

shutdown /r /T 10 /C "Added to domain"

Figure T

As a final step, we should not forget to activate the server ( Figure U) by typing thefollowing:

slmgr.vbs -ato

Figure U

This doesn’t even scratch the surface of what you c an do with a Windows Server Coreinstallation but it begins to show you how powerful command line is with a smallWindows kernel. With the popularity of virtualization and server consolidation, havingthe ability to virtualize a server core installation an d attach a single role will become verypopular with the datacenter.