Nano Server Management

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Where has the time gone? I looked up from my computer and the summer is nearly over! One of the things I’ve been tinkering with as of late with some of my “infrastructure as code” projects is Nano Server. Not only is Nano Server gearing up to be a great Hyper-V host and a cool place to start dabbling in containers, it’s also great server to use when testing deployment scripts because it’s small and deploys quickly. When all I want to do is spin up and tear down to test my templates, I love being able to use a Windows server with a smaller footprint.

With Nano server being “headless”, it only supports remote administration, so this has also lead me to check out all the newish ways we can manage servers remotely. You’ll need to take a few steps so you can remotely manage a Nano server deployed in Azure.

  1. Open NSG on Azure for the Nano Server – If you created a VM from the Azure Portal and accept all the defaults (which include an NSG), that NSG doesn’t open the ports for WinRM by default.  It only opens RDP.  The OS firewall is open to accept WinRM and PowerShell, but the NSG blocks it.  You need to edit the NSG to include TCP ports 5985 (http) and/or 5986 (https) for remote management.
  2.  Add Nano External IP Address as a Trusted Host – Since you’ll be connecting to your VM remotely over the public internet, you’ll need to add that IP address to your trusted host list on your workstation. You can do that via PowerShell or via CMD (just pick one). 
    1.  winrm set winrm/config/client @{ TrustedHosts="13.88.11.166" }

    2.  Set-Item WSMan:\localhost\Client\TrustedHosts "13.88.11.166"

At this point you should be able to remotely connect to your Nano Server using PowerShell. On your workstation, run (replacing the IP address and username as appropriate):

 $ip = "13.88.11.166"
 $user = "$ip\sysadmin"
 Enter-PSSession -ComputerName $ip -Credential $user

You’ll be prompted for your password and then you’ll be given a remote PowerShell prompt to your Nano VM. But what if you want MORE than just a PowerShell prompt? What if you want access to event logs? Or some basic performance information? Or dare say, use “Computer Manager”??

You can use Server Manager tools from workstation or you can use the Azure Server Management Tools (and Gateway).

While your remotely connect to the server you want to manage, you may need to make a few other small changes, particularly if your servers aren’t domain joined or are on a different subnet than the machine you are connecting from. I recommend checking out this troubleshooting guide – https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/servermanagement/2016/07/20/troubleshooting-problems-with-server-management-tools/

If you specify in Microsoft Azure the local administrator account to connect to the managed server, you have to configure this registry key on the managed server:

REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy /t REG_DWORD /d 1

If you are connecting from a different subnet:

NETSH advfirewall firewall add rule name=”WinRM5985″ protocol=TCP dir=in localport=5985 action=allow

If you want to use Computer Manager and other common Server Manager tools:

Set-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup ‘Remote Event Log Management’ -Enabled True -PassThru |

select DisplayName, Enabled

Happy Remoting!