I want to be able to fully manage servers in an Active Directory environment using a GUI from a central Windows Server.
I bring this question to Server Fault because there seem to be multiple types of "Remote Management" within Windows Server and the various articles I've found describe enabling it in different, confusing, ways.
An example of my ideal workflow:
- Log into the only central server with a GUI.
- Go to All Servers and right click the server I wish to manage.
- Click "Computer Management" and be able to manage the things available to do so through that MMC. i.e. Disk Management, Device Manager, Task Scheduler, etc.
When researching how to do this, the following things are what confuse me:
- I have to enable firewall exceptions for managing specific functions remotely. i.e. Disk Management requires the Remote Volume Management firewall group enabled. This is separate from the "Configure Remote Management" available in the Core server's
sconfig.cmd
- I have to do that on both the server to be managed, and the server doing the managing.
- Windows Remote Management is not a catch-all for all these functions.
#1 confuses me because going into sconfig.cmd
on the Core installation of a server that's to be managed says 4) Configure Remote Management Enabled
. So presumably this should already do that. If it isn't doing that, what is it actually enabling?
#2 confuses me because those Firewall groups affect incoming connections only. Why this would be relevant to the managing server, I don't know.
#3 confuses me because it seems that's something specifically for Powershell/Command Prompt management and has nothing to do with enabling the individual components. It seems like a poor naming choice, or lack of clarification. I'm not certain of this however.
My primary question is: How do I achieve what I want with minimal firewall/setting changes in Active Directory?
Am I coming at this from the wrong angle or misunderstanding something regarding how to enable these features? It just seems like this is more work than it needs to be, and confusing than necessary, given how widely used I'd expect these features to be.
If I go forward with the various guides I've found, I'm likely to enable/allow things that shouldn't or don't need to be enabled/allowed.