I recently had a conversation with people managing windows servers and we got to talking about how the environment has really changed in the last 4 years.
The GUI version of Windows Server more closely resembles the Windows 8 look and feel. The Server Manger application is there to make things easier for managing multiple servers from a single endpoint. The tool handles most of your basic windows tasks, and may even be run on a Windows 8 machine while managing Windows Server 2012 instances.
What makes server manager interesting is that it can manage the core version of windows as well providing GUI tools for managing a command line only operating system.
Some were really drawn to the PowerShell enhancements for managing servers. They liked the command line interface that could interact with servers over the network or the local instance. Given appropriate rights and a set of scripts they had developed over time made the management of their servers easier.
What seemed to be common in all the comments was the missing start button. It made it more difficult, especially in a remote desktop connection, to do simple things such as opening a command prompt unless they pinned it to the desktop, etc.
Are you managing windows servers? Do you find the new techniques to be efficient? Do you have any tips or workarounds you use to make you more efficient? Share you experience here or drop an email to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben