In this lesson, you are going to learn how to install Windows Server Roles and Features on Windows Server Core Edition.

I am logged into the server and the first thing we are going to do here is make sure this one is active.

Type powershell in the Command Prompt window. This will launch the PowerShell command line.

Now, when we want to install Windows Roles and Features through PowerShell, generally you will not know all the commands, but there’s a couple of things you should remember.

The first command I want you to memorize is Get-Command and press Enter. That is going to list all the available PowerShell commands that we have.

There’s a lot of commands we can use.

We can type Get-Command | Select-String “feature”. This will list all the same commands as before but will select and display the ones that have the word “feature”.

We can see a couple of commands like Add-WindowsFeature, Uninstall-WindowsFeature, etc. Now, Install-WindowsFeature has replaced Add-WindowsFeature.

Now, the next thing I want you to memorize is how to use the commands that we find. We can type Get-Help Install-WindowsFeature and press Enter.

This gives us the basic syntax of the command.

Now, one thing to point out is that we are not getting the entire help file, to do that we need to type the command Update-Help.

Now, let’s type Get-WindowsFeature and press Enter. This is going to return all the information about what server roles and features are installed. You will also notice that all of these are combined into one result.

When we are going to install a new Server Role or Feature we use the value under the Name column.

In the same list after .NET Framework 3.5 Features, we have all the features and before that, we have the Roles. Keep in mind that we have them grouped together in the same list.

If we want to install the DNS Server Role we type the command Install-WindowsFeature DNS and we want to include all the subfeatures and management tools and those are not included by default. We add to the previous command -IncludeAllSubFeature -IncludeAllManagementTools and press Enter.

The full command is: Install-WindowsFeature DNS -IncludeAllSubFeature -IncludeAllManagementTools 

The installation process will begin and you will see a banner indicating the progress.

When the installation is complete we will see a confirmation message like the following:

Now, type again Get-WindowsFeature and press Enter.

We can see that DNS Server has an X and that means that it is now installed.

Now, let’s talk about how you uninstall a Server Role or Feature.

We can type Get-Command | Select-String feature and press Enter so we can search for the uninstall command.

We can see the Uninstall-WindowsFeature.

Now type Get-Help Uninstall-WindowsFeature and press Enter.

We see the syntax help for the Uninstall-WindowsFeature command.

Type Uninstall-WindowsFeature -Name DNS -IncludeManagementTools and press Enter.

Generally uninstalling a Role or Feature might require a reboot.

The process completes and we have the confirmation message.

If we type Get-WindowsFeature and press Enter we see DNS Server is no longer checked.

To restart the computer just type Restart-Computer and press Enter.

That’s it for Installing Windows Server Roles and Features on Server Core Edition.

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