Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Curiousity killed the cat: Does WDS run on 2012 Server Core?

Update 10/1/2013: I've since found new cmdlets for configuring WDS, but listed as applying to "Windows Powershell 4.0, Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview". So perhaps WDS on server core is supported in 2012 R2.  This blog entry refers to my experiences on Server 2012 with PS 3 only.
 
Per the technet doc http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj574158 ,  2012 Server core has a number of roles that are listed reported as being "supported" leading me to believe that others will not install/work. But oddly enough they still seem be listed in get-windowsfeature. In fact, if you do a compare-object(aka diff) between a Full gui server and a server core server, you will get no results:

For instance, local server is Full gui. Server2 is server core:
compare-object -referenceobject (get-windowsfeature) -differenceobject (invoke-command -computername server2 -scriptblock {get-windowsfeature}) -property name

This will return no results. Try the switch -includeequal to also include the ones that are the same, which is all of them.

So if something like WDS is listed in get-windowsfeature but not supposed to be supported on server core , what happens if you try to install it? After installing with install-windowsfeature WDS.

If you use get-windowsfeature *wds*, WDS, WDS-Deployment, and WDS-Transport show up as installed. At first glance, WDSutil runs. Go to another 2012 that has the WDS MMC, and you can connect to this server and configure it.

I'm still curious at what point I might find it's "broken", but I don't really want to spend any more time on this for now. I do wonder why 2012 server core even lists it in get-windowsfeature, and even stranger, let's you install it, if it's not supported.

(as an aside, I also tried to install Application-Server role also but it just installs .net framework 4.5 feature(AS-NET-Framework) by default, and that's supported by server core.) 

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