Windows Admin Center

5th February 2020

Allows remote administration of Windows10 and Server2016 over HTTPS. A compelling reason to use these OS’s over older products. May be a preview, promised win8.1 / server 2012r2 not in place yet.

more info here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows-server/manage/windows-admin-center/use/get-started

Install remotely like this:

copy WindowAdminCenter.msi to c:\share

Run PowerShell as administrator. Enter-PSSession -ComputerName (computername)

msiexec /i c:\share\WindowsAdminCenter.msi /qn /L*v log.txt SME_PORT=6516 SSL_CERTIFICATE_OPTION=generate

Result =

Processing data for a remote command failed with the following error message: The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.

Updates:

the self-signed certificate from M$ Admin Ctr has a lot of trouble with certificate pinning supported by Chrome, Brave and Firefox

How to change a tcp port or regenerate a certificate here https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/change-the-windows-admin-center-certificate

The latest versions of WAC are missing the ability to do windows updates remotely. One of the main reasons I was interested in this software.

more info here https://mcpmag.com/articles/2019/02/05/windows-admin-center-windows-server-core.aspx?m=1