An Introduction to
Windows Server 2008
Server Manager
1-800-COURSES
www.globalknowledge.com
Expert Reference Series of White Papers
Introduction
When you take your first look at Windows Server 2008, you'll find that many of the traditional tools that
graced Server 2003 are still around: the Computer Management console; the System Information utility; the
Services console; and so forth. Administrative Tools are still in a Start menu folder named "Administrative
Tools," and you can start feeling fairly comfortable with the GUI if you have background with prior versions
of Windows.
If you have logged some flight time with Windows Vista, things will look even more familiar. Windows Server
2008 has the look and feel of Windows Vista. (Which makes sense, when you consider that both products were
developed under the "Longhorn" moniker
, and share many megabytes of code.) The new collapsible Start
menu, the Vista-style search facilities, as well as some of the tools (such as Windows Firewall with Advanced
Security) look just as they do in the
Vista GUI.
Where things change a bit is in the Server Manager console (ServerManager.msc, typically under
C:\Windows\System32), which is really the "nerve center" of Server 2008.
Parts of this console are simply con-
venient pointers to other administrative tools. However, the "Roles" and "Features" nodes may be unfamiliar
to you. This white paper introduces the Server Manager console and will help you find your way around it, so
that you can get up to speed with Server 2008 more quickly than I did when I first started stumbling around
this massive console!
Version note: For this white paper, I installed Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, Beta 3 (build 6001), into a fresh
Virtual Machine running on Virtual PC 2007, with the Virtual Machine Additions. The host system was Windows
V
ista Ultimate
.

e 1.
The Server Manager overview duplicates ICT functionality
.
What Are Roles?
Roles
are the primary responsibilities that a server may hold. They are analogous to job titles in a company.
You may have been introduced to this term if you ever used the Security Configuration Wizard (scw.exe) that
Microsoft bundled with Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1. SCW would go through your server, identify the
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raining LLC. All rights reserved.
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s
ervices it was running, and assign roles based on what it found. You can also think of roles as being similar to
the old "optional Windows components" that you used to install via the Add/Remove Programs wizard. (That
function, by the way, is gone; if you go to the new Programs and Features control panel and try to turn
Windows features on or off, guess what—you get routed to Server Manager!)
An out-of-the-box installation of Server 2008 starts out with no roles; a big part of setting up a server is
adding the roles that you need. When you add a role, you typically launch a wizard that handles the installa-
tion of any required services and administrative tool consoles, and provides initial configuration of the role.
Just as small business managers wear many hats, servers in small organizations can have many roles. In larger
organizations, servers tend to be more specialized, and have fewer roles. You can set up Server 2008 with as
many or as few roles as you like—understanding, of course, that just as with humans, more roles mean more
stress! And more problems when the role-holder suffers some downtime.
Note: For those of you interested in single-purpose servers, check out my other Server 2008 white paper on
Server Core-a version of Server 2008 that runs without a GUI,
for easier management and enhanced reliability.
The roles that you can add to Server 2008 appear in a checkbox list that you will see after you click the "Add
Roles" link in the context menu of the Roles node
. You can add multiple roles at one session;
for example, in

.
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raining LLC. All rights reserved.
Page 5
Figure 3. Pick and choose from the services you need for a given role.