Innovative Technology Weblog

A few months ago I’ve wrote a post about Exchange SP1 for the lazy Admin. Now I found something on the web for the same admins but that is usefull in setting up Windows Server 2008 Core.

As you should know by now in Server Core there is no GUI (well there are exeptions like notepad and time settings) so Administrators have to know the CLI commands to setup their servers. The last 2 years I have worked on my Linux skills and can say that finaly I can remember the commands that I use on a daily/weekly basis. But how many times a day or week do you setup a new Domain Controller ? I say not offtenly enough to remember the commands without mistakes.

Last week I was looking on the web for the commandlines to setup a DC but found a tool that was called “CoreConfigurator”

As you can see you can do the basic tasks that you normaly would do if you setup a new server, but still using a GUI. For example if you want to setup the Windows Firewall (only the basic stuff) you normaly have to use the netsh command and that command alone has hundreds of options that you have to know.

Using this tool I was able to setup my Demo domain within 5 minutes with only one CLI Command : C:\Program Files\CoreConfigurator\CoreConfigurator.exe

So the rest of the evening I have spend on drinking beer and eating some chips while watching the 5th season of 24 (the terrorists have stolen some Sentox-nervegas, but I think that Jack Bauer will save the day within 24 hours )

To download CoreConfigurator Click Here