Windows Server Manager - Learn System Administration

This article briefly talks about the Windows Server Management Console – Server Manager tool available in Windows Servers. We will cover topics like What is a server Manager, explore different ways of starting Server Manager etc. We will also provide you with links to the Microsoft website that talks about Server Management tool in Windows.

Summary of Contents

What is the Server Management tool in Windows?

Server Manager is a Server Management Console on all Windows Servers. The tool helps Windows server administrators to provision and manage local and remote servers from their Desktops. The Server Manager tool eliminates the requirement to physical access a remote server. It also eliminates the need to enable Remote Desktop protocol (RDP) connections on remote servers to manage them remotely.

How many servers can you manage using the Server Manager tool?

Microsoft have run tests in their LAB environment on the capacity of the Server Manager tool. After carefully analyzing the results, Microsoft claims that Server Manager manage up to 100 servers. This number is also dependent on the roles/features and the workload running on each server.

Windows Server Manager Interface

What are the different ways of launching Server Management tool?

Start using Run

To Start Server Manager using Run, press the Windows Key + R to open the Run box.

Now, type ServerManager and click Ok.

Start using Command Prompt

Open Command Prompt.

Type ServerManager and press Enter.

Start Windows Server Manager using Command Line

Start using Windows Graphical User Interface

Click on the Windows Start Button.

Click on Server Manager tile.

Start Windows Server Manager using Start Button (GUI)

Server Manager Tool – Managed Server xml List

The list of all the servers managed by the Server Management tool can be found at the following location:

Location: %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\ServerManager
FileName: Serverlist.xml

Using the tool on newer versions of Windows

As per Microsoft, the Server Management tool version running on an Operating System is not compatible with the newer versions of Windows operating system. This means that a server running Windows Server 2012 R2 cannot be used to manage a server running Windows Server 2016.