Windows Server Core: Installing Roles & Features

February 2nd, 2010

Once you have joined your Windows Server 2008 R2 machine to the domain you are ready to install roles and features.  Normally you would do this through server manager but in core there is no GUI so there is no server manager.

Roles and Features Available to Install

To get a list of roles and features available to install you can run the command:

dism.exe /online /get-features

dism.exe is the Deployment Image Servicing and Management Tool.  This command is available on all editions of Win7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

/online tells dism to work on the currently active installation of Windows.  You can also point it to a stored image even if it is not currently running.

/get-features tells dism to get a list of available features and their current status.  The output of this command on my system (truncated to just a few lines) is:

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 6.1.7600.16385

Image Version: 6.1.7600.16385

Features listing for package : Microsoft-Windows-ServerCore-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.7600.16385

Feature Name : NetworkLoadBalancingHeadlessServer
State : Enabled

Feature Name : SUACore
State : Disabled

After the basic header information it shows us a feature and it’s current state.  The first two features are “NetworkLoadBalancingHeadlessServer” which is installed and SUACore which is not installed.

The list of roles and features available are at the bottom of this post along with any relevant notes next to them.

Installing a Role or Feature

To install a role or feature we use the command

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:<Name of Feature>

To install the .Net Framework 2.0 we would use the command:

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx2-ServerCore

Available Roles and Features in Windows Server 2008 R2 Core

 

NetworkLoadBalancingHeadlessServerAllows the server to be a member of a Windows Load Balancing cluster
SUACoreSubsystem for UNIX
SUACore-WOW64Subsystem for UNIX
WindowsServerBackup 
WindowsServerBackupCommandlet 
MultipathIo 
DNS-Server-Core-Role 
FRS-Infrastructure 
BitLocker 
BitLocker-RemoteAdminToolAbility to remotely administrate BitLocker on the server
DirectoryServices-DomainController-ServerFoundationActive Directory
DirectoryServices-ADAM-ServerCoreActive Directory Lightweight Directory Services (better known as ADAM)
ActiveDirectory-PowerShellActive Directory Powershell Cmdlets
IIS-WebServerRole 
IIS-WebServer 
IIS-CommonHttpFeatures 
IIS-StaticContent 
IIS-DefaultDocument 
IIS-DirectoryBrowsing 
IIS-HttpErrors 
IIS-HttpRedirect 
IIS-WebDAV 
IIS-ApplicationDevelopment 
IIS-NetFxExtensibility 
IIS-ASPNET 
IIS-ASP 
IIS-CGI 
IIS-ISAPIExtensions 
IIS-ISAPIFilter 
IIS-ServerSideIncludes 
IIS-HealthAndDiagnostics 
IIS-HttpLogging 
IIS-LoggingLibraries 
IIS-RequestMonitor 
IIS-HttpTracing 
IIS-CustomLogging 
IIS-ODBCLogging 
IIS-Security 
IIS-BasicAuthentication 
IIS-WindowsAuthentication 
IIS-DigestAuthentication 
IIS-ClientCertificateMappingAuthentication 
IIS-IISCertificateMappingAuthentication 
IIS-URLAuthorization 
IIS-RequestFiltering 
IIS-IPSecurity 
IIS-Performance 
IIS-HttpCompressionStatic 
IIS-HttpCompressionDynamic 
IIS-WebServerManagementTools 
IIS-ManagementScriptingTools 
IIS-ManagementService 
IIS-IIS6ManagementCompatibility 
IIS-Metabase 
IIS-WMICompatibility 
IIS-LegacyScripts 
IIS-FTPServer 
IIS-FTPSvc 
IIS-FTPExtensibility 
WAS-WindowsActivationService 
WAS-ProcessModel 
WAS-NetFxEnvironment 
WAS-ConfigurationAPI 
IIS-HostableWebCore 
ClientForNFS-Base 
ServerForNFS-Base 
DFSR-Infrastructure-ServerEdition 
DHCPServerCore 
SNMP-SC 
DFSN-Server 
TelnetClient 
WINS-SC 
Printing-ServerCore-Role 
Printing-LPDPrintService 
Printing-ServerCore-Role-WOW64 
ServerCore-EA-IME 
ServerCore-EA-IME-WOW64 
QWAVEQoS Support for audio and video
NetFx2-ServerCore.Net 2.0 Framework
NetFx2-ServerCore-WOW64.Net 2.0 Framework for x86
NetFx3-ServerCore.Net 3.5 Framework
WCF-HTTP-Activation 
WCF-NonHTTP-Activation 
NetFx3-ServerCore-WOW64.Net 3.5 Framework for x86
MicrosoftWindowsPowerShell 
MicrosoftWindowsPowerShell-WOW64 
ServerManager-PSH-CmdletsPowershell Cmdlets for Server Manager
BestPractices-PSH-CmdletsPowershell Cmdelts for Best Practices Analyzer
PeerDistBranch Cache
Microsoft-Hyper-V 
VmHostAgentVDI Agent
CertificateServicesActive Directory Certificate Services
SMBHashGenerationBranch Cache
ServerMigration 
ServerCore-WOW64 
FSRM-Infrastructure-Core 
CoreFileServer 
LightweightServer 
Microsoft-Windows-Web-Services-for-Management-IIS-Extension 
FailoverCluster-CoreWindows Failover Clustering
FailoverCluster-Core-WOW64 

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