Author's Note: In the developer preview version of Windows Server 8, some functionality is missing or will change over the course of development. Some of the descriptions in this article might become obsolete as Microsoft responds to the mountains of feedback that it's no doubt already receiving.
In Windows Server 2008, Microsoft added the Server Manager interface, and it was good. Server Manager provides a central location for managing a
server's roles and features, and although there's occasionally a need to use other tools, many admins can live in this interface all day long. But
Server Manager has a fatal flaw that's obvious with the passage of time: It works against only one server at a time. If you need to manage multiple
servers, as many admins do in this new world of distributed computing services and virtualized environments, Server Manager becomes more of a hindrance
than a benefit.
And that's where the next version of Windows Server, code-named Windows Server 8, comes in. Among the many benefits and new features in the upcoming
Windows Server OS revision is a completely new version of Server Manager, written from the ground up to accommodate today's multiserver management
style. And the new Server Manager is indeed brand new: It doesn't look or behave like any administrative console you've ever used.
The difference isn't just in the look and feel. Server Manager 8 (as I call it) is different from previous versions because Microsoft expects most
admins to access it on their desktop PCs, remotely connecting to the servers that they manage from a single interface. This approach stands in sharp
contrast to the more typical administrative model, in which you use Remote Desktop Connection to interactively access each server's desktop -- or worse
yet, physically sit down in front of each server.
A Server Manager for the 21st Century
When you run Server Manager 8 for the first time, it's obvious that things have changed. Gone is the Microsoft Management Console (MMC)-based UI, with
its old-school panels and panes and tree-based navigation of roles and features. Instead, Microsoft has wrought a new, flatter UI that seems to
incorporate some Metro-style user experiences from Windows 8 or Windows Phone, as Figure 1 shows.
Figure 1: Server Manager in the Windows Server 8 developer preview
If you're familiar with the process of configuring a new server that runs Server 2008, you'll also notice the absence of the Configure Your Server
wizard on your first boot of Server 8. I don't see a direct replacement for that wizard, at least not in the Server 8 developer preview, so you'll need
to set up certain features manually before digging into Server Manager. A temporary Welcome to Server Manager pane in Server Manager provides
a more obvious way to configure roles and features, add servers to manage, or create a server group, as Figure 2 shows. This pane can be handy until
you know your way around.
Figure 2: Adding roles or servers and creating groups
Dive into Server Manager, and you'll see that the dashboard UI is still segmented, with a navigation pane of sorts on the left. But you no longer
expand nodes in a tree-like structure, as you do in Server 2008 Server Manager. Instead, selections simply replace the main view in the console. For
items that have subnodes, a new pane opens, as Figure 3 shows. If you're familiar with how the Windows Intune management console looks and works, this
approach will feel somewhat similar. For most Windows admins, it will be a new way of doing things.
Figure 3: Example of a top-level node with subnode views
From a usage perspective, Server Manager 8 provides a tiled dashboard as the default view. Each tile represents a role that's installed on one or more
of the servers that you're managing. So you'll see individual tiles for such things as Active Directory Domain Services, DNS Server, File Services, and
whichever other roles you've configured across your environment. These roles also appear in the navigation pane, so they're always a click away, but
the dashboard provides at-a-glance capabilities, including red highlighting of events, services, performance alerts, and other role-related items that
need attention. For example, one of my Server 8 virtual machines (VMs) is perpetually low on available RAM, so the performance-alerts item is usually
highlighted in red.
These alerts aren't just for show: You can also act on them. To do so, click the item in question. A Detail View window appears and provides more
information, as Figure 4 shows. What you can do from this window depends on the alert. In the case of my performance-alerts warning, I can see which
machine is affected and the warning type, and then I can right-click that warning to get even more information in the Performance View window. Here, I
can view individual alerts and see information about which processes are consuming so much RAM. In my case, simply providing the VM with more memory
solved the problem.
Figure 4: Detail view for an alert
Multiple Servers, One Pane of Glass
Of course, Server Manager 8 really shines when you use the interface to configure and manage multiple servers. You add servers to Server Manager
through the Manage menu in the top-right corner of the main console. Then, via the Add Servers option, you choose other machines in your environment
and add them to the console. You can add Server 8 machines, of course, but you can also add machines that run Windows 8, Server 2008 (or Server 2008
R2), Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, or Windows XP. (So far, I've tested this function by adding Server 8 machines only.)