Windows Admin Center

Windows Admin Center (WAC) is a browser-based, locally deployed management tool for IT Admins to manage Windows Server and Windows 10 systems.  Windows Admin Center is now production ready and will continue to grow and mature.

In this post, I’m just going to cover the bare-basics of getting it up and running on a Windows Server 2016 VM in Gateway Mode using SSL.

Check out Microsoft’s FAQ here for more details.

Installing Windows Admin Center

Installing is pretty straight forward.  There are a few preparations, but if your in a domain setting, I’m sure you already have Group Policies applied to your servers covering all of the remote-ability prerequisites.

1. Prepare your environment
2. Download Windows Admin Center
3. Install SSL Certificate
   1. Open up certlm.msc and import your wildcard domain or server SSL certificate.
      1. Right-click on Start, click Run, enter certlm.msc
         

         

4. Install Windows Admin Center

Using Windows Admin Center

The nice thing about using Windows Admin Center is there isn’t a whole lot of explanation needed.  You go to the web page, and is very self explanatory just by looking at it, and makes it easy to manage your systems.

1. After installing, log in via your web browser to https://server.domain.local
   1. Use your domain credentials.

      

   2. MS Edge wouldn’t work correctly, but Chrome worked fine.
2. Add a server by clicking the Add button.
3. After added, click on the server to manage.  You’ll see a nice overview of the system, with a ton of management options:

   

Tools Out of The Box

Here’s what you get out of the box: