The first thing we'll do in this demonstration is set up
Windows Admin Center. You can download WAC from the Microsoft
Evaluation Center. Comes down as an MSI.
I'm on a Windows Server 2022 domain member server, as you can see here.
And let me run the MSI package here so you can see what's involved.
I think I mentioned earlier in this learning path, that, depending
upon whether you're on a server or client system,
if we were doing this on a Windows 10 or Windows 11 work station,
then it would be a single user local install.
However,
because we're on a server version of Windows, WAC will be set up as a
Windows service and it will be what's called a gateway.
We're required to accept the software license terms. We'll click Next.
You can opt in or opt out of what level of diagnostic data to send to Microsoft.
It's recommended to let Microsoft Update update Windows Admin Center,
and this could be if we're using Azure Arc, if this is an off cloud
machine. We could use the update management solution, which in turn
can use Microsoft Update. Anyway,
I'm going to integrate it with Microsoft Update.
Let's click Next to install the gateway.
I'm going to click Next.
Now, you'll notice that the default port for the Windows Admin Center site is
443, and you've got the choice to generate a self‑signed certificate that
will expire in 60 days, or you can use a certificate that's on the computer,
and we can optionally, although it's recommended, redirect HTTP port to
HTTPS. Let me click Install here.
Set up is complete now, so we can use the host name of the server,
doing an HTTPS call to connect to the service.
I'm going to authenticate with my administrative credential. Now this is not an
IIS application, and what we can do here, let me zoom in a little bit, is we can
connect to the local server, which as you see, is a gateway, and depending upon
the extensions that we've installed, we then can come in and manage the system.
Another thing we can do is add connections.
So let's make a connection here, clicking Add, to a local server on my network.
Actually, it's called vm1.timw.info.
Let's let it resolve.
It looks like access was denied.
Well, let me specify a username here, and then Add with credentials.
There we go.
And to begin to manage certain services on those servers,
VM1, for instance, is a domain controller.
Hopefully it makes sense that we would want to do user and
group management in this kind of stuff.
This is going to take us over under Settings, Extensions, where you can
install the Active Directory and other extensions on the system.
Let me zoom out a little bit and click Install to install that extension on the system.