Windows Admin Center Blog articles

Configuring Compute in Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode

Davanna-White — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:35:02 GMT

We’ve been walking you through Virtualization Mode’s “Add resource” wizard step-by-step, first with a adventurous overview, then a no-nonsense networking walkthrough, followed by a shagadelic storage summary. We’re almost finished!

But our wizard would not be complete without the final member of our trio—Compute. Configuring Compute when onboarding Hyper-V (compute) systems to Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode (vMode) through the Add resource wizard is as simple as counting to four.

Compute configuration

On the Compute page, you’re configuring Hyper-V settings for your system. Doing this through vMode’s Add Resource wizard is especially beneficial when you’re adding multiple machines. Manually configuring all these settings yourself, on every machine you want to manage, is a recipe for inconsistency. Instead of worrying about whether a script ran correctly or triple-checking that you set the proper values on all machines, vMode takes care of that for you.

1: Removing non-essential features

If you’ve ever set up a Windows Server, you’re probably familiar with the Get-WindowsFeature PowerShell command. Microsoft provides a plethora of roles, role services, and features for configuring a server exactly the way you need it to run for your business needs.

And that’s awesome! But often, many of these features will go unused on your systems. Even without use, these features will still need to be patched and serviced, creating increased operational overhead. When you select this checkbox, vMode will go ahead and remove all features not required for running compute workloads and those not already installed on the system already.

Removing Windows Features that aren’t essential keeps the host OS leaner and reduces the system’s attack surface. It also lowers patching and servicing overhead over time, helping improve uptime and reduce operational cost.

2: Enable Enhanced Session Mode

Hyper-V Enhanced Session Mode lets you connect to a Windows VM through Virtual Machine Connection (VMConnect) using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), which enables a richer console experience than basic mode. Enabling it makes the VM window resizable and high-DPI aware and allows convenient host-to-VM integration—like shared clipboard, file copy/paste, and device redirection—so day-to-day admin tasks are faster and less error-prone.

This is another setting where manual configuration can cost you precious time. You have to configure this setting for both the system and the user. Forget to do one and you’ll spend hours trying to figure out where you went wrong (and might feel quite silly when you figure it out). Select this checkbox and we’ll just set these settings for you, possibly saving hours of frustrating debugging time.

3: Configure concurrent migrations

Enabling concurrent Live Migrations (often called “simultaneous live migrations”) lets Hyper-V move more than one running VM at a time, which is valuable when you need to drain a host quickly for patching, hardware maintenance, or cluster rebalancing. In well-provisioned environments, increasing concurrency can reduce the total time it takes to complete a batch of migrations and get hosts back into service—while still giving you a knob to tune so migration traffic doesn’t overwhelm CPU, storage, or network bandwidth.

In vMode, you can select 1, 2, 4, or no concurrent migrations. This is another case where we’re ensuring consistency in your setup by configuring multiple settings for you at once, saving you the pain of manual configuration.

4: Setting your default virtual machine path

The last setting we ask you to configure is your default virtual machine path. Historically, Hyper-V has set two different paths for your virtual machines and virtual hard disks—you can see this If you navigate into the tool today.

Having a different path for every VHD can make it challenging to find what you’re looking for. In vMode, we ask you for one path that is accessible for all machines you added in the beginning of the wizard, and we’ll use this same path for all machines. Even if the path doesn’t exist yet, we’ll create it for you as long as the drive letter exists and the path is valid. Your VHDs will appear in nested folders under this directory.

Your options for this are dependent on what you told us about on the “Storage” screen. If you added storage, it will appear in the dropdown menu. If you elected to use storage already provisioned for a cluster, the dropdown may be greyed out—this path should default to a location like %SystemDrive%\Virtual Machines or… Additionally, if you elected to use storage already provisioned for the system, and you added one or multiple standalone hosts on the “Getting started” screen, the dropdown menu will contain all local drives that appear on all the standalone systems. If one system doesn’t have a particular drive, it will not show up in the menu.

What happens next

After proving we can count and hit submit, vMode will configure Hyper-V settings on all systems based on your selections. We’ll install the following features on all Compute systems:

Hyper-V
Network ATC
Data Center Bridging (required for Network ATC)
Failover Clustering (required for Network ATC and used for HA Hyper-V)
AD RSAT PowerShell tools (required for storing VMs on file shares)
Multipath-IO (only installed if SAN storage was configured)

And uninstall everything else (while leaving features already installed outside of this wizard alone).

This song and dance will require a reboot, and we’ll do that for you. When dealing with existing clusters already running workloads, it can get a bit complicated. vMode will perform node drain and ensure seamless reboot of your cluster nodes.

Summary

On the Compute screen, vMode reduces the time you have to spend fiddling with Hyper-V settings by performing smart configurations for you, getting you up and running faster. The Add Resource wizard is designed to make your system onboarding experience as easy as possible, simplifying your networking, storage, and compute configuration. Public Preview 2 is dropping with the features we’ve discussed here and more very soon. Give vMode a try and leave us feedback at aka.ms/wacfeedback!

Thanks for reading,

Davanna White

Configuring Storage for Hyper-V Hosts in vMode

DanCuomo — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Aaaaaaand we’re back! Today, we’ll walk through the next step of onboarding Hyper-V (compute) systems to Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode (vMode) and give you a sneak peek at what’s coming for storage profiles.

If you’ve been following along, we’ve accepted the quest and slayed the onboarding dragon before we doubled back with Great Gatsby-like panache to configure our networking. And now, with an Austin Powers-like swagger that only an integrated onboarding wizard can evoke, we’ll strut through the storage configuration page for a smooth, mojo-friendly storage experience.

Profile vs Configuration

Before we begin, let’s address the JUMBO jet in the room: there’s a subtle difference between selecting a host profile on the first screen of the Add Resource wizard and configuring settings on the following pages.

Host Profile – The service being provisioned on the system(s) specified in the wizard.

For example:

Compute Host Profile – Provides a hypervisor (compute) service to virtual machines
Storage Host Profile – Provides storage (SAN, NAS, HCI) service to compute systems
Network Host Profile – Provides SDN services (NC, SLB, Gateway) to compute systems and virtual machines.

In short, the host profile defines the services this system offers, the views you'll find the system in after setup, and which management tools you’ll need. In the screenshot below, the storage profile is selected and subsequent pages in the wizard will ensure that this system provides SAN, NAS, or HCI storage to compute systems.

While we’re hard at work on Storage and Network profiles, the focus of this blog is storage configuration for a system with a compute profile (next section).

Configuration – Configures the services consumed by the system(s) being added.

For example, a compute system requires storage to host its VMs. Storage may come from an external SAN or NAS device and be as a cluster shared volume (CSV) accessible to all compute nodes. The CSV may be configured on these pages.

In simple terms, the first page in the Add Resource wizard specifies the service being provisioned (host profile) and the remainder of the pages configure the service.

As previously mentioned, the focus of this blog will be on storage configuration for a compute profile system.

Storage Configuration in the Compute Profile

As you stroll through the first few pages of the wizard like Bacharach on a rooftop with a piano and a smile, you’ll come to the storage configuration page where you’re presented with a few options for configuring storage.

SAN Storage
NAS Storage
Hyperconverged Storage (not available in Public Preview 1 or 2)
Use existing storage already configured on this system

Note: You can use this final option whether you’ve already configured storage or plan to do it later—the storage step will stand by with the steady stoicism of a Scotland Yard bobby.

You can learn more about each of these architectures at the following Microsoft link. Now let’s look at SAN and NAS storage to see how the wizard helps you get things going.

SAN Storage

If you choose SAN storage, the system scans for available SAN disks and sorts them into three categories:

Ready: These disks are already properly configured as a CSV and ready for use

Auto configure: This is the wizard’s way of saying, “we’ll take it from here!”

These disks can be set up as CSVs if you choose. Just enter a CSV Name, and the wizard will bring the disk online, initialize it, partition it, and create the CSV for you. It’ll even enable the CSV cache for you.

In short, if you provision a new LUN for each node in the cluster, we can set everything else up for you. However, if you don’t want the wizard to do anything to that LUN, just leave the CSV name blank and it will ignore it.

Manual configuration: These disks require manual intervention.

There’s an issue and we can't resolve it automatically. Hover over the info bubble to see why the disk is in this category.

In this case, the disk is only presented to one of the nodes in the cluster so it can’t be made into a CSV. You’ll need to ensure the other nodes in the cluster can see the disk before proceeding.

There are several other reasons why we might require manual intervention; the more information section on the wizard explains all the requirements.

NAS Storage

NAS storage is essentially a SMB file share. This can run on a Windows Server or one of our many partner devices. If it runs on Windows, you can manage the file server directly through the vMode browser.

Whatever you choose, you’ll simply type in the file share path into the wizard. The wizard will validate that the share exists and see if it has access.

Windows Based File Servers

If a file share is running on a supported Windows OS, we’ll install the vMode agent so you can manage that system on the Storage view after the wizard completes. This means that you’ll be able to create more file shares and configure settings on the file server without changing browser tabs.

Permissions and Delegation

You may have noticed that we don’t ask you to configure permissions for the file share. Setting permissions and SMB delegation for live migration has historically been a critical, yet overwhelming step for Hyper-V administrators.

Any management tool with real mojo turns tangled complexity into smooth and simple vibes. With that ambiance set, we’ve added two extra settings for file shares to keep things groovy.

Eventually, vMode will ask you if:

you want vMode to configure access permissions

If selected, the permissions will be updated to include all the systems needed for live migration as specified in the link above.

you want vMode to enable SMB delegation

If selected, we’ll attempt to enable SMB delegation making this a “1-click” experience for enabling live migrations. If we don’t have the Active Directory permissions necessary to make the delegation changes, we’ll inform you in the deployment status so you can take care of it yourselves.

For non-Windows based NAS systems, we won’t be able to set permissions or delegation settings so these options will be greyed out.

So, now what?

After configuring storage for your compute systems, you may need to manage or review their connections. Simply open the Storage view to see all onboarded storage devices and their linked systems.

If the onboarded system uses Windows, an agent will be installed to enable full management through the Storage view. For other operating systems, you'll still see the system listed, but management options will be limited unless your storage partner provides a vMode extension.

Summary

If you’ve been reading this blog series, you’re starting to see how the vMode Add Resource wizard makes onboarding simple and straightforward whether you’re using SAN or NAS storage (HCI coming soon!). Keep an eye out for Public Preview 2 dropping soon and make sure you give us feedback on our progress so far!

Dan “Danger” Cuomo

Intent Matters: Configuring Network ATC in Windows Admin Center Virtualization Mode

cindywan — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 17:50:23 GMT

Let's talk about networking.

I know, I know—wouldn’t it be nice if there were just a big “EASY” button you could hit to make networking simple? You’ve got VMs to spin up, migrations to finish, and approximately one thousand other things on your plate. You don’t want to think about networking. You just want it to work.

The trouble is, in a virtualization environment, networking is the plumbing behind everything else. Get it wrong on one node, and suddenly your live migration is limping, your storage traffic is elbowing your management traffic in the ribs, and you're having a very bad Thursday. Get it right—consistently, at scale—and it just works, invisibly, the way good infrastructure is supposed to.

In Windows Admin Center Virtualization Mode (vMode), Network ATC is that “EASY” button, and in Public Preview 1, it’s the cornerstone of the networking story. The feature surface is intentionally focused for this first preview release, but we're also introducing a new concept alongside it: Network Intent Templates. I want you to understand this one early, because it's foundational to where we're going.

A Quick ATC Refresher

Chances are, Network ATC is not a stranger to you. But just in case: Network ATC is Microsoft's intent-based networking approach for Hyper-V hosts. Instead of manually configuring physical NIC settings, virtual switches and virtual NICs, teaming configuration, RDMA settings, Data Center Bridging for storage networks, cluster network settings, and more on every single node—and crossing your fingers that whoever configured node 14 was having a good day—you declare what you want, and ATC says “got it” and handles the rest.

With ATC, you simply describe the outcome for the adapters:

Management intent
Compute intent
Storage intent

Take a swig of your coffee, and before you know it, ATC owns the implementation. It's one of those features that, once you use it, makes all your previous manual network configuration sessions feel like a fever dream.

Network ATC is Now on Windows Server 2022

Yes, you read that right.

Until now, Network ATC was only available starting with Windows Server 2025. That meant customers running Windows Server 2022 had no easy, consistent, or automatable way to deploy host networking. And if you tried to deploy Network ATC on WS2022 anyway, it would fail without warning, leaving you none the wiser.

At the same time, we know that you can't simply upgrade to the latest and greatest just because that's where the best technology is available. Migrations take time, organizations move at their own pace, and "just upgrade" isn't always an option. With vMode's N-1 OS support model, our goal is to give you the flexibility and breathing space to adopt at your own pace without sacrificing the quality of your networking experience in the meantime.

That's why we backported Network ATC to Windows Server 2022. vMode users on WS22 can now configure host networking through ATC the same way WS2025 users can, with the same guided experience, same intent-based model, and same consistency guarantees. Whether you're onboarding a WS2022 cluster or a WS2025 cluster, the networking workflow in vMode looks and behaves the same way.

If you're in the middle of a VMware migration and landed on WS22, this one's for you.

Introducing Network Intent Templates

Traditionally, Network ATC lets you create an intent and apply it directly to specific NICs on specific hosts. And yes, Copy-NetIntent exists—but copying intents cmdlet by cmdlet across potentially hundreds of hosts and clusters isn't exactly the "EASY" button we promised you. That's where Network Intent Templates come in.

A Network Intent Template is an abstracted, predefined intent that hasn’t yet been associated with a specific cluster or host. Think of it as a blueprint that's been fully drafted but not yet stamped to a particular address. When you're ready to onboard a new cluster or standalone node, you pull out the template, tell it which NICs on these nodes it should apply to, and the intent gets created accordingly.

Same blueprint. Different nodes.

What You Can See During Onboarding

If you've already onboarded any resources in vMode, you'll find the Networking section waiting for you in the same workflow. Before you can advance to the next section, you’ll need to identify the management, storage, and at least one compute intent. If you're missing any of the three intent types, vMode will flag it. Consider it a seatbelt check: we're not letting you pull out of the driveway without buckling up.

The Networking section also gives you visibility into what's already on your system before anything gets changed:

Existing network intents—if the nodes you're onboarding already have ATC configured, you can see what's there.
Available network adapters—view the NICs on your nodes so you know exactly what you're working with when mapping adapters to your template.

This is especially useful when onboarding nodes that aren't starting from scratch. If Network ATC is already deployed on your nodes, the existing configuration will be automatically displayed—no force redeployments of ATC intents, no unexpected changes, and no configuration happening behind your back before you've had a chance to review what's there.

If you're currently using SCVMM or any other manual network configuration, you will need to migrate to Network ATC to proceed with onboarding these hosts. We'll cover that migration process in a future blog, so stay tuned.

A small caveat: for now, only connected adapters are displayed. If you have NICs that are physically present but disconnected, they won't show up in the list yet. We know this can be a real head-scratcher ("I have NICs in each node, so where are they?"), so showing disconnected adapters is planned for a future release.

Overrides That Adapt to What You're Configuring

Network ATC is designed to make the most common configurations easy by assuming sensible defaults out of the box. But every environment is a little different. Maybe you need to adjust your Jumbo Frame sizes, tweak your DCB settings, or enable or disable RDMA on specific adapters. That's where overrides come in: they give you the flexibility to customize on top of ATC's defaults without having to throw out the intent model entirely.

In vMode, the overrides available in the intent template are dynamic based on the intent type you select. Choose a management-only intent, and you’ll see overrides like DNS registration and proxy settings. Select compute and storage together, and overrides such as RDMA, QoS, and Jumbo Frames appear instead. No more sifting through a wall of options trying to figure out which half of them actually apply to your configuration. The UI responds to your choices, which makes the experience feel considerably less like reading the terms and conditions.

Public Preview 1: Scope Check

Public Preview 1 is a focused release, and the networking experience reflects that. For now, Network Intent Templates are not saved after you exit the Add Resource workflow. If you're onboarding clusters across multiple sessions, you'll need to recreate the template each time. So much for the “EASY” button! It's a known limitation and it's the first thing we're addressing for the next release.

There's also no dedicated networking page in vMode Public Preview 1. Outside of the onboarding flow, there's currently no single place to browse, manage, or revisit your networking configuration. That's exactly what we're building toward—and we'd love to hear what you need most as we do.

What's Coming in Public Preview 2

In Public Preview 2, templates get their memory back. Once you create a Network Intent Template, it will persist, meaning the next time you open the Add Resource workflow, your templates will be right there in the dropdown, ready to be selected and applied to a new cluster without rebuilding anything. Define once, reuse everywhere.

We're also introducing a dedicated Networking view in Public Preview 2. The initial version is intentionally minimal: it gives you a single place to view your intent templates, but it's the foundation of the purpose-built networking management experience we're working toward.

By GA, the goal is an end-to-end integrated Networking view—complete CRUD operations for intent templates and intents, and a management experience worthy of the scale vMode is designed for.

The Road Ahead

Think of Public Preview 1 as laying the foundation. The WS2022 backport means every vMode user is working from the same networking playbook regardless of OS version. Network Intent Templates introduce a concept that scales: define your intent once, apply it across as many clusters as you need. And the guided onboarding experience keeps networking front and center rather than something you remember to configure three days later.

This is just the beginning, and your feedback during public preview is genuinely what shapes the rest of the story. Jump into the Networking section during resource onboarding and tell us what you think at aka.ms/wacfeedback or wacvmodefeedback@microsoft.com about what clicks, what's confusing, and what you need that isn't there yet.

Thanks for reading,

Cindy "Management. Compute. Storage." Wan

Resource onboarding using Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode

Theo_Tran — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Previously on our epic saga: we unlocked Virtualization Mode, traversed the lore of two modes, and upgraded our management platform to vMode. With these three pieces in hand, we can begin onboarding machines to their newfound home.

Preparing for the journey

Before onboarding hosts into vMode, we should take a moment to make sure our machines are set up for a smooth and predictable experience.

Whether you’re onboarding standalone HyperV hosts or multi-node clusters, vMode ensures your machines are ready for their quest to management by validating a small set of prerequisites up front. These quick readiness checks help vMode apply configuration consistently across hosts and clusters, so you get reliable outcomes from day one, without surprises midway through onboarding.

Supported host operating systems

vMode currently follows an N‑1 host support model, supporting Windows Server 2025 and Windows Server 2022 for host machines.

We focused on these versions so we could backport key capabilities like Network ATC and deliver the most reliable onboarding experience possible. As vMode continues to evolve, support for additional Windows Server versions is something we plan to expand over time.

Note: These OS requirements apply only to host machines and cluster nodes being onboarded into vMode. Guest virtual machines running on those hosts are not subject to these requirements.

Domain requirements

To ensure secure communication and consistent configuration, all hosts and cluster nodes being onboarded must be domain-joined and reside in the same Active Directory domain as the vMode instance.

At this time, vMode does not support onboarding for:

workgroup machines
cross‑domain scenarios
untrusted domains

These constraints allow vMode to reliably authenticate, configure, and manage hosts as a unified fabric. We know your party’s environments vary, and your feedback will help guide how we evolve these capabilities over time.

Temporary firewall access for onboarding

During onboarding (and removal), vMode needs temporary access to copy the files required to install its lightweight management agent. For this reason, SMB inbound traffic (TCP 445) must be allowed on each host or cluster node during these operations.

You can enable this with the following PowerShell command:

Enable-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName 'File and Printer Sharing (SMB-In)'

This access is used solely to install or uninstall the vMode agent, which enables stateful, scalable, and secure management of your virtualization fabric.

Note: Once the agent has been installed or removed, you may disable this firewall rule again if desired.

Ready to hit the road

We know how hard it’s been to get here. Getting hosts and clusters stood up the “right” way is rarely clean or straightforward. It usually means long nights, tribal knowledge, brittle scripts, and the constant worry that one node isn’t quite configured like the others.

vMode is built to take that burden off your plate by ensuring your machines are ready to be managed before we start their onboarding quest. With clear requirements and validation that takes seconds, you can proceed through the wizard without worry.

Choosing a path: host profiles

Managing hosts and clusters at scale means understanding what role each system plays and ensuring the right tools are available for that role. In vMode, we organize onboarded systems using host profiles.

A host profile is a primary classification assigned during onboarding. It determines:

where a system appears in the navigation,
which tools and workflows are available, and
which operations can be performed from that view.

This role-based approach helps you focus on what matters most for each type of system, without clutter or unnecessary options.

Today, vMode recognizes three host profiles:

Compute (Hyper‑V hosts)
The Compute view focuses on virtualization workloads and day‑to‑day host operations. From here, you can manage VM lifecycle operations such as live migration and Hyper‑V Replica, apply host updates, configure firewall settings, and review event logs. All from a centralized, consistent experience.
Storage
The Storage profile is designed for systems that provide storage for virtual machines, including SAN, NAS, or hyperconverged infrastructure using Storage Spaces Direct. While this profile view is not available yet, it is planned for a future release and will provide storage‑specific management and visibility once enabled.
Networking
The Networking profile is intended for managing network configuration and services that support virtualization workloads, including Network ATC intents, ATC intent template management, and Software Defined Networking (SDN) components. Although the dedicated Networking profile view is not available today, vMode already supports configuring Network ATC during onboarding, and additional networking capabilities and workflows are planned for a future release.

Note: The Storage and Networking profile view are still in progress and planned for the general availability release of vMode.

By organizing hosts around clear, role-based profiles, vMode makes it easier to manage complex environments consistently. While ensuring each system is governed and operated according to its intended purpose. Selecting your machine’s classification profile is essential for completing their quest.

Facing the onboarding wizard

Now that your environment is ready, let’s take on the resource onboarding wizard in vMode. This guided flow validates your setup, applies configuration consistently, and gives you visibility into every step along the way.

Create a resource group

Start by creating a resource group to organize your hosts and clusters. Resource groups help you manage related systems together and keep your environment easy to navigate as it grows.

Add a resource

Next, add a resource to the resource group. vMode automatically runs validation checks in the background, so you don’t have to manually verify prerequisites before moving forward. This is also where you select your profile.

If the host is part of a cluster, vMode detects this automatically and adds the entire cluster on your behalf—saving time and eliminating manual discovery steps.

Coming soon: You’ll be able to create clusters directly from this wizard, including creating new host VMs and clustering them as part of the same flow.

Configure networking

Configure Network ATC and create the necessary network intents to automatically configure, validate, and maintain the required networking for hosts or clusters.

Coming soon: Expanded networking experiences are in active development to provide deeper visibility and control as vMode approaches general availability.

Configure storage
In the Storage step, you select how storage is configured for your hosts or clusters. This step ensures your virtualization workloads have the right storage foundation before onboarding completes.

Coming soon: Expanded storage experiences, including support for SAN‑based storage and file shares.

Configure compute settings

In the Compute step, you can fine-tune host configuration, including:

removing non‑essential Windows Server features,
enabling Enhanced Session Mode,
configuring up to four concurrent live migrations, and
setting a custom virtual machine storage path.

These options help ensure your hosts are optimized for performance, scalability, and reduced operational overhead.

Review and onboard

Before onboarding begins, you’ll review all selected settings to ensure everything looks correct. Once confirmed, vMode kicks off the onboarding process.

Track progress in real time

The workflow status page shows onboarding progress in real time:

broken down per step
visible per node

If issues arise, this detailed view makes it easier to troubleshoot and pinpoint exactly where attention is needed.

Start managing your resources

Once onboarding completes, your newly onboarded hosts or clusters appear in the left navigation, ready for day-to-day management.

Quest completed! For now…

Your quest “Resource onboarding using vMode” has been completed! You made sure your machines were ready for their journey by following the onboard prerequisites, chose your machine’s profile (or “class”) carefully, and defeated the onboarding wizard.

Along the way, vMode ensured your experience was straightforward and that the onboarding experience was consistent, easing worries about misconfigured nodes or roles you’d forgotten to install. We make sure nodes are consistent if you’re onboarding a cluster and machine configuration doesn’t necessarily require a complex automation script. Think of vMode as your ~~game~~ onboarding master, invested in the success of your ~~characters~~ machines.

Thank you for following along as we continue to build vMode. Your feedback plays a critical role in shaping what comes next, and we’d love to hear what workflows, capabilities, or improvements matter most to you as we move toward general availability.

Thank you for stopping by,

Theo (Just Theo)

Installing Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode

Davanna-White — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 22:37:44 GMT

So far, we’ve introduced Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode (vMode) and discussed the architectural changes in Windows Admin Center necessary to implement both virtualization and administration modes. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to get started with vMode.

Check out the video from Ignite and the announcement blog post if you missed the news!

Breaking Barriers to Better Beginnings

Whether you have tens of virtual machines or tens of thousands of virtual machines, your management infrastructure is critical. It’s paramount to get it up and running as fast as possible so you can get on with running your business. You don’t want to spend hours or days mucking around with prerequisite installations or submitting requests for firewall changes and group policy updates. You want to get down to business.

We know that getting started is sometimes the hardest part. Challenges with management infrastructure tend to compound quickly, especially with larger scale deployments. Manual configuration steps, environment-specific dependencies, and unclear upgrade paths can turn what should be a straightforward setup into a brittle, time consuming process that’s hard to repeat reliably across environments.

When it comes to vMode, we designed the getting started experience to be frictionless, familiar, and fast.

Frictionless: Minimal prerequisites

Modern virtualization management platforms often require:

User rights configuration and service account setup
Several prerequisite applications that require frequent updates
Firewall rule changes

And that’s before you can really get started—adding time and complexity to even the simplest deployments. Virtualization Mode is designed to reduce this burden by minimizing prerequisites and streamlining setup so you can get up and running without coordinating complex dependencies across your environment.

All you need to do to get started with vMode is to install Visual C++ Redistributable, which you can do with one command:

winget install "Microsoft.VCRedist.2015+.x64" --silent

We’re not kidding, that’s it!

With vMode, getting started is a frictionless experience. You spend less time preparing your environment and more time managing it.

Familiar: Installer evolution

Those of you familiar with the installation of Administration Mode (aMode) will recognize the installer for vMode. It looks exactly like the aMode installer, but with one additional screen.

Note: Right now, these two installers are separate, but when it comes time for the release to general availability, you will be given one installer with another additional screen—one that allows you to select the mode you wish to install.

For a stateful implementation like vMode, we install a lightweight PostgreSQL database which requires a username and password. We recommend saving this information somewhere secure and accessible after installation, in case you need these credentials for restoring your vMode instance in the future.

vMode builds on an installer experience you already know, letting you move forward with confidence.

Fast: Watch for yourself!

It’s easy to take my word on the simplicity of the experience, but if you’re not convinced, here’s a real-time installation video that highlights all the new steps:

&amp;amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;amp;nbsp;

The video above walks through an installation of Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode by installing the Visual C++ Redistributable and launching the installer. If the video player doesn’t load, open the video in a new window: Open video

Setup with vMode takes just a few minutes, so you spend less time waiting and more time managing your virtualization infrastructure.

Picking the Perfect Place

Now that you understand how easy it is, let’s talk about how to start an implementation. Think of Virtualization Mode as your always on command center—it deserves a home that’s built for the job.

First, find or create a machine with at least 4CPUs (physical or virtual), at least 8GB of RAM, and 10GB of free disk space. Because we need want the gateway online and available to communicate with the host agents, and we’re installing a PostgreSQL database, you’ll want this system to be running domain-joined Windows Server 2025 Standard or Datacenter edition with DNS resolution using Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). This is not a job for your laptop.

Note: It’s not a job for clustered machines yet, either. While installing vMode on a cluster today is not supported, a new high availability implementation for Windows Admin Center exclusively available in vMode is on the roadmap for general availability.

This machine could be a physical or a virtual machine. If it’s a virtual machine, it’s totally fine to have vMode running while the host is also being managed by vMode. vMode uses Network ATC which maintains a copy of the network configuration in the registry, so you never have to worry about the system losing connection with the gateway.

Carve out a small, but proper place for vMode to live, and it’ll quietly do its job in the background while you focus on managing your environment.

Staying Simple, Staying Supported

You did it! You’ve got vMode up and running. But after the install is behind you, the real question is how to keep it that way.

Keeping your management tooling up to date is critical: the management plane coordinates changes across hosts and platform services, and updates deliver reliability fixes and security patches that reduce operational risk over time.

Extensions

Extensions are the lifeblood of Windows Admin Center. After you select an object to manage in vMode, all further operations are enabled through a flexible extension framework. Each tab in the tools pane that loads to the right of the object hierarchy when you select an object, like the Virtual Machines tool when you select a host, is an extension.

You control which extensions are installed via the extension manager through toggleable automatic updates. With automatic updates turned on, every time you open vMode it checks for new extensions and updates those that have new versions available. When automatic updates are off, navigate to the extension manager to manually install any extension you need with just a few clicks. In either case, you're in control of managing your updates in the way that's best for your environment.

Note: Running in a partially or fully disconnected environment? That’s okay, we also have a way to update extensions for offline scenarios.

Gateway and Database

The gateway and database form the core Windows Admin Center platform. These components are at the heart of everything you do in Windows Admin Center. For example, the object hierarchy is stored in the database and displayed by the gateway.

When it comes to updating the core platform, automatic platform updates are also on the roadmap, making it even easier to stay up-to-date with the latest new features in vMode.

Updating your vMode gateway will automatically trigger an update for the vMode agents configured on all objects managed through vMode. Soon, we’ll also provide a dashboard for you to see the status of all your agents and fix issues, including issues with agent updates.

With vMode, staying current feels less like maintenance work and more like a PaaS service or appliance that takes care of itself.

Flit Forward Faster

In minutes, you can have an enterprise scale management platform for your virtualization infrastructure up and running. With one prerequisite installation, it really couldn't get much simpler to get started and take advantage of all vMode’s benefits, like the PostgreSQL database, self-managed update lifecycle, automatic agent updates, and more.

Keep tuning in to hear more about Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode and keep an eye out for an update preview release with even more new features!

Thanks for reading,

Davanna “Amazingly Alliterative” White

Windows Admin Center Architectural Changes

DanCuomo — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:00:00 GMT

Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode is a new experience that helps you manage your virtualization infrastructure across your Hyper-V clusters, storage (SAN, NAS, and HCI), and networking configurations.

Download Now in Public Preview!

Check out our presentation at Microsoft Ignite 2025!

“1‑mode, 2‑mode, 3‑mode 4… Two modes together in one platform core.”

-Windows Admin Center developer limerick

In our last blog, we introduced Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode (vMode) and laid out the concepts of modes. This article will be more conceptual, focused on the fundamental changes that made vMode possible and help you understand some of the differences you’ll need to consider when using it – like where you install it, when to take backups and should you make it highly available.

...and if you missed the news, check out this video from Ignite and this blog post.

A tale of two modes

Administration Mode

“In the land of servers, where admins roam, aMode was the tool that that each called home.”

-An ode to Matt Wilson

The goal

Once upon a time, in a distant release cycle, there was only Windows Admin Center: Administration Mode (aMode). At the time of course, it was only known as Windows Admin Center, but it functioned well for general OS management and administration scenarios.

Its goal was to improve upon the inbox Windows Server MMCs that had several problems such as:

Modernization difficulty – Most MMCs are built in native C++, which makes them difficult to update or extend with new functionality.
Limited remoting – Some MMCs let you connect to multiple servers, but they don’t share context. For example, if you open two HyperV hosts in the same console, there’s no way to coordinate resources or knowledge between them.
OS Bound – MMCs are tied to its OS version, so you needed a separate jump box for every different operating system you wanted to manage remotely.

Through its web-based gateway, Windows Admin Center solved each of these problems.

The architecture

“Every click a new page, every page a clean slate...”

-Le Chant de l’Architecture Qui S’Oublie, Strophe 7
by Ben Schultz, circa 2016

When you installed Windows Admin Center (aMode), you were installing what is known as “the gateway.” When you open your browser to the Windows Admin Center address, a service called (you guessed it) WindowsAdminCenter starts and presents you with a login screen.

After logging in, you could see your “connections” list where you can add a number of different servers. Once connected to an individual server, you could manage that entity. This list of connections is cached locally and is the only information that Administration Mode remembers.

You can add several different types of devices to your connections list such as a Windows Server, Windows Client, Failover Clusters, or Azure VMs. However, you could only connect to one of these at a time.

Once connected, aMode uses PowerShell remoting to collect information from the system and display it in the browser. When you click on a different tool or make a connection to a new host, the gateway throws out all the information it collected and collects the new information being requested. This is a “stateless architecture.”

This stateless model is great for:

Single, task-oriented configuration (e.g. change power plan to high performance)
Administration of independent servers
Installation anywhere – Each administrator performs their own installation (installation per device, per user) of Windows Admin Center then configures and organizes their connection list.

However, Administration mode was designed to manage (for example) a single system or single cluster, not many Hyper-V clusters. It was focused on general administration of an individual server rather than a holistic scenario. For server administration scenarios it was originally designed for, Windows Admin Center: Administration Mode was great. But for virtualization environments, it left you wanting a more tightly integrated management tool...

The summary

Uses PowerShell remoting to collect data and display it in the browser
Because it’s stateless, the gateway can be installed anywhere (Windows 11, Windows Server)
Because it’s stateless, you can connect to the same system from multiple gateways
Because it’s stateless, there’s no data to backup
Because it’s stateless, there’s no need for high availability
Is a general tool for configuration of many different types of servers

Virtualization Mode

“aMode and vMode sat on a wall. One was stateless, the other recalls.”

- WAC PM onboarding guide

The goal

In recent times, there’s been a significant change in the virtualization winds. As part of rising costs in the industry, many of you are searching for your next virtualization vendor. Besides the hypervisor, the management interface is one of the most critical considerations of a virtualization platform—you rely on it daily, so it must be solid.

If you know anyone that came back from Microsoft Ignite 2025 in November, you might have caught a whisper of a new mode in Windows Admin Center, purpose-built to manage virtualization environments, providing:

Multisystem navigation allows you to see and manage all of your clusters in a single view, up to 1,000 hosts and 25,000 virtual machines
Centralized management of your compute, storage (SAN, NAS, HCI), and network resources that run your virtualization environment.
Role-based Administration Control enabling delegation of responsibilities and maintaining of security boundaries.
Enterprise VM features like templates and built-in disaster recovery
Simple Azure Arc enablement

By enabling a new architecture in Windows Admin Center, we can bring these and many other capabilities into one cohesive management experience. Here’s a quick look at what we can do in the new Virtualization Mode.

The architecture

“A tidy chest for all your hosts, keeping track of what matters most.”

-Windows Admin Center design document

Behind these improvements are a few architectural changes. Now, when you install Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode, you’re asked for a username and password to install a lightweight, postgresql database.

This database is used to store information about the servers and clusters being managed. These could be Hyper-V hosts, storage devices used for virtual machines, or network configuration information of the machines being managed. To receive these updates the gateway system needs to be online and available, so you won’t want to install Virtualization Mode on your laptop; you should treat it like a server in your infrastructure.

When you onboard a server, the Virtualization Mode system deploys an agent to that server and registers it in the database. Rather than using remote PowerShell like Administration Mode, Virtualization Mode uses this agent to communicate with the gateway when needed.

Among other tasks, the agent:

performs heartbeats enabling it to track system availability
implement configuration changes submitted by the user
collects and shares information with the database

There are several benefits to this architectural approach, let’s review a few of them:

Scalability: This architecture offers some significant scalability improvements enabling management of up to 1,000 hosts and 25,000 virtual machines by the same vMode system.
Centralization: You have one centralized location for all your team’s configuration information. You and your team can log into the gateway from any system using a web browser and without installing anything on the local system and everyone will see the same list of connections.
Advanced Functionality: We can also now implement some advanced functionality that only makes sense in a stateful architecture like Virtualization Mode. For example:
- Role-based Administration Control (RBAC) – Given you have (1) multiple team members using the same management information and (2) a centralized database where that information is stored, RBAC can be implemented in Virtualization Mode.
- VM Templates – Templates require VM hardware configuration and VHDX locations to be remembered. The database allows us to store the necessary information.
Resilient connectivity Since there is an agent (service) running locally on the system, operations are significantly more resilient. Transient network connectivity, user elevation, among other issues are significantly less disruptive.

This stateful architecture is great for:

Implementing workflows with multiple steps like deploying a Hyper-V host
Management of interrelated systems such as managing multiple clusters
Centralized installation – One management tool using RBAC to control access

Best of all, this mode is 100% focused on managing virtualization environments. As a result of being purpose-built for virtualization, we can reduce the management complexity found in our previous management tools and provide a tightly integrated experience.

Note: Generalized tools like the MMCs and Windows Admin Center: Administration Mode have an inherently component centric design. They were generalized to cover many scenarios. That’s why you ended up juggling so many separate tools like Hyper-V Manager, Failover Clustering, (and many more), or the litany of Active Directory MMCs, DNS, DHCP, etc. just to name a few.

The summary

Uses an agent to collect data and stores it in the database
Because it’s stateful, there is one centralized gateway installed
Because it’s stateful, you need to backup the database
Because it’s stateful, you might want a highly available deployment
Is focused on virtualization and only virtualization

Tick-tock – two modes on a block

With all that said, which architecture should you use? The architecture is determined by the experience (or mode) you’ve chosen at installation time. This means you don't have to worry about what architecture to use, the best architecture is automatically selected based on the use case you select at installation time.

This table summarizes the key architectural differences

	Administration Mode	Virtualization Mode
Architecture	Stateless	Stateful
Key scenario	Server Admin	Virtualization
Acquires metadata	PowerShell remoting	Local agent
Implements configuration	PowerShell remoting	Local agent
Data storage	None	PostGreSQL Database
Installation	Many distributed	One centralized
High Availability Required	No	Possible
Backups required	No	Yes
Max concurrent connections	1	1,000
Scale	~10 nodes	1,000 nodes

Key Changes

“Install it once, keep it sound — this gateway likes to stay around.”

-Dev and PM training curriculum

Naturally, different architectures inherently have different ways of solving problems. Here are a few key changes to call out when using vMode:

Hosting model – vMode should be installed on a dedicated Server OS because the systems you onboard will need to regularly communicate updates with this system. A client system (like Windows 11) may be offline at various times throughout the day.
Backups – Regular backups should be taken to ensure that new objects added or removed from navigation are restored in the event of a catastrophe. If someone accidentally destroys the system that hosts the vMode gateway and database, you’ll want to restore it soon.
[Optional] High Availability – If you’re in a large environment with many users and teams or environments needing frequent changes to their infrastructure, you might benefit from highly available options that are coming soon.

Similarities

“Different paths, same olde rhyme — both modes, in lockstep time.”

- Windows Admin Center chorale and performing arts team

Despite the above changes, we were careful to ensure many of the core tenets of Windows Admin Center remained the same, for example:

Requirements – There is currently 1 AND ONLY 1 prerequisite to install vMode (Visual C++ Redistributable). There is also only one requirement for onboarded hosts (SMB firewall rule). Everything else is taken care of by the installer. As a result, Both modes in Windows Admin Center takes less than 5 minutes to install.

Installations of comparable products can take hours, and we’ve even heard some horror stories of days from some of you!
Tools and Extension Updates – Tools and extensions provide the functionality you see on screen when configuring a system. These need to remain updated to get the best experience.

We enable both online and offline updates. The installation is self-managed and requires only a browser refresh after the installation. Best of all, with vMode you need to perform updates once per gateway for all users to gain the benefit.
Partner ecosystem – Both modes in Windows Admin Center support partner extensions that extend the experience to other related domains.

As an example, vMode partners could build virtualization extensions such as a self-service portal, backup integration, server hardware management, storage provisioning, or networking appliance management.

Happily, ever after...

You might just wonder, is this a trend? Is this blog over? The rhymes never end!"

-Dan Cuomo

Windows Admin Center has evolved to support both server administration and virtualization roles. While this metamorphosis required significant changes to the underlying architecture, the best aspects of Windows Admin Center remain unchanged.

If you’re managing Windows Servers and performing administrative tasks, you’ll likely find that Administration mode with its stateless architecture meets all your needs without the need for backups, high availability, or other more detailed implementations.

However, if you’re a virtualization administrator, you’ll benefit from the new stateful architecture that improves performance and scales significantly higher for that scenario. Ultimately, regardless of which mode you need, Windows Admin Center preserves its core values - simplicity, reliability, and ease of use.

Keep an eye out for more information on Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode and our upcoming release of Private Preview 2.

And now to send you on your virtualizing way,

“With your clusters tidy and your hosts in a row, may your VMs hum softly as the datacenter winds blow. May your agents check-in, your backups stay tight, and your hypervisors reliable for a peaceful goodnight.”

Thanks for reading,

Dan “Virtual Rhymes” Cuomo

Virtualization Mode Unlocked

DanCuomo — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:38:29 GMT

Download Now in Public Preview!

When searching for a new virtualization platform, one of the key factors to consider is the management tool. Ultimately, a strong management platform means efficiency for your team; it means deploying, updating, or troubleshooting with ease; it means assurance that you’ll be home in time for dinner with the family. In this article, we'll introduce you to our new management tool for virtualization called Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode.

A management tool as great as our hypervisor

Windows Server has always sported a world-class inbox hypervisor– Hyper-V (since 2008). Hyper-V runs the world’s computer, Microsoft Azure, along with some of the largest and most demanding systems on the planet like Office 365 mail servers, Azure SQL databases, and other high-demand and key services at Microsoft. These services use Hyper-V on Windows Server and so Hyper-V is critical to Windows Server.

Hyper-V scales beyond most (if not all) other publicly available hypervisors, supporting 4 Petabytes of RAM per host and 2048 logical processors; it supports Windows, Linux, and some FreeBSD guest operating systems (same list as Azure); and it supports a huge list of features from the simplest (e.g. live migration and GPU partitioning) to the most complex scenarios (e.g. Hyperconverged Infrastructure and Software Defined Networking).

It’s often missed that if you’re already running Windows Server as a VM on another platform, you can transfer that license to the host and run Hyper-V, which simultaneously licenses the host and guest at no additional cost. Speak to any Microsoft representative if you’d like more information.

Until now, we’ve struggled to meet your expectations in a management tool. Despite multiple updates and attempts to refine them, the results fell short. Windows Server supports a wide range of scenarios, but this versatility often led to tools that were too complex and too generic, lacking the tailored experience needed for specific use cases.

Those days are over...

If you’re ready for a switch to Windows Server Hyper-V, the best management experience is in the redesigned Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode, or vMode as we call it colloquially. We completely rearchitected Windows Admin Center to better support virtualization environments.

The rest of this article will introduce you to vMode and give pointers to the public preview released at Microsoft Ignite 2025. In future articles, we’ll dive into the transformation of Windows Admin Center that enabled these changes along with various capabilities of vMode.

What is Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode?

Put simply, vMode is a purpose-built virtualization management tool. It lets you deploy, manage, and troubleshoot your virtualization infrastructure to ensure your virtual machines are running in peak condition. You can view your compute (Hyper-V), storage (SAN, File Servers, HCI), and network configurations (Network ATC) in a single pane of glass, organizing these systems into groups that make sense to your needs. You can also deploy and manage virtual machines in your infrastructure.

What’s better to help you visualize vMode than to roll a 1-minute montage!?

As you can see, vMode is a complete overhaul of Windows Admin Center, completely focused on virtualization, and it’s available for download in Public Preview if you want to give it a shot and check out the documentation .

Different modes for different roles

“But I liked the current experience!”

-The millions of existing Windows Admin Center customers.

If you liked the current Windows Admin Center experience, I have excellent news: that’s still available. The existing Windows Admin Center experience is great at server administration, which is useful if you are logging into the servers (including virtual machines), to perform some administrative functions. You know, administrative tasks like:

Installing roles and features
Managing updates
Reviewing event logs
Checking performance counters, etc.

This experience will be refocused on administrative tasks and will henceforth be referred to as Windows Admin Center: Administration Mode. This creates a clear dichotomy between the Windows Admin Center experiences, ensuring each provides a tailored mode that best meets the needs of each role:

Administration Mode focused on server administration tasks
Virtualization Mode streamlined for virtualization management

Installation remains as simple as it’s always been; you’ll just choose whether you want to install Administration Mode (aMode) or Virtualization Mode (vMode).

At the time of writing, Administration Mode (Windows Admin Center 2511) and Virtualization Mode are currently separate installers. Once Virtualization Mode is generally available, the installers will be unified and will include an option for mode selection.

Next Blog

In the next article, we’ll dive into the transformation of Windows Admin Center into modes and highlight some of the architectural and principled changes between them. Until then, let me leave you with a few links so you can:

Download and tryout Public Preview of Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode.
Read the documentation for Public Preview.
And watch our presentation at Ignite (also shown below).

And of course, don’t forget to give us feedback (Use the Issues tab)! Your feedback is why we ventured down this road to create a dedicated mode for virtualization in the first place!

Thanks for reading,

Dan “vMode Activator” Cuomo

The Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode preview build has been updated!

Davanna-White — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 22:42:28 GMT

At Ignite last year, we announced Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode (vMode), a purpose-built experience to help you easily manage on-premises Windows Server Hyper-V virtualization at scale – across multiple hosts and clusters – while effortlessly bridging your environment with Azure Arc for a true hybrid cloud experience. Today we’ve updated that build to 2.6.4.

This update sets the foundation for virtualization mode agent updates. When you install a newer version of Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode, the agents you have installed on your existing vMode managed machines will be updated to the latest version, ensuring consistency across your infrastructure.

For existing vMode users to take advantage of agent updates, you’ll need to uninstall your existing version of vMode before adopting this new build. Miss the announcement entirely? Check it out here or take a look at the documentation.

Download the latest build and let us know what you think!

Announcing Windows Admin Center for Arm-based Copilot+ PCs

Ben_Schultz — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 21:26:58 GMT

Great news for IT pros managing the next generation of Windows devices! Windows Admin Center now supports Arm-based Copilot+ PCs, bringing the powerful, browser-based management experience you rely on to Microsoft's most advanced AI-powered devices. Copilot+ PCs are next-generation Windows devices designed with built-in AI capabilities, delivering faster performance, enhanced productivity, and intelligent experiences powered by Windows and Microsoft Copilot.

Whether you're managing hybrid Active Directory environments, configuring servers and clusters, or administering client infrastructure, you can now do it all seamlessly from your Copilot+ PC. This means no more workarounds. Enjoy the same centralized, secure administration you expect, now optimized for the energy-efficient, AI-accelerated Arm architecture. The Windows Admin Center experiences are the same you know and love, including installation, overview experiences and the same tool set you are familiar with!

As enterprises embrace Copilot+ PCs for their blend of performance, mobility, and AI capabilities, having full management parity with x64 devices is critical. Organizations evaluating large-scale deployments have been waiting for this moment, and now IT admins can confidently manage their entire Windows ecosystem—servers, clusters, and desktops—directly from Arm devices without sacrificing functionality.

Ready to experience the future of Windows management? Read about our 2511 release and download Windows Admin Center 2511 for Arm-based Copilot+ PCs today! We'd love to hear your feedback as you try this new capability!

Windows Admin Center version 2511 is now generally available!

Davanna-White — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:56:40 GMT

April 9th, 2026: The Windows Admin Center installer has been updated to build number 2.6.6.18. This build includes an update to the Cluster manager extension that addresses a known issue and no other functionality changes. The HA deployment scripts and associated documentation have also been updated.

April 2nd, 2026: The Windows Admin Center installer has been updated to build number 2.6.5.16. This build includes security improvements and no other functionality changes.

February 17th, 2026 update: The Windows Admin Center installer has been updated to build number 2.6.4.11. This build includes security improvements and no other functionality changes.

February 10th, 2026 update: We've updated the high availability deployment script and the associated documentation. The Windows Admin Center 2511 installer has not been changed.

Today we’re announcing the general availability of Windows Admin Center version 2511! A special thank you to our customers, partners, and fans. Your continued support of Windows Admin Center has been critical to its continued success.  

Version 2511 marks a milestone. We’ve brought back high availability deployments compatible with our modernized gateway (known colloquially as “v2”), enhanced silent installation, and provided enterprise-ready logging. We also improved several of our core tools, including VM management enhancements and updates to Remote Deskop’s international keyboard layouts.

We’ve been working behind the scenes to ensure that Windows Admin Center is up-to-date, secure, and reliable. Read on to learn about the new features and updates! 

Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode is now in preview!

At Microsoft Ignite last month, we announced Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode (vMode), a purpose-built experience to help you easily manage on-premises Windows Server Hyper-V virtualization at scale – across multiple hosts and clusters – while effortlessly bridging your environment with Azure Arc for a true hybrid cloud experience.

Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode and Windows Admin Center 2511 are distinct installations. This post refers specifically to Windows Admin Center 2511. To read more about Virtualization Mode, check out the announcement and public documentation.

What’s new in Windows Admin Center 2511

Platform updates 

Installer

The Windows Admin Center installer in version 2410 had some gaps. We’ve heard ample feedback about the installer experience and have worked to address several of these in 2511.

Silent install commands

In Windows Admin Center version 2410, we did not include many command line install operations. We know that many of you install Windows Admin Center through the command line because you’re using Server Core or would like to automate your Windows Admin Center deployments. With this release, we’ve restored command line silent installation support and added a few extra arguments as well. The following arguments can now be used:

/Silent
/VerySilent
/HTTPSPortNumber
/CertificateThumbprint

Here’s an example of how you’d run the installer from the command line:

.\WindowsAdminCenter2511.exe /HTTPSPortNumber=1234 /CertificateThumbprint=“1234abcd4567efgh”

In addition to the command line installation, your Windows Admin Center configuration can always be modified with the PowerShell Configuration script module, which can be found at the following file path:
%Program Files%\WindowsAdminCenter\PowerShellModules\Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter.Configuration

Cert troubleshooting

The management of software certificates is a necessary component to product lifecycle management, but it isn’t always easy. When we upgraded the Windows Admin Center backend with version 2410, we also changed the way certificates are handled by Windows Admin Center. We’ve created new documentation that can assist in the process of updating your Windows Admin Center certificate or troubleshooting certificate issues.

Localization

In this release, we’ve addressed an issue where users upgrading to Windows Admin Center versions 2410 or later were unable to migrate to the new backend successfully. This issue was due to certificates being improperly processed because of a localization error in one of the Windows Admin Center scripts. After updating, users were unable to launch the latest version of Windows Admin Center successfully.

Logging

We have heard your feedback, and the WAC installer now supports enterprise-ready logging by writing installation details to the Windows Event Log. This provides centralized visibility for IT teams, improves compliance, and simplifies troubleshooting.

Other bugfixes

We've fixed an issue where some installations were failing on Windows Server 2022 systems and older, first reported in our public preview release.

High availability

Historically, you could deploy Windows Admin Center in a failover cluster to provide high availability for your Windows Admin Center gateway service. In Windows Admin Center version 2410, this functionality was unavailable.

In this release, we’ve restored the ability to deploy Windows Admin Center with high availability. The solution provided is an active-passive solution, where only one instance of Windows Admin Center is active. If one of the nodes in the cluster fails, Windows Admin Center gracefully fails over to another node, letting you continue managing the servers in your environment seamlessly.

Learn more about highly available Windows Admin Center and download the latest deployment script.

Updates to Extensions

Virtual machine tool

The VM management tool has been updated with improved import/export workflows that polish the destination dialog and file location handling. The host settings have enhanced configuration options and backend validation to prevent user misconfiguration. There is now an improved creation and configuration workflow for virtual switches, along with network controller integration. There’s better rule management, validation for affinity rules to avoid any potential conflicts.

Performance is still top of mind and one of the highest priorities for our team. With that said, the VM list is loading faster, there are now clearer error messages, and the UI is now more responsive.

Virtual machine conversion tool

As organizations update their infrastructure, a growing number are seeking adaptable, Microsoft-supported solutions that address current requirements while laying the path for future cloud and AI adoption. Azure provides an agile, scalable, cost-effective platform for infrastructure and innovation. Whether by modernizing to cloud technologies like Windows or Linux VMs, containers, Azure VMware Solution or PaaS services, Azure offers a world-class cloud experience. However, we recognize that some organizations must retain workloads on-premises due to data compliance, governance, or other regulatory requirements. For customers wanting to adopt Windows Server and Hyper-V for this use case, we are excited to provide a new option within Windows Admin Center, the VM Conversion tool, in public preview as of last month. Read the announcement and explore the documentation.

RDP tool

The Remote Desktop (RDP) tool has long been one of the most relied-upon features in Windows Admin Center, enabling IT professionals to manage servers remotely with ease. In this latest update, we’ve focused on two critical areas: global accessibility and rock-solid reliability.

First, we’ve significantly expanded international keyboard support. Remote management often spans multiple regions and languages, and incorrect keyboard mappings have been a pain point for many users. To solve this, we introduced advanced detection methods that combine timezone and language heuristics with physical keyboard pattern analysis. We also added a new utility method, streamlined language-to-layout mapping, and implemented fallback strategies to ensure accuracy in diverse environments. With these improvements, the RDP tool now supports over thirty international keyboard layouts, including Japanese, German, and French, making it a truly global solution for distributed teams and traveling administrators.

Second, we addressed a critical reliability issue that affected version 4.30.2, where the tool sometimes stalled during loading. This bug has been fully resolved in the latest in-box version, delivering faster startup times and consistent connectivity. Whether you’re managing a single server or an entire cluster, you can now rely on the RDP tool to perform without interruptions.

These enhancements aren’t just technical upgrades. They’re about creating a smoother, more inclusive experience for IT professionals everywhere. By improving keyboard detection and eliminating loading issues, we’re making remote administration more efficient, more reliable, and ready for the demands of modern infrastructure management.

Security tools

Windows Admin Center introduces powerful security tools for Windows Server 2025 to help organizations stay ahead of evolving cyber threats. Key features include Silicon Assisted Security, which consolidates secured-core requirements and hardware recommendations into a streamlined view for configuring protections like VBS, Secure Boot, and TPM 2.0; the Security Baseline tool, enabling enforcement of Microsoft-recommended settings and industry standards such as CIS, DISA STIG, and FIPS through OSConfig and drift control; and Windows LAPS, which automates local administrator password management and integrates with Admin Center for bulk password resets and expiration tracking. Together, these tools simplify security management, strengthen infrastructure resilience, and ensure compliance with best practices. Learn more.

SDN management

In this release, we’ve updated the SDN management extension to add X509 client authentication support for FC NC environments. This is a requirement for some Azure Local configurations. Additionally, we’ve updated SDN deployment to include an option to specify the OU path of the infrastructure VMs.

Partner ecosystem

Windows Admin Center is built to be an extensible platform. Our partners help to provide a comprehensive management experience, and we value their contributions to the Windows Admin Center ecosystem. Since our last release, several extensions have been updated, including those from Dell, Lenovo, and more. Additionally, we have a new extension available from NetApp.

NetApp Shift Toolkit is now available!

NetApp provides unified data storage, integrated data services, and cloud operations solutions to enterprise customers. One of their many products is their Shift Toolkit, a free, GUI-based solution that simplifies VM migration across different hypervisors and converts virtual disk formats. It automates the creation and configuration of destination VMs, reduces virtualization costs through VM portability, and supports disk-level conversions for multi-hypervisor environments.

This extension combines Windows Admin Center’s intuitive UI with the power of NetApp’s Shift Toolkit, making migrations to Hyper-V fast and easy.

Read NetApp’s blog post about their extension here.

The Dell OpenManage Integration extension has been updated!

The Dell OpenManage Integration extension has been updated to version 3.4.0. This version comes with the following improvements since the last Windows Admin Center generally available release:

Added support for 17G PowerEdge servers.
Added support for Azure Stack HCI operating system 24H2.
Updated Azure Local rebranding changes.
Support for BitLocker in Dell AX System for Microsoft Windows Server.
OMIMSWAC is hosted under Windows Admin Center as a separate subprocess. For more information, see Windows Admin Center modernized gateway.
The hardware update operation is now working in the German language.
The use of TLS 1.2 is enabled when TLS 1.3 does not work in a supported system.
Support for Azure Policy Onboarding for HCI and failover clusters when a resource group in Azure Arc has servers which are not part of the cluster.
You can view the inventory information of clusters without providing the 'Manage as' credentials.

The Lenovo XClarity Integrator extension has been updated!

The Lenovo XClarity Integrator extension has been updated to version 5.1.1. This version comes with the following improvements since the last Windows Admin Center generally available release:

New hardware support
- ThinkSystem SR630 V4 (7DG8, 7DG9, 7DGA, 7DGB)
- ThinkSystem SR650 V4 (7DGC, 7DGD, 7DGE, 7DGF)
New functions support
- ThinkAgile MX Best Recipe 2503
- Lenovo XClarity Essentials OneCLI V5.2.0 for system upgrade
- Automatic detection on the enablement status of Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) for the managed servers
- User-friendly download mode for WDAC policy file
- System upgrade on the servers with BitLocker enabled
- Windows Admin Center Gateway V2
- ThinkAgile MX Best Recipe 2410
- Lenovo XClarity Essentials OneCLI V5.0.0 for system upgrade
Software ecosystem support
- Lenovo XClarity Administrator 4.3.x
- Azure Local 24H2
- Windows Server 2025
- Windows Admin Center 2410
- Lenovo XClarity Administrator 4.2

The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure extension has been updated!

The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure extension has been updated to version 2.6.5. This version comes with the following improvements since the last Windows Admin Center generally available release:

Switched from NGSSO to Dell Identity Authentication for enabling Dell Support Portal access
Adopted the new Dell-provided Azure Local golden image for cluster expansion and server repair
Adopted Azure Stack HCI rebrand to Azure Local
Blocked node repair on 3-Node switchless cluster

Other extension updates

NEC ESMPRO version 1.1.5 updates the information on monitored devices.
The DataON MUST extension has been updated to version 4.1.10.

Known issues 

This version of Windows Admin Center cannot be registered in Azure Government sovereign cloud.

Download today! 

If you made it this far in the blog post, thank you so much for reading along! We hope you enjoy this new version of Windows Admin Center and the various new functionality and new extensions now available.  

Download now!

As always, thanks for your ongoing support, adoption, and feedback. Your contributions through user feedback continue to be vital and valuable to us, helping us prioritize and sequence our investments. 

Windows Admin Center is continuously evolving and growing as a tool and a platform, and we are beyond thrilled to have you part of our journey. 

Thank you, 

Windows Admin Center Team (@servermgmt) 

Windows Admin Center version 2511 is now in public preview!

Davanna-White — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 19:02:12 GMT

Windows Admin Center provides a convenient method for IT admins to investigate and manage their Windows Servers. 2410 was made generally available in December 2024, and refreshed to respond to customer feedback in February 2025. This 2511 release comes with new additions to core tools like the virtual machines tool, the security tool, and bug fixes. Additionally, we have heard your feedback on the installer and have updated it.

As always, thank you to our customers, partners, and fans. Your continued support of Windows Admin Center has been critical to its continued success.

We’ve been working behind the scenes to ensure that Windows Admin Center is up-to-date, secure, and reliable. Read on to learn about the new features and updates!

Platform updates

Installer

The Windows Admin Center installer in version 2410 had some gaps. We’ve heard ample feedback about the installer experience and have worked to address several of these in 2511.

Silent install commands

/Silent
/VerySilent
/HTTPSPortNumber
/CertificateThumbprint

Here’s an example of how you’d run the installer from the command line:

.\WindowsAdminCenterSetup.exe /HTTPSPortNumber=1234 /CertificateThumbprint=“1234abcd4567efgh”

In addition to the command line installation, your WIndows Admin Center configuration can always be modified with the PowerShell Configuration script module, which can be found at the following file path:

%Program Files%\WindowsAdminCenter\PowerShellModules\Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter.Configuration

Cert troubleshooting

Localization

There is still a potential known issue with connections not transferring to new Windows Admin Center builds on update with the Japanese language specifically. We are working to address this prior to the generally available release.

Logging

Updates to Extensions

Virtual machine tool

Virtual machine conversion tool

Remote desktop tool

Security tools

Windows Admin Center introduces powerful security tools for Windows Server 2025 to help organizations stay ahead of evolving cyber threats. Key features include Silicon Assisted Security, which consolidates secured-core requirements and hardware recommendations into a streamlined view for configuring protections like VBS, Secure Boot, and TPM 2.0; the Security Baseline tool, enabling enforcement of Microsoft-recommended settings and industry standards such as CIS, DISA STIG, and FIPS through OSConfig and drift control; and Windows LAPS, which automates local administrator password management and integrates with Admin Center for bulk password resets and expiration tracking. Together, these tools simplify security management, strengthen infrastructure resilience, and ensure compliance with best practices. Learn more.

SDN management

Known issues

Azure Gov Cloud

This version of Windows Admin Center cannot be registered in Azure Government sovereign cloud.

High Availability

Any users utilizing a high availability (HA) setup should not install this version with the intent to use HA. HA is not currently supported in our .NET 8 backend implementation, nor in the 2410 release. HA installation support will be restored with our 2511 generally available release.

New NDA group!

We are migrating our NDA group from Viva Engage to a private GitHub group. If you are a part of our existing NDA group, have an existing NDA with us, or are a Microsoft MVP, please fill out this survey to request access to the group.

Download today!

Download now!

As always, thanks for your ongoing support, adoption, and feedback. Your contributions through user feedback continue to be vital and valuable to us, helping us prioritize and sequence our investments.

Windows Admin Center is continuously evolving and growing as a tool and a platform, and we are beyond thrilled to have you part of our journey.

Thank you,

Windows Admin Center Team (@servermgmt)

Strengthening your security posture with Windows Admin Center

Theo_Tran — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 23:30:52 GMT

Security helps protect sensitive data and critical infrastructure. Cyberattacks are on the rise, and it is more critical than ever to ensure that your Windows Server infrastructure is secure. To help customers stay ahead of evolving threats, we are continuously innovating and introducing new security-focused tools in Windows Admin Center.

WS 2025 Silicon Assisted Security

If you’re familiar with the Secured-core tool, then you’re going to love our new Silicon Assisted Security tool! This includes the secured-core requirements along with the minimum recommended hardware requirements for Windows Server 2025. We have heard your feedback, and as a result, we consolidated this into a singular view to streamline the configuration experience.

With Silicon Assisted Security, you can monitor the status and set the below security features:

Virtualization-based Security (VBS)
System Guard Secure Launch (DRTM)
Hypervisor-protected Code Integrity (HVCI)
Boot DMA protection
Secure Boot
Trusted Platform Module (TPM 2.0)

Note: This tool is currently in preview and is behind an experiment key. Add experiment key under Settings -> Advanced -> Experiment keys: msft.sme.security.siliconAssistedSecurityPreview

WS 2025 Security baseline

Microsoft provides a security baseline for Windows Server with hundreds of security settings. This tool provides a method to implement security based on Microsoft recommended security baselines and industry best practices. You can apply the security baseline throughout the device lifecycle starting from initial deployment using Microsoft provided ‘PowerShell tooling’ or Windows Admin Center, supported by the new security configuration platform, ‘OSConfig’. You can also leverage the ‘inbuilt drift control mechanism’, one of the salient features of the security configuration platform which helps ensure that the system starts and remains in a known good security state.

Apply the recommended Windows Server security baseline:

Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmark
Defense Information Systems Agency Security Technical Implementation Guides (DISA STIG)
Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS 140) requirements for the OS
Azure Compute Security baselines

You can learn more about all the new Windows Server 2025 security features and updates here: Windows Server 2025 security book.

Windows LAPS

Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (Windows LAPS) is a Windows feature that automatically manages and backs up the password of a local administrator account on your Microsoft Entra joined or Windows Server Active Directory-joined devices. You also can use Windows LAPS to automatically manage and back up the Directory Services Restore Mode (DSRM) account password on your Windows Server Active Directory domain controllers. An authorized administrator can retrieve the DSRM password and use it. Learn more here.

Now, you can use Windows LAPS to manage your passwords on your LAPS enabled machines within the domain with Windows Admin Center. With this tool, you can reveal and copy passwords of a given machine. View the corresponding password expiration time and update the time stamp. Not only that, but you set the expiration time and reset passwords for multiple machines at a time, making password management and authentication more secure, simpler, and efficient.

By leveraging these powerful security tools in Windows Admin Center, you can take a proactive approach to safeguarding your Windows Server environments. Whether it’s through Silicon Assisted Security, Security Baseline, or Windows LAPS, Windows Admin Center provides the necessary tools to enhance your security posture with minimal complexity.

As cyber threats continue to evolve, securing your infrastructure should remain a top priority. Windows Admin Center is here to help you stay ahead, ensuring that your Windows Server environment is protected, resilient, and ready for the challenges of tomorrow.

To get started with these security features, download the latest version of Windows Admin Center here and improve your security today.

Windows Admin Center version 2410 is now generally available!

Davanna-White — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 23:52:34 GMT

February 25th, 2025 update: This minor build update makes quality improvements around localization, installation, and the "All Connections" page. If you are having challenges with these scenarios, please ensure you are using this build (2.4.2.1).

Windows Admin Center provides a convenient method for IT admins to investigate and manage their Windows Servers. Over the last seven years, one of the top customer requests has been performance. With this release, we are ensuring that we deliver the solution that customers desire. This release marks a new era for Windows Admin Center as the platform for the future, bringing efficiency and convenience to you while bridging the gap in feature parity for virtual machine management.

This 2410 release marks the general availability of our “modernized gateway” or “v2” effort years in the making. In addition, this build comes with new additions to core tools like the virtual machines tool, the security tool, a new LAPS tool, and bug fixes.

As always, thank you to our customers, partners, and fans. Your continued support of Windows Admin Center has been critical to its continued success.

We’ve been working behind the scenes to ensure that Windows Admin Center is up-to-date, secure, and reliable. Read on to learn about the new features and updates!

What's new in Windows Admin Center v2410

Platform updates

Upgrade to .NET Core

The Windows Admin Center frontend user-interface (UI) is built on Angular, which is in turn built on our shell. The shell hosts all the core services and most of our UI components, our solutions like server and cluster manager, and, on top of that, every extension that you use for server management.

Our front end interacts with our backend, which is also known as our gateway. The gateway hosts our authorization structure, our PS services, our gateway plug-ins, and plays a critical role in every single experience that you use in Windows Admin Center.

In this release, we have upgraded our backend from .NET 4.6.2 to .NET 8, bringing enhanced security and improved cryptography to our product. This also includes support for HTTP 2, reducing latency and enhancing the responsiveness of Windows Admin Center. Combined with improved performance, providing faster load times, you’ll be able to get your tasks done more quickly and efficiently.

Developers of Windows Admin Center extensions, please read the “Backend upgrade impact on extensions” section later in this post to understand how your extension might be affected.

Updated installer

While modernizing our gateway, we also made the installer more flexible by providing increased customization options including network access settings, selecting trusted hosts, providing a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for your gateway machine, and more. For more details about the installer, read the Updated installer details section of this blog post.

Data migration

To ensure that your user and environment data is transferred to the right places with our backend upgrade, we've implemented a data migration flow to make the transition to our latest build seamless. Much of this data will be automatically transferred, but there are a few areas where additional information from the user is required. For details about the migration experience, read on to the Migrating your data section.

Settings update

As part of our gateway modernization effort, you may notice that your Windows Admin Center settings look a little bit different.

As we discussed in the 2211 Windows Admin Center release, we have deprecated the in-app update experience and have consequently removed the settings blade for Updates. Additionally, the Access and Shared Connections blades are now available on local gateway installations (also known as “desktop mode” in older gateway builds).

The Access page allows you to access Windows Admin Center PowerShell APIs by retrieving an access key for your user account. This blade is not available if you’re choosing to open Windows Admin Center with NTLM log-in.

Multi-process, micro-service based

The 2410 build also leverages microservice architecture. Prior to this upgrade, Windows Admin Center performed all tasks in a single process. With our new model, we start one process for Windows Admin Center on application startup that serves as a process manager. As you use Windows Admin Center, additional sub-processes are spun up to perform specific tasks.

Additionally, gateway plug-ins that are compatible with the upgrade backend will also run their own collection of sub-processes under the Windows Admin Center service manager to perform their functions.

Changing from a monolithic service to a microservice model helps our 2410 build be more flexible, scalable, and resilient.

Kestrel HTTP web server

Previously, Windows Admin Center utilized Katana components, including a web server, on the backend. With the 2410 build, we’ve shifted to an ASP.NET Core Kestrel web server.

Kestrel is the recommended web server for ASP.NET Core applications. Kestrel is:

High performing: Kestrel is optimized to handle a large number of concurrent connections efficiently.
Lightweight: Optimized for running in resource-constrained environments, such as containers and edge devices.
Security hardened: Kestrel supports HTTPS and is hardened against web server vulnerabilities.

Additionally, Kestrel supports the HTTP/2 web protocol, where previously we had only supported HTTP1.1 with the Katana components. The upgrade from HTTP1.1 to HTTP/2 brings reduced latency to our application as well as increased responsiveness through enhanced features like multiplexing and server push.

Switching to a Kestrel web server will also allow for Windows Admin Center to potentially enable cross-platform support in the future.

Changing Windows Admin Center configuration after install

With this build, we’ve also changed the mechanism to modify settings of your Windows Admin Center installation after install. In the Program Files for Windows Admin Center, we’ve included a PowerShell module called Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter.Configuration.psm1. This module allows you to modify your Windows Admin Center configuration after installation and can be found in the PowerShellModules folder of your installation (C:\Program Files\WindowsAdminCenter\PowerShellModules\ by default).

To use this module, run one of the included commands. For example, to change the ports Windows Admin Center is using, run the following command:

Set-WACHttpsPort -Wacport <port> -ServicePortRangeStart <port> -ServicePortRangeEnd <port>

Core tools

Virtual machine tool update

The Virtual machines tool continues to be one of our most-used tools. The management of virtual machines is absolutely critical for the overall infrastructure management experience. We continue to improve our Virtual machine tool experience based on customer feedback.

This release, our primary goal was to provide you with your list of VMs as soon as possible so you are empowered to efficiently carry out your administrative tasks. To make this easier, we’ve added a toggle in the top right corner of the Virtual machines tool that will allow you to switch between a “detailed” mode and a “light” mode.

Today, we invite you all to use the tool and share your feedback.

Highlights:

The actions performed on a VM (e.g. start, pause, import move etc.) now only update the VM selected without reloading the entire table, saving customers valuable time
We improved the inventory page’s responsiveness by rewriting how we load and display data; so today - clicking, hovering scrolling and even grouping and searching is a lot better than what it used to be
To prioritize loading the VM list first, certain operations are deferred until after the initial load (e.g., cluster node check)
To optimize performance, we have reduced the number of columns in the default view to show only essential information about the VM to you. Note that this can be toggled off using the “Detailed Mode” toggle to switch back to the previous experience
In default mode, we now show you the computer name of running Windows VMs and their operating system versions, we’ve categorized this information with the goal to make discovery easy for users.

In addition, we’ve got more feature work to share. Today, we are also announcing some changes to the feature that supports managing a VM on Windows Admin Center.

The Move and Import VM got a face lift! We’re glad to share with you that we are converting the single form experience to a wizard that guides the user through typical steps a user interacts with when importing or moving a VM (and/or its resources). With is change we usher in the ability for you to;

Change the destination of the stored resources association with the VM different locations configurable by you - the user
Reconfigure virtual switches at the destination if needed
We now provide proper validations of your VM configuration before you perform the action to move or import VM
These processes will also include better notification and progress update for users to track the status of their VM’s operation.

Although we are actively still developing these scenarios, we will like to invite you to turn on this feature and try out the new Move and import VM. To enable these features, perform the following steps:

Navigate to your Windows Admin Center settings by selecting the gear in the top right corner of the header.
Navigate to the “Advanced” tab.
Add the following experiment key(s):
- msft.sme.hyperv.newImportFlow
- msft.sme.hyperv.newMoveVmFlow

The first key enables the new import VM experience, and the second key above enables the new move VM experience.

WS2025 Security baseline

Microsoft provides a tailored security baseline for Windows Server with hundreds of security settings. It supports security best practices based on Microsoft recommended security baselines and industry best practices. Customers can apply the security baseline throughout the device lifecycle starting from initial deployment using Microsoft provided ‘PowerShell tooling’ or Windows Admin Center, supported by the new security configuration platform, ‘OSConfig’. Customers can leverage the ‘inbuilt drift control mechanism’, one of the salient features of the security configuration platform which helps ensure that the system starts and remains in a known good security state.

Apply the recommended Windows Server security baseline:

Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmark
Defense Information Systems Agency Security Technical Implementation Guides (DISA STIG)
Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS 140) requirements for the OS
Azure Compute Security baselines

The security baseline settings have been verified for compatibility and performance impact. Support of those security baselines is intended to make it easier for customers to help meet their compliance and regulatory requirements.

You can learn more about all the new Windows Server 2025 security features and updates here: Windows Server 2025 security book.

Windows LAPS

Introducing Windows LAPS in Windows Admin Center. Now, you can use Windows LAPS to manage your passwords on your LAPS enabled machines within the domain. With this tool, you can reveal and copy passwords of a given machine. View the corresponding password expiration time and update time stamp. Not only that, but you set the expiration time and reset passwords for multiple machines at a time, making password management and authentication more secure, simpler, and efficient.

Software Defined Networking

Windows Server 2025 introduces numerous networking advancements and innovations, offering a top-tier management experience via Windows Admin Center. For host management, we are introducing Network ATC, which simplifies the deployment and network configuration management for Windows Server 2025 clusters, fully managed through Windows Admin Center. Additionally, we will soon enable operational network diagnostics with Network HUD, which will alert users to networking operational issues, with alerts surfaced in WAC. Finally, AccelNet will facilitate the management of high-performance networking (SR-IOV), all through Windows Admin Center.

In terms of workload management, significant progress has been made with Software Defined Networking (SDN). The central infrastructure component for SDN, the Network Controller, is now hosted directly as Failover Cluster services on Windows Server 2025 hosts, rather than in virtual machines. This can be deployed and managed through Windows Admin Center. New security features, such as tag-based segmentation and default network policies, will protect workloads from external and lateral threats, all managed through Windows Admin Center. For customers expanding to multiple locations, Windows Admin Center-based SDN multisite management ensures seamless network connectivity across these locations.

GPU-P

Management of GPUs is becoming even more critical in the age of artificial intelligence. Windows Admin Center continues to simplify GPU management by enhancing security, efficiency, and performance. In this release, we’ve made the GPU tool compatible with Windows Server 2025 Datacenter and Azure Stack HCI 24H2 OSes, enhancing the AI capabilities of these OSes with GPU Partitioning (GPU-P). GPU-P empowers customers to partition a supported GPU and assign those partitions to different VMs in a failover cluster. This means that multiple VMs can share a single physical GPU, giving each VM an isolated fraction of the physical GPU's capabilities. Read more about GPU-P in this article.

Installing and using version 2410

Updated installer details

With version 2410, we’ve made changes to our installer to offer more flexibility to the user. When running the installer, you will be presented with two different installation modes: express setup and custom setup.

Express setup

The express setup option does not allow for the configuration of the following features:

Login authentication mode
Host access network names
Internal and external network ports
Certificate type and thumbprint
Endpoint FQDN
Trusted hosts mode
WinRM over HTTPS

If you would like to configure any of these features, please use the custom setup option instead.

When you select express setup, the installer will use the operating system of your machine to determine the port Windows Admin Center is accessible through. If you run the installer on a client machine, Windows Admin Center will be accessible through port 6600 and will use internal ports 6601-6610. If you run the installer on a server machine, Windows Admin Center will be accessible through port 443 and will use internal ports 6601-6610. The exception to this rule is if you have a previous version of Windows Admin Center installed—then the installer will pick up that port instead (6516 by default).

Custom setup

Selecting custom setup allows you to configure all Windows Admin Center setup options:

Network access– This page allows you to select how you will be using Windows Admin Center. You may choose to restrict Windows Admin Center access to other users by selecting localhost access only or allow remote access through machine name of FQDN.
Port numbers – This page allows you to select the ports that will be reserved for Windows Admin Center. Windows Admin Center uses one external port for its primary processes. Other processes use internal ports. There are two internal processes by default, but extensions may define their own services that will require port access. By default, the internal range is 10 ports.
Select TLS certificate – This page allows you to select Self-Signed certificates or an official TLS certificate that Windows Admin Center should use. Self-Signed certificates include Self-signed CA root certificates and TLS certificates that work with the latest Edge/Chrome browser.
Fully qualified domain name – This page allows you to provide a fully qualified domain name for network access. This name must match the name on the TLS certificate.
Trusted hosts – This page allows you to select which type of remote hosts you’d like to manage. You may choose to manage only trusted domain computers or allow access to non-domain joined machines.
WinRM over HTTPS - This page allows you to select whether to use HTTPS for WinRM communication. WinRM communicates over HTTP by default.

Troubleshooting installation

If your installation failed, or you’re having trouble opening Windows Admin Center after install, you may need to uninstall and reinstall. This can also happen if you have an older version of a Gateway v2 preview build installed, and you are trying to update to a newer version. To uninstall, follow the instructions in the Uninstalling and cleanup section of this document.

Migrating your data

Once you have installed version 2410, much of your transferable data is automatically copied over to the new backend, reducing the time it takes for you to get started. However, there are four items that may require user input:

Proxy credentials
WebSocket Origin configuration
Azure registration
Extensions

We’ll automatically detect which items are relevant for you. You only need to complete this wizard once. Once your data is fully migrated, future releases of Windows Admin Center will have the seamless update experience you know and love.

Proxy credentials

Windows Admin Center will not be able to able access Azure services and the public extension feed without proper proxy credentials. If you have a proxy set up, then you will need to enter the proxy address, as well as the username and password to give Windows Admin Center access.

WebSocket Origin configuration

If you had previously configured WebSocket Origins, you can review and edit them here. To get you started, we have imported the WebSocket Origins list from your previous Windows Admin Center setup. If you no longer wish to use WebSocket Origins, or would like to configure them later, you can skip this step.

Azure registration

Windows Admin Center now requires additional redirect URLs to be configured with the Azure App Registration instance. This can only be done through the Azure Portal. Selecting the “Configure” button will programmatically update the Azure App Registration on your behalf. After it is registered, you may need to re-enable Azure login to Windows Admin Center.

You will need the elevated permissions on this Azure subscription to perform this re-registration. See our documentation for more information on how to change these permissions.

Extensions

Starting in version 2410, we’re using a different link for our default extension feed. You may notice missing extensions from this Windows Admin Center instance, including extensions not installed by default and ones you may have installed from your own feed or from external partners. This page is purely informational. If you do not see an extension on the feed in this build, it might not be compatible with the .NET 8 backend. We’re working diligently with our partners to ensure all extensions are compatible with this new backend. See the Backend upgrade impact on extensions section for more details.

Review + complete

On this page, review which actions are still remaining to make your transition to this build as easy as possible. Certain actions, like reconfiguring redirect URIs in your Azure app registration, can be done outside the wizard, so you can complete this wizard without completing these steps. Note that completing the migration wizard without successfully completing all steps may result in unexpected errors or behavior. See our documentation for more information on potential issues.

Uninstalling version 2410

To uninstall the Windows Admin Center version 2410, perform one of the following actions:

In the Apps & Features page of your gateway machine settings, select Windows Admin Center from the program list and then select uninstall.
Navigate to the folder where the Windows Admin Center is installed (default directory is C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Windows Admin Center) and select “Uninstall Windows Admin Center”
Run C:\Program Files\WindowsAdminCenter\unins000.exe

Running the installer again will not result in an uninstall option at this time. To ensure your installation was removed successfully, check if a WindowsAdminCenter folder exists in C:\ProgramData or C:\Program Files. If it does not exist in either location, your application has been successfully uninstalled.

During the uninstallation process, everything put on the machine during installation will be removed, except for the Windows Admin Center.exe installer file.

Partner ecosystem and extensibility

Extension updates

Windows Admin Center is built to be an extensible platform. Our partners help to provide a comprehensive management experience, and we value their contributions to the Windows Admin Center ecosystem. Since our last release, many partner extensions have been updated, including those from Dell, Lenovo, HPE, and more.

Because of our backend upgrade, there are several extensions that are not yet supported with this release. See the Backend upgrade impact on extensions section to learn more.

Dell OpenManage

The Dell OpenManage Integration extension has been updated to version 3.3.0. This update comes with the following changes:

Support for the modernized gateway framework with .Net Core and Angular 15 introduced with WAC 2410.
Support for Windows server 2025 OS for 15G and 16G PowerEdge servers.
Azure Alert configuration feature to push Dell iDRAC based hardware alerts to Azure Log Analytics Workspace and configuring alert rules on them.
Diagnostics feature for downloading the iDRAC and extension logs.
Warranty feature is now supported for proxy configurations as well.
Exempt policies are no longer created for Azure policy onboarding to maintain policy versions. The versions are now maintained using existing policy metadata.
Hardware configuration policy compliance logic has been enhanced to load the compliance report for HCI clusters even when one or more nodes are down.
Several other defect fixes and enhancements.

Lenovo XClarity Integrator

The Lenovo XClarity Integrator extension has been updated to version 4.7.1. This update includes the following changes:

Enhancements
- Support ThinkAgile MX Best Recipe 2403
- Support BMU update type
- Enhance Labrador package support
- Fix some known issues
- Refine UI with Angular 15
- Update Windows Admin Center SDK sustainability for Azure Stack HCI 23H2
- Support Cluster-Aware Updating (CAU) in Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 V3 (7D75, 7D76, 7D77)
- Support specific packages to update in Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 V3 (7D75, 7D76, 7D77)
New software support
- Lenovo XClarity Administrator 4.1
- Lenovo XClarity Essentials OneCLI 4.4.1
- Azure Stack HCI 23H2
- Lenovo XClarity Controller 2
- Lenovo XClarity Essentials OneCLI 4.3.0
- Windows Admin Center 2311
New hardware support
- Lenovo ThinkSystem SD530 V3 (7DD3, 7DDA)
- Lenovo ThinkSystem SD550 V3 (7DD2, 7DD9)
- Lenovo ThinkSystem SR250 V3 (7DCM, 7DCL)
- Lenovo ThinkEdge SE455 V3 (7DBY)

The Lenovo XClarity Integrator extension is not currently compatible with Windows Admin Center version 2410. Support for this version is expected in the next extension version release.

HPE Server and Azure Stack HCI WAC extensions

The HPE Server and Azure Stack HCI WAC extension has been updated to version 1.9.1. This version includes the following changes:

This release makes use of HPESysInfoCmdlets version 1.6.0.1 to provide more network information for Gen11 servers and clusters.
The HPE smart array controller model in the Azure Stack HCI Storage tab will be displayed when the data is available. The prerequisites include:

1. Agentless Management Service (AMS) and HPESysInfoCmlets must be installed on each server / node. HPESysInfoCmdlets 1.6.0.1 or above is required for better performance and richer data.
2. HPENVDIMMCmdlets 2.3.0.0 or above also must be installed on systems with Persistent Memory (PMEM), for Server extension to retrieve PMEM information.

Dell APEX Cloud Platform

The Dell APEX Cloud Platform extension has been updated to version 2.3.0. This update includes the following changes:

Support for the modernized gateway framework with .NET Core
Customization of storage IP/vLAN is now available, including configuration and validation of storage network
In the Servers tab, a warning is now displayed for users attempting to add a node to cluster that is currently using an Azure proxy server
In the Updates tab, the LCM functionality now shows error messages when the current version of a component has drift from the target version in precheck

DellEMC PowerPath

The DellEMC PowerPath extension has been updated to version 2.0.0. This version includes the following enhancements:

New multiple selections for disk feature that enables the user to avoid the repetition of same steps for each disk object (ex. Selecting multiple disks and setting policies on all at once)
The following management activities can now be performed by the user:
- powermt set persist_path_info
- powermt set auto_host_registration
- powermt set path_latency_threshold
- powermt set perfmon
- Autorestore
Under configuration, the user can view array specific properties

Other extension updates

HPE Azure Stack HCI Cluster Deployment and Update Snap-in version 1.4.1 - This version includes a fix for an issue on multi-node clusters where only one node is successfully updated through CAU, support for Azure Stack HCI 23H2 with HPE ProLiant DL 380 Gen 11 Integrated System as well as HPE Gen 10/Gen10 Plus validated solutions, support for Angular 15, and support for Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) enforced mode when HPE SBE Supplemental Policy is installed.
HPE Storage version 1.1.30 - This version extends support for HPE Alletra 9000, HPE Alletra 6000, and HPE Alletra Storage MP systems.
Marvell QLogic version 2.4.0 - This version includes added support for Adapter and Port Alias, FC PowerKit installation discovery through registry entries instead of the Get-AppcPackage command, and updated dependent build components to mitigate security vulnerabilities.

Backend upgrade impact on extensions

How does the v2 build impact my extension?

Gateway plug-in extensions will be the most impacted by the changes to our backend and the migration to .NET 8. Windows Admin Center gateway plug-ins enable API communication from the UI of your tool or solution to a target node. Windows Admin Center hosts a gateway service that relays commands and scripts from gateway plug-ins to be executed on target nodes. The gateway service can be extended to include custom gateway plug-ins that support protocols other than the default ones (PowerShell and WMI).

Because gateway plug-ins communicate with Windows Admin Center’s backend to enable API communication, gateway plug-in code may include components written with the .NET framework version 4.6.2, which will not function with .NET 8. This code needs to be updated to use the .NET 8 framework.

Additionally, we’ve modified the way plug-ins work with this build. Instead of developing a C# class which implements the IPlugIn interface from the Microsoft.ManagementExperience.FeatureInterfaces namespace to extend the gateway plug-in, extensions will now be written in the form of ASP.NET MVC controllers. These controllers have increased flexibility compared to the simple C# class and extensive documentation.

Learn more about gateway plug-in development in Windows Admin Center here.

Impact on tool and/or solution extensions

Solution and tool extensions should be minimally impacted by the changes in the 2410 build. Due to updated publication requirements, many tool and solution extensions built by external partners are not yet available on the 2410 extension feed. You may continue to use these extensions by downloading them from our legacy feed and adding a local file share as an extension feed. We’re working with our partners to ensure most extensions will be available on the 2410 extension feed in the future.

Note on published extensions

The following extensions are not currently available on the 2410 extension feed:

Lenovo XClarity Integrator
HPE OneView
HPE Server extension and HPE Azure Stack HCI extension
HPE Storage manager
Fujitsu ServerView RAID
Fujitsu Software Infrastructure Manager (ISM)
Fujitsu ServerView Health
Pure Storage FlashArray

All partner teams are working diligently to make their extensions compatible with the backend upgrade. When the extensions are available, they will be added to the extension feed.

Known issues

Any users utilizing a high availability (HA) setup should not install this version with the intent to use HA. HA is not currently supported in our .NET 8 backend implementation, nor in the 2410 release. A comprehensive HA solution will be available soon.

Download today!

Phew! If you made it this far in the blog post, thank you so much for reading along! We hope you enjoy this new, modern version of Windows Admin Center and the various new functionality and new extensions now available.

Direct Download Link!

As always, thanks for your ongoing support, adoption, and feedback. Your contributions through user feedback continue to be vital and valuable to us, helping us prioritize and sequence our investments.

Windows Admin Center is continuously evolving and growing as a tool and a platform, and we are beyond thrilled to have you part of our journey.

Thank you,

Windows Admin Center Team (@servermgmt)

____________________________________________________________________________________

Public Preview of Windows Admin Center v2410 has been updated!

Davanna-White — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 21:43:56 GMT

This 2410 preview release improves upon the last Windows Admin Center 2410 Public Preview build that was released on October 16th. This build comes with new additions to the virtual machines tool, updates to the security tool, bugfixes, and more.

Thank you to our customers and partners who have provided feedback on the anticipated Windows Admin Center 2410 release so far—your insights are critical to ensuring we make Windows Admin Center better!

What's new in this build

Virtual machine tool update

We have heard your feedback and have improved the virtual machine (VM) tool experience! Our primary goal is to provide you with the list of VMs as soon as possible so you are empowered to efficiently carry out your administrative tasks. To make this easier, we’ve added a toggle in the top right corner of the Virtual machines tool that will allow you to switch between a “detailed” mode and a “light” mode.

Today, we invite you all to use the tool and share your feedback.

Highlights:  

We improved the inventory page’s responsiveness by rewriting how we load and display data; so today - clicking, hovering and scrolling is a lot better than what it used to be

The actions performed on a VM (e.g. start, pause, import move etc.) now only update the VM selected without reloading the entire table, saving customers valuable time

To prioritize loading the VM list first, certain operations are deferred until after the initial load (e.g., cluster node check)

To optimize performance, we have reduced the number of columns in the default view to show only essential information about the VM to you. Note that this can be toggled off using the “Detailed Mode” toggle to switch back to the previous experience

In default mode, we now show you the computer name of running Windows VMs and their operating system versions, we’ve categorized this information with the goal to make discovery easy for users

Additionally, the Move and Import VM features have improved! We’re happy to share with you that we have added a wizard experience that guides you through the steps for importing or moving a VM (and/or its resources). With is change, we empower you to:

Change the destination of the stored resources association with the VM different locations configurable by you - the user

Reconfigure virtual switches at the destination if needed

Provide proper validations of your VM configuration before you perform the action to move or import VM

Include better notification and progress update for users to track the status of their VM’s operation

Although we are actively still investing in these scenarios, we would like to invite you to enable these features and try it out. Remember we will like to hear from you about these features.

To enable and test these new VM management improvements, follow these steps:

Navigate to your Windows Admin Center settings by selecting the gear in the top right corner of the header.
Navigate to the “Advanced” tab.
Add the following experiment key(s):
- msft.sme.hyperv.newImportFlow
- msft.sme.hyperv.newMoveVmFlow

The first key enables the new import VM experience and the second key above enables the new move VM experience.

Security tool update

We now have a tailored security baseline for Windows Server with hundreds of security settings! It supports security best practices based on Microsoft recommended security baselines and industry best practices. Customers can apply the security baseline throughout the device lifecycle starting from initial deployment using Microsoft provided ‘PowerShell tooling’ or Windows Admin Center, supported by the new security configuration platform, ‘OSConfig’. Customers can leverage the ‘inbuilt drift control mechanism’, one of the salient features of the security configuration platform which helps ensure that the system starts and remains in a known good security state.

Apply the recommended Windows Server security baseline:

Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmark

Defense Information Systems Agency Security Technical Implementation Guides (DISA STIG)

Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS 140) requirements for the OS

Azure Compute Security baselines

Support of security baselines is intended to make it easier for customers to help meet their compliance and regulatory requirements.

You can learn more about all the new Windows Server 2025 security features and updates here: Windows Server 2025 security book.

Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) extension is now in preview!

We are happy to announce we now have a Windows LAPS tool in Windows Admin Center! Now, you can use Windows LAPS to manage your passwords on your LAPS enabled machines within the domain. With this tool, you can reveal and copy passwords of a given machine. You can also view the corresponding password expiration time and update the time stamp. You can also set the expiration time and reset passwords for multiple machines at a time, making password management and authentication more secure, simple, and efficient.

Bugfixes

The following fixes have been made since the last preview release:

Resolved issue where Azure Arc status call on All connections page would fail if you were viewing only cluster connections

Resolved issue where the data table search bar in multiple tools was hanging

Resolved issue of clusters being added to both Shared connections and personal connections after completing add Shared connections workflow

Several bugfixes in the virtual machines tool

Download today!

We hope you enjoy this latest update of Windows Admin Center, all the new features, and all the extensions!

Direct download link here!

As always, thanks for your ongoing support, adoption, and feedback. Your contributions through user feedback continue to be vital and valuable to us, helping us prioritize and sequence our investments.

Windows Admin Center is continuously evolving and growing as a tool and a platform, and we are beyond thrilled to have you part of our journey.

Thank you,

Windows Admin Center Team (@servermgmt)

Windows Admin Center version 2410 is now in Public Preview!

Davanna-White — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 23:49:10 GMT

Announcing Public Preview of Windows Admin Center v2410

This 2410 preview release builds on top of the latest modernized gateway Public Preview build that was released July 29th. This build comes with new additions to the virtual machines tool and bug fixes.

As always, thank you to our customers, partners, and fans. Your continued support of Windows Admin Center has been critical to its continued success.

A couple important notes on this preview version of Windows Admin Center:

This build is a preview version and is not recommended for installation in production environments.

This preview version cannot install side-by-side with the last GA release (version 2311) or any of the previous releases. Once you install this build and migrate your user data and environment configurations, you will not be able to go back.

Any users utilizing a high availability (HA) setup should not install this preview version with the intent to use HA. HA is not currently supported in our v2 backend implementation, nor in the 2410 public preview release.

What's new in this build

Upgrade to .NET Core  

In this release, we have upgraded our backend again, from the .NET Core 6 to .NET Core 8, bringing enhanced security and improved cryptography to our product. This also includes support for HTTP 2, reducing latency and enhancing the responsiveness of Windows Admin Center. Combined with improved performance, providing faster load times, you’ll be able to get your tasks done more quickly and efficiently.

Virtual machine tool update

Today, we invite you all to enable this feature, use the tool, and share your feedback. 

Highlights:  

The VM Power operations (e.g. start, pause etc.) now only update the VM selected without reloading the entire table, saving customers valuable time 
To optimize responsiveness (e.g., clicking, hovering and scrolling), we have removed the runtime pipeline. 
To prioritize loading the VM list first, certain operations are deferred until after the initial load (e.g., cluster node check) 
To optimize performance, we have reduced the number of columns in the default view. Note that this can be toggled off using the “Detailed Mode” toggle to switch back to the previous experience  
In default mode, we list the computer name of running Windows VMs and their operating system versions

Updated installer 

While modernizing our gateway, we also made the installer more flexible by providing increased customization options including network access settings, selecting trusted hosts, providing a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for your gateway machine, and more. For more details about the installer, read on to the Installing the 2410 public preview build section.  

Data migration

To ensure that your user and environment data is transferred over, we have implemented a data migration flow so that you will seamlessly transition to the new build. All of your data will be copied over, except for 4 items that will require user intervention. For more details about the installer, read on to the Migrating your data section.

Settings update

As part of our gateway modernization effort, you may notice that your Windows Admin Center settings look a little bit different.

As we discussed in the 2211 Windows Admin Center release, we have deprecated the in-app update experience and have consequently removed the settings blade for Updates. Additionally, the Access and Shared Connections blades are now available on local gateway installations (also known as “desktop mode” in legacy gateway builds).

Multi-process, microservice based

This build also leverages microservice architecture. Prior to this upgrade, Windows Admin Center performed all tasks in a single process. With our new model, we start one process for Windows Admin Center on application startup that serves as a process manager. As you use Windows Admin Center, additional sub-processes are spun up to perform specific tasks.

Additionally, gateway plug-ins that are compatible with this build will also run their own collection of sub-processes under the Windows Admin Center service manager to perform their functions.

Changing from a monolithic service to a microservice model helps Windows Admin Center be more flexible, scalable, and resilient.

Kestrel HTTP web server

Previously, Windows Admin Center utilized Katana components, including a web server, on the backend. With this build, we’ve shifted to an ASP.NET Core Kestrel web server.

Kestrel is the recommended web server for ASP.NET Core applications. Kestrel is:

High performing: Kestrel is optimized to handle a large number of concurrent connections efficiently.

Lightweight: Optimized for running in resource-constrained environments, such as containers and edge devices.

Security hardened: Kestrel supports HTTPS and is hardened against web server vulnerabilities.

Switching to a Kestrel web server will also allow for Windows Admin Center to potentially enable cross-platform support in the future.

How does this build impact my extension?

Gateway plug-in extensions will be impacted by the changes to this build. Windows Admin Center gateway plug-ins enable API communication from the UI of your tool or solution to a target node. Windows Admin Center hosts a gateway service that relays commands and scripts from gateway plug-ins to be executed on target nodes. The gateway service can be extended to include custom gateway plug-ins that support protocols other than the default ones (PowerShell and WMI).

Because gateway plug-ins communicate with Windows Admin Center’s backend to enable API communication, gateway plug-in code may include components written with the .NET framework version 4.6.2, which will not function with .NET Core. This code needs to be updated to use the .NET Core framework.

Additionally, we’ve modified the way plug-ins work with this build. Instead of developing a C# class which implements the IPlugIn interface from the Microsoft.ManagementExperience.FeatureInterfaces namespace to extend the gateway plug-in, extensions will now be written in the form of ASP.NET MVC controllers. These controllers have increased flexibility compared to the simple C# class and extensive documentation.

Learn more about gateway plug-in development in Windows Admin Center here.

What about my tool and/or solution extension?

Solution and tool extensions do not communicate with Windows Admin Center’s backend in-depth and should be minimally impacted by this build. We strongly recommend testing your extension to ensure it continues to run smoothly on the new backend.

Installing the 2410 public preview build

With the 2410 public preview, we’ve made changes to our installer to offer more flexibility to the user. When running the installer, you will be presented with two different installation modes: express setup and custom setup.

Express setup

The express setup option does not allow for the configuration of the following features:

Login authentication mode
Host access network names
Internal and external network ports
Certificate type and thumbprint
Endpoint FQDN
Trusted hosts mode
WinRM over HTTPS

If you would like to configure any of these features, please use the custom setup option instead.

Custom setup

Selecting custom setup allows you to configure all Windows Admin Center setup options:

Network access – This page allows you to select how you will be using Windows Admin Center. You may choose to restrict Windows Admin Center access to other users by selecting localhost access only or allow remote access through machine name of FQDN.
Port numbers – This page allows you to select the ports that will be reserved for Windows Admin Center. Windows Admin Center uses one external port for its primary processes. Other processes use internal ports. There are two internal processes by default, but extensions may define their own services that will require port access. By default, the internal range is 10 ports.
Select TLS certificate – This page allows you to select Self-Signed certificates or an official TLS certificate that Windows Admin Center should use. Self-Signed certificates include Self-signed CA root certificates and TLS certificates that work with the latest Edge/Chrome browser.
Fully qualified domain name – This page allows you to provide a fully qualified domain name for network access. This name must match the name on the TLS certificate.
Trusted hosts – This page allows you to select which type of remote hosts you’d like to manage. You may choose to manage only trusted domain computers or allow access to non-domain joined machines.
WinRM over HTTPS - This page allows you to select whether to use HTTPS for WinRM communication. WinRM communicates over HTTP by default.

Troubleshooting installation

If your installation failed, or you’re having trouble opening Windows Admin Center after install, you may need to uninstall and reinstall. This can also happen if you have an older version of a Gateway v2 preview build installed, and you are trying to update to a newer version. To uninstall, follow the instructions in the Uninstalling and cleanup section of this document.

Migrating your data

Once you have installed the 2410 public preview, much of your transferable data is automatically copied over to the new build, reducing the time it takes for you to get started. However, there are four items that will require your input on:

Proxy credentials
WebSocket Origin configuration
Azure registration
Extensions

You will only have to do this once. Once your data is fully migrated, future releases of Windows Admin Center will have the seamless update experience you know and love.

Proxy credentials

WebSocket Origin configuration

If you had previously configured WebSocket Origins, you can review and edit them here. To get you started, we have imported the WebSocket Origins list from your previous Windows Admin Center setup.

Azure registration

You will need the elevated permissions on this Azure subscription to perform this re-registration.

Extensions

The extension feed for the 2410 public preview is not currently fully configured. You may notice missing extensions from this Windows Admin Center instance, including extensions not installed by default on install and ones you may have installed from your own feed or from external partners. As of right now, this page is read-only. We’re working with our internal and external partners to ensure that all extensions are compatible. These extensions should be available soon.

Review + complete

You will not be allowed to use Windows Admin Center unless you complete these steps.

Uninstalling the 2410 public preview build

To uninstall, perform one of the following actions:

In the Apps & Features page of your gateway machine settings, select Windows Admin Center (v2) Preview from the program list and then select uninstall.
Navigate to the folder where the Windows Admin Center (v2) is installed (default directory is C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Windows Admin Center (v2)) and select “Uninstall Windows Admin Center (v2)”
Run C:\Program Files\WindowsAdminCenter\unins000.exe

During the uninstallation process, everything put on the machine during installation will be removed, except for the Windows Admin Center (v2) .exe installer file.

FAQs

Q: Can you install the 2410 public preview build (Windows Admin Center (v2)) when you already have an existing build of Windows Admin Center installed?

A: No, you cannot install a v2 build of Windows Admin Center side-by-side with a legacy gateway build. Installing this preview build will prompt you to migrate your user data and configuration settings, and after this is complete, you will not be able to go back to a legacy build without fully uninstalling.

Q: Can I change the ports my Windows Admin Center installation is using after install?

A: Yes, In the Program Files for Windows Admin Center, we’ve included a PowerShell module called Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter.Configuration.psm1. This module allows you to modify your Windows Admin Center configuration after installation and can be found in the PowerShellModules folder of your installation (C:\Program Files\WindowsAdminCenter\PowerShellModules\ by default).

To change the ports Windows Admin Center is using, run the following command:

Set-WACHttpsPort -Wacport <port> -ServicePortRangeStart <port> -ServicePortRangeEnd <port>

Q: Changing the ports is great, but can I change other configuration settings after install?

A: Yes! You may use the PowerShell module Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter.Configuration.psm1 to change your configuration settings. It can be found in the PowerShellModules folder of your installation.

Known issues

The account for the PowerShell session in the PowerShell tool always defaults to the user signed into the Windows Admin Center gateway, even if different management credentials were specified when remoting to a connection.

The extension feed for this build has not been configured. Extensions not included in the Windows Admin Center installer (including external partner extensions) will not be available unless you add an extension feed. Even with an added feed, the following extensions do not currently function with the v2 build:

Dell OpenManage
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure
Lenovo XClarity Integrator
HPE OneView
HPE Server extension and HPE Azure Stack HCI extension
HPE Storage manager
Fujitsu ServerView RAID
Fujitsu Software Infrastructure Manager (ISM)
Fujitsu ServerView Health
Pure Storage FlashArray

The extension feed will be available in the generally available release and will include all extensions that are compatible with the 2410 preview build.

Other known issues include:

High availability configurations are not supported in this build.
Azure Arc status on the All Connections page may not successfully load if all connections are clusters.
When using the new Hyper-V preview mode feature in the Virtual Machines tool, inventory may load improperly when navigating between clusters and servers.

Download today!

We hope you enjoy this latest update of Windows Admin Center, the various new functionality in preview, and all the extensions now available.

Direct download link here!

As always, thanks for your ongoing support, adoption, and feedback. Your contributions through user feedback continue to be vital and valuable to us, helping us prioritize and sequence our investments.

Windows Admin Center is continuously evolving and growing as a tool and a platform, and we are beyond thrilled to have you part of our journey.

Thank you,

Windows Admin Center Team (@servermgmt)

Windows Admin Center (v2) Public Preview build has been updated!

Theo_Tran — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 17:10:46 GMT

It’s been seven months since we released the last Public Preview for our “Modernized Gateway” (known as v2) -- today, we’re updating the Public Preview build with new functionality and bug fixes. As we get closer to officially releasing this version to general availability (GA), we want to hear from you first so that we proactively address any feedback you may have!

Please note that this is still a Public Preview version of Windows Admin Center, so it is not recommended to install this build in your production environment. This preview version will no longer be able to be installed side-by-side with the last GA release (version 2311, or any of the previous releases). Once you install this build and migrate your user data and environment configurations, you will not be able to go back.

We’ve been working behind the scenes to ensure that Windows Admin Center is up-to-date, secure, and reliable. We suggest experienced users of Windows Admin Center and Windows Admin Center developers give this new build a try. Read on to learn about the new features and updates!

What's new in this v2 build

Upgrade to .NET Core

Virtual machine tool update

Today, we invite you all to enable this feature, use the tool, and share your feedback.

Highlights:

The VM Power operations (e.g. start, pause etc.) now only update the VM selected without reloading the entire table, saving customers valuable time

To optimize responsiveness (e.g., clicking, hovering and scrolling), we have removed the runtime pipeline.

To prioritize loading the VM list first, certain operations are deferred until after the initial load (e.g., cluster node check)

To optimize performance, we have reduced the columns in the default view. Note that this can be toggled off using the “Detailed Mode” toggle to switch back to the previous experience

A new streamlined Azure Site Recovery integration experience for users

How to enable the feature

Navigate to your Windows Admin Center settings by selecting the gear in the top right corner of the header.
Navigate to the “Advanced” tab.
Add the following experiment key: msft.sme.hyperv.hyperVPreviewMode

Updated installer

Data migration

To ensure that your user and environment data is transferred over, we have implemented a data migration flow so that you will seamlessly transition to the new v2 build. All of your data will be copied over, except for 4 items that will require user intervention. For more details about the installer, read on to the Migrating your data section.

Settings update

As part of our gateway modernization effort, you may notice that your Windows Admin Center settings look a little bit different.

Multi-process, micro-service based

The v2 build also leverages microservice architecture. Prior to this upgrade, Windows Admin Center performed all tasks in a single process. With our new model, we start one process for Windows Admin Center on application startup that serves as a process manager. As you use Windows Admin Center, additional sub-processes are spun up to perform specific tasks.

Additionally, gateway plug-ins that are compatible with the v2 build will also run their own collection of sub-processes under the Windows Admin Center service manager to perform their functions.

Changing from a monolithic service to a microservice model helps our v2 build be more flexible, scalable, and resilient.

Kestrel HTTP web server

Previously, Windows Admin Center utilized Katana components, including a web server, on the backend. With the v2 build, we’ve shifted to an ASP.NET Core Kestrel web server.

Kestrel is the recommended web server for ASP.NET Core applications. Kestrel is:

High performing: Kestrel is optimized to handle a large number of concurrent connections efficiently.
Lightweight: Optimized for running in resource-constrained environments, such as containers and edge devices.
Security hardened: Kestrel supports HTTPS and is hardened against web server vulnerabilities.

Switching to a Kestrel web server will also allow for Windows Admin Center to potentially enable cross-platform support in the future.

How does the v2 build impact my extension?

Gateway plug-in extensions will be the most impacted by the changes to our v2 build. Windows Admin Center gateway plug-ins enable API communication from the UI of your tool or solution to a target node. Windows Admin Center hosts a gateway service that relays commands and scripts from gateway plug-ins to be executed on target nodes. The gateway service can be extended to include custom gateway plug-ins that support protocols other than the default ones (PowerShell and WMI).

Because gateway plug-ins communicate with Windows Admin Center’s backend to enable API communication, gateway plug-in code may include components written with the .NET framework version 4.6.2, which will not function with .NET Core. This code needs to be updated to use the .NET Core framework.

Additionally, we’ve modified the way plug-ins work with our v2 build. Instead of developing a C# class which implements the IPlugIn interface from the Microsoft.ManagementExperience.FeatureInterfaces namespace to extend the gateway plug-in, extensions will now be written in the form of ASP.NET MVC controllers. These controllers have increased flexibility compared to the simple C# class and extensive documentation.

Learn more about gateway plug-in development in Windows Admin Center here.

What about my tool and/or solution extension?

Solution and tool extensions do not communicate with Windows Admin Center’s backend in-depth and should be minimally impacted by the v2 build. We strongly recommend testing your extension to ensure it continues to run smoothly on the new backend.

Installing the v2 build

With our v2 build, we’ve made changes to our installer to offer more flexibility to the user.

When running the installer, you will be presented with three different installation modes: express localhost setup, express remote setup, and custom setup.

Express setup options

Two of the three installation modes for the v2 build are express modes—express localhost setup and express remote setup.

Both express setup options do not allow for the configuration of the following features:

Login authentication mode
Host access network names
Internal and external network ports
Certificate type and thumbprint
Endpoint FQDN
Trusted hosts mode
WinRM over HTTPS

If you would like to configure any of these features, please use the custom setup option instead.

If you select the express localhost setup option, WAC will be accessible through port 6600 and will use internal ports 6601-6610.

If you select the express remote setup option, WAC will be accessible through port 443 and will use internal ports 6601-6610.

Custom setup

Selecting custom setup allows you to configure all Windows Admin Center setup options:

Network access – This page allows you to select how you will be using Windows Admin Center. You may choose to restrict WAC access to other users by selecting localhost access only or allow remote access through machine name of FQDN.
Port numbers – This page allows you to select the ports that will be reserved for Windows Admin Center. WAC uses one external port for its primary processes. Other processes use internal ports. There are two internal processes by default, but extensions may define their own services that will require port access. By default, the internal range is 10 ports.
Select TLS certificate – This page allows you to select Self-Signed certificates or an official TLS certificate that Windows Admin Center should use. Self-Signed certificates include Self-signed CA root certificates and TLS certificates that work with the latest Edge/Chrome browser.
Fully qualified domain name – This page allows you to provide a fully qualified domain name for network access. This name must match the name on the TLS certificate.
Trusted hosts – This page allows you to select which type of remote hosts you’d like to manage. You may choose to manage only trusted domain computers or allow access to non-domain joined machines.
WinRM over HTTPS - This page allows you to select whether to use HTTPS for WinRM communication. WinRM communicates over HTTP by default.

Troubleshooting installation

If your installation failed, or you’re having trouble opening WAC after install, you may need to uninstall and reinstall. This can also happen if you have an older version of a v2 build installed, and you are trying to update to a newer version. To uninstall, follow the instructions in the Uninstalling and cleanup section of this document.

Migrating your data

Once you have installed the v2 build, much of your transferable data is automatically copied over to the new build, reducing the time it takes for you to get started. However, there are four items that will require your input on:

Proxy credentials
WebSocket Origin configuration
Azure registration
Extensions

You will only have to do this once. Once your data is fully migrated, future releases of Windows Admin Center will have the seamless update experience you know and love.

Proxy credentials

WebSocket Origin configuration

If you had previously configured WebSocket Origins, you can review and edit them here. To get you started, we have imported the WebSocket Origins list from your previous Windows Admin Center setup.

Azure registration

You will need the elevated permissions on this Azure subscription to perform this re-registration.

Extensions

The extension feed for v2 builds is not currently fully configured. You may notice missing extensions from this Windows Admin Center instance, including extensions not installed by default on install and ones you may have installed from your own feed or from external partners. As of right now, this page is read-only. We’re working with our internal and external partners to ensure that all extensions are compatible with v2—these extensions will be available soon.

Review + complete

You will not be allowed to use Windows Admin Center unless you complete these steps.

Uninstalling the v2 build

To uninstall the Windows Admin Center (v2), perform one of the following actions:

In the Apps & Features page of your gateway machine settings, select Windows Admin Center (v2) Preview from the program list and then select uninstall.
Navigate to the folder where the Windows Admin Center (v2)is installed (default directory is C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Windows Admin Center (v2)) and select “Uninstall Windows Admin Center (v2)”
Run C:\Program Files\WindowsAdminCenter\unins000.exe

During the uninstallation process, everything put on the machine during installation will be removed, except for the Windows Admin Center (v2) .exe installer file. If you have another build of Windows Admin Center also installed at the time of your v2 build uninstallation, no files or properties of the other build will be touched during the uninstallation process. There are no interdependencies between the two installations.

FAQs

Q: Can you install a build of Windows Admin Center (v2) when you already have an existing build of Windows Admin Center installed?

A: No, you cannot. Once you install this build and migrate your data over, you will not be able to run the legacy build of Windows Admin Center since they use the same ports.

Q: Can I change the ports my Windows Admin Center installation is using after install?

A: Yes, In the Program Files for Windows Admin Center, we’ve included a PowerShell module called Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter.Configuration.psm1. This module allows you to modify your WAC configuration after installation and can be found in the PowerShellModules folder of your installation (C:\Program Files\WindowsAdminCenter\PowerShellModules\ by default).

To change the ports WAC is using, run the following command:

Set-WACHttpsPort -Wacport <port> -ServicePortRangeStart <port> -ServicePortRangeEnd <port>

Q: Changing the ports is great, but can I change other configuration settings after install?

A: Yes! You may use the PowerShell module Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter.Configuration.psm1 to change your configuration settings. It can be found in the PowerShellModules folder of your installation.

Q: Why aren’t all these changes just in the 2311 release?

A: To ensure the best quality experience, we require customer and developer feedback before these changes are generally available.

Q: Are all the features in the 2311 release available in this build?

Known issues

The extension feed for the v2 build has not been configured. Extensions not included in the Windows Admin Center installer (including external partner extensions) will not be available unless you add an extension feed. Even with an added feed, the following extensions do not currently function with the v2 build:

Dell OpenManage
Lenovo XClarity Integrator
HPE OneView
HPE Server extension and HPE Azure Stack HCI extension
HPE Storage manager
Fujitsu ServerView RAID
Fujitsu Software Infrastructure Manager (ISM)
Fujitsu ServerView Health
Pure Storage FlashArray

Looking forward

Please be on the lookout later this year for our next GA release. It will include even more features for Hyper-V, several Windows Server 2025 exclusive features, and will be the most performant build of Windows Admin Center to date!

Download now!

We hope you enjoy this new, modern version of Windows Admin Center and the various new functionality in preview.

Direct Download Link!

Windows Admin Center is continuously evolving and growing as a tool and a platform, and we are beyond thrilled to have you part of our journey.

Thank you,

Windows Admin Center Team (@servermgmt)

Announcing Windows Admin Center in Azure for Windows Client machines

Prasidh_Arora — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 16:00:00 GMT

In 2022, we introduced Windows Admin Center in Azure, making it easy for you to manage your Windows Server Azure VMs directly from the Azure Portal. Since its release, we’ve been overwhelmed by the positive response and feature requests we’ve received. Over the last 2 years, we expanded to support Azure Arc-enabled Windows Servers and Azure Stack HCI clusters, providing you access to Windows Admin Center for your on-premises machines without. We’ve heard you and added secure, password-less authentication, giving you single sign-on using your Entra ID credentials. We also increased the performance by over 50% leveraging Azure Front Door as our content delivery network. We continue to release every month, providing you with new experiences, updates, and bug fixes.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Windows Admin Center in Azure is expanding to also support Windows 10/11 machines. When you’re running Windows 10/11 as an Azure VM, you will be able to use Windows Admin Center in Azure to manage your client machines directly from the Azure Portal. By default, the Azure Portal provides a singular view for virtual machine management and the essential elements to manage your infrastructure. With the addition of Windows Admin Center, we have supplemented this great experience with additional capabilities such as an enhanced view of virtual machine usage, performance monitoring, viewing of events, and much more. We expect this to reduce the need for you to remote desktop into your virtual machine for administration, simplifying your experience as you deploy and maintain your client machines.

Get started with Windows Admin Center

Windows Admin Center in Azure is available to all Windows client customers on Azure running Windows 10/11 in the public cloud. To get started, create a new virtual machine today or deploy Windows Admin Center on your existing infrastructure. You can begin managing your virtual machines in Azure using Windows Admin Center by navigating to the Windows Admin Center blade under Connect in the Virtual Machine Azure portal UI. You can learn more here.

Thank you for using Windows Admin Center in Azure and stay tuned for more updates and features coming soon.

Windows Admin Center "Modernized Gateway" is now in Public Preview!

Theo_Tran — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 22:28:20 GMT

Today, we release an upgraded version of Windows Admin Center to public preview. This is in addition to our latest generally available release, Windows Admin Center version 2311. These two versions of Windows Admin Center can be installed side-by-side, allowing you to get a taste of what’s coming in Windows Admin Center without sacrificing your existing setups.

We’ve been working behind the scenes to ensure that Windows Admin Center is up-to-date, secure, and reliable. We suggest experienced users of Windows Admin Center and Windows Admin Center developers give this build a try. Read on to find out what the modernized gateway is and all the exciting new performance, extensibility, and security features we’re now leveraging!

What's new in the modernized gateway

Upgrade to .NET Core

The Windows Admin Center frontend UI is built on Angular, which is in turn built on our shell. The shell hosts all the core services and most of our UI components, our solutions like server and cluster manager, and, on top of that, every extension that you use for server management.

Our front end interacts with our backend, which is also known as our gateway. The gateway hosts our authorization structure, our PS services, our gateway plug-ins, and plays a critical role in every single experience that you use in Windows Admin Center.

In this release, we’re upgrading our backend from the .NET 4.6.2 framework upgrade to .NET Core, bringing enhanced security and improved cryptography to our product. This also includes support for HTTP 2, reducing latency and enhancing the responsiveness of Windows Admin Center. Combined with improved performance, providing faster load times, you’ll be able to get your tasks done more quickly and efficiently.

Updated installer

While modernizing our gateway, we also made the installer more flexible by providing increased customization options including network access settings, selecting trusted hosts, providing a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for your gateway machine, and more. For more details about the installer, read on to the Installing the modernized gateway section.

Settings update

As part of our gateway modernization effort, you may notice that your Windows Admin Center settings look a little bit different.

Multi-process, micro-service based

The modernized gateway also leverages microservice architecture. Prior to this upgrade, Windows Admin Center performed all tasks in a single process. With our new model, we start one process for Windows Admin Center on application startup that serves as a process manager. As you use Windows Admin Center, additional sub-processes are spun up to perform specific tasks.

Additionally, gateway plug-ins that are compatible with the modernized gateway will also run their own collection of sub-processes under the Windows Admin Center service manager to perform their functions.

Changing from a monolithic service to a microservice model helps our modernized gateway be more flexible, scalable, and resilient.

Kestrel HTTP web server

Previously, Windows Admin Center utilized Katana components, including a web server, on the backend. With the modernized gateway, we’ve shifted to an ASP.NET Core Kestrel web server.

Kestrel is the recommended web server for ASP.NET Core applications. Kestrel is:

High performing: Kestrel is optimized to handle a large number of concurrent connections efficiently.
Lightweight: Optimized for running in resource-constrained environments, such as containers and edge devices.
Security hardened: Kestrel supports HTTPS and is hardened against web server vulnerabilities.

Switching to a Kestrel web server will also allow for Windows Admin Center to potentially enable cross-platform support in the future.

How does the modernized gateway impact my extension?

Gateway plug-in extensions will be the most impacted by the changes to our modernized gateway. Windows Admin Center gateway plug-ins enable API communication from the UI of your tool or solution to a target node. Windows Admin Center hosts a gateway service that relays commands and scripts from gateway plug-ins to be executed on target nodes. The gateway service can be extended to include custom gateway plug-ins that support protocols other than the default ones (PowerShell and WMI).

Because gateway plug-ins communicate with Windows Admin Center’s backend to enable API communication, gateway plug-in code may include components written with the .NET framework version 4.6.2, which will not function with .NET Core. This code needs to be updated to use the .NET Core framework.

Additionally, we’ve modified the way plug-ins work with our modernized gateway. Instead of developing a C# class which implements the IPlugIn interface from the Microsoft.ManagementExperience.FeatureInterfaces namespace to extend the gateway plug-in, extensions will now be written in the form of ASP.NET MVC controllers. These controllers have increased flexibility compared to the simple C# class and extensive documentation.

Learn more about gateway plug-in development in Windows Admin Center here.

What about my tool and/or solution extension?

Solution and tool extensions do not communicate with Windows Admin Center’s backend in-depth and should be minimally impacted by the modernized gateway. We strongly recommend testing your extension to ensure it continues to run smoothly on the new backend.

Installing the modernized gateway

With our modernized gateway, we’ve made changes to our installer to offer more flexibility to the user.

When running the installer, you will be presented with three different installation modes: express localhost setup, express remote setup, and custom setup.

Express setup options

Two of the three installation modes for the modernized gateway are express modes—express localhost setup and express remote setup.

Both express setup options do not allow for the configuration of the following features:

Login authentication mode
Host access network names
Internal and external network ports
Certificate type and thumbprint
Endpoint FQDN
Trusted hosts mode
WinRM over HTTPS

If you would like to configure any of these features, please use the custom setup option instead.

If you select the express localhost setup option, WAC will be accessible through port 6600 and will use internal ports 6601-6610.

If you select the express remote setup option, WAC will be accessible through port 443 and will use internal ports 6601-6610.

Custom setup

Selecting custom setup allows you to configure all Windows Admin Center setup options:

Network access – This page allows you to select how you will be using Windows Admin Center. You may choose to restrict WAC access to other users by selecting localhost access only or allow remote access through machine name of FQDN.
Port numbers – This page allows you to select the ports that will be reserved for Windows Admin Center. WAC uses one external port for its primary processes. Other processes use internal ports. There are two internal processes by default, but extensions may define their own services that will require port access. By default, the internal range is 10 ports.
Select TLS certificate – This page allows you to select Self-Signed certificates or an official TLS certificate that Windows Admin Center should use. Self-Signed certificates include Self-signed CA root certificates and TLS certificates that work with the latest Edge/Chrome browser.
Fully qualified domain name – This page allows you to provide a fully qualified domain name for network access. This name must match the name on the TLS certificate.
Trusted hosts – This page allows you to select which type of remote hosts you’d like to manage. You may choose to manage only trusted domain computers or allow access to non-domain joined machines.
WinRM over HTTPS - This page allows you to select whether to use HTTPS for WinRM communication. WinRM communicates over HTTP by default.

Troubleshooting installation

If your installation failed, or you’re having trouble opening WAC after install, you may need to uninstall and reinstall. This can also happen if you have an older version of a modernized gateway build installed, and you are trying to update to a newer version. To uninstall, follow the instructions in the Uninstalling and cleanup section of this document.

Uninstalling the modernized gateway

To uninstall the Windows Admin Center modernized gateway, perform one of the following actions:

In the Apps & Features page of your gateway machine settings, select Windows Admin Center (v2) Preview from the program list and then select uninstall.
Navigate to the folder where the Windows Admin Center modernized gateway is installed (default directory is C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Windows Admin Center (v2)) and select “Uninstall Windows Admin Center (v2)”
Run C:\Program Files\WindowsAdminCenter\unins000.exe

During the uninstallation process, everything put on the machine during installation will be removed, except for the Windows Admin Center modernized gateway .exe installer file. If you have another build of Windows Admin Center also installed at the time of your modernized gateway uninstallation, no files or properties of the other build will be touched during the uninstallation process. There are no interdependencies between the two installations.

FAQs

Q: Can you install a build of Windows Admin Center with the modernized gateway when you already have an existing build of Windows Admin Center installed?

A: Yes, you can install a modernized gateway build of Windows Admin Center side-by-side with a legacy gateway build as long as you do not choose the same ports for both installations.

Q: Can I change the ports my Windows Admin Center installation is using after install?

A: Yes, In the Program Files for Windows Admin Center, we’ve included a PowerShell module called Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter.Configuration.psm1. This module allows you to modify your WAC configuration after installation and can be found in the PowerShellModules folder of your installation (C:\Program Files\WindowsAdminCenter\PowerShellModules\ by default).

To change the ports WAC is using, run the following command:

Set-WACHttpsPort -Wacport <port> -ServicePortRangeStart <port> -ServicePortRangeEnd <port>

Q: Changing the ports is great, but can I change other configuration settings after install?

A: Yes! You may use the PowerShell module Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter.Configuration.psm1 to change your configuration settings. It can be found in the PowerShellModules folder of your installation.

Q: Why aren’t all these changes just in the 2311 release?

A: To ensure the best quality experience, we require customer and developer feedback before these changes are generally available.

Q: Are all the features in the 2311 release available in this build?

Known issues

The extension feed for the modernized gateway has not been configured. Extensions not included in the Windows Admin Center installer (including external partner extensions) will not be available unless you add an extension feed. Even with an added feed, the following extensions do not currently function with the modernized gateway:

Dell OpenManage
Lenovo XClarity Integrator
Fujitsu ServerView RAID
Fujitsu Software Infrastructure Manager (ISM)
Fujitsu ServerView Health
Pure Storage FlashArray

Download today!

We hope you enjoy this new, modern version of Windows Admin Center and the various new functionality in preview. Learn more and download today!

Windows Admin Center is continuously evolving and growing as a tool and a platform, and we are beyond thrilled to have you part of our journey.

Thank you,

Windows Admin Center Team (@servermgmt)

Windows Admin Center version 2311 is now generally available!

Davanna-White — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 18:19:43 GMT

March 22nd, 2024 update: This minor build update makes quality improvements for the remote desktop tool and Azure Arc onboarding. If you are having challenges with these scenarios, please ensure you are using this build (1.5.2403.08001). Click here to download.

February 13th, 2024 update: This minor build update makes quality improvements for localization and Azure Arc onboarding. If you are having challenges with these scenarios, please ensure you are using this build (1.5.2402.08001).

Today, we share our newest release of Windows Admin Center – version 2311. There are improvements to some of our most used tools including Virtual Machines, Server Overview, and Updates. We also created new experiences around Azure hybrid services like Azure Arc and Azure Migrate! Please join us in our excitement about the new features we’re introducing.

A big thank you to our customers, partners, and fans for helping us to continue to improve and make Windows Admin Center better.

Happy holidays!

What's new in Windows Admin Center v2311

Platform updates

Azure Arc onboarding at-scale

Azure Arc-enabled servers empower you to manage Windows physical servers and virtual machines hosted outside of Azure using the Azure control plane. Windows Admin Center provides an Azure Arc onboarding experience through our Azure hybrid center. New in this release, we’ve extended this experience and made it available on our All Connections page—the first page you see when you open Windows Admin Center. Now you can select multiple servers and, with a few simple clicks, onboard them to Azure Arc all at once.

As a part of this experience, we’ve also added a column to the All Connections page that displays the Azure Arc status of your machines, allowing you to take quick inventory of your hybrid connections the moment you open Windows Admin Center. If you’re not sure what a status means, you can select it to view more details without leaving the page. This status updates every fifteen minutes, ensuring that you always have up-to-date information.

This experience does not currently support onboarding of the cluster connection type. Additionally, Azure VM connections do not need to be onboarded to Azure Arc for Servers, as they are already connected to Azure. To onboard servers to Azure Arc or view their status, your Windows Admin Center gateway must be registered with Azure.

Platform Angular upgrades

In Windows Admin Center, every tool, every solution, and every experience that you use and see is built on Angular. Angular plays a critical role in each management task that you perform. In this release, Windows Admin Center takes a big step forward with an upgrade of our platform, from Angular 11 to Angular 15, bringing you the latest in Angular platform security and performance. You can expect improved load times and a smoother experience in this build of Windows Admin Center.

Note that not all extensions have been updated to use Angular 15 in this release. Extensions built on Angular 11 continue to be backwards compatible.

Developers looking to upgrade their Windows Admin Center extension can now do so using the built in command in our latest SDK version. We’ve also updated our documentation with step-by-step instructions on how to upgrade.

UI updates

We're excited to announce a series of UI updates to Windows Admin Center, bringing it closer to Azure Portal. Pivots have been redesigned, and typography improved with updated font sizes and semi-bold headings. Form components are now 24 pixels in height, and buttons with text have adopted Azure styles. We expect these refinements to enhance usability and align with the elegance of the Azure Portal.

Tool updates

Virtual Machines

Virtual Machine management is a key component in day-to-day infrastructure management. For this release, we focused on the Import VM functionality. We’ve enabled the reconfiguration of virtual switches on destination hosts where there are incompatible virtual switches. To further improve the import experience, we’ve also clarified some of the common failure notifications.

We encourage you to use the tool, provide feedback on your experiences, and let us know what additional features you would like to see in the future.

Server Overview

The server Overview tool has been a staple for IT administrators to get a bird’s eye view of their server’s health. This tool provides key insights into your server’s CPU usage, memory utilization, networking throughput and much more. Our team is dedicated to ensuring that this experience continues to provide value to you, our customers. To that end, we have made several improvements to this tool based on your feedback.

These improvements come in 2 parts, (1) error consolidation and (2) error messaging improvements.

We have heard your feedback about errors in the Overview tool. We have updated the underlying logic to handle certain scenarios, improving the meaning and relevance of these errors.

The second set of improvements are the error messages themselves. We have heard your feedback about certain errors being unreadable, unactionable, and even confusing at times. We have done a lot of work, collaborating with the design team and user researchers here at Microsoft, to ensure that the error messages are more readable with 3 key things in mind: (1) what went wrong, (2) what caused it, if relevant, and (3) how to fix it.

Azure Migrate

Azure Migrate provides a simplified migration, modernization, and optimization service for Azure, including ways to assess the benefits of Azure migration of your machines.

In this release, we’ve introduced a new experience in the Virtual Machines tool for assessing your Hyper-V VMs for migration to Azure. With just a few clicks, you can generate both an assessment and business case to fully understand what a migration to Azure means for you.

With an assessment, you assess your on-premises workloads to measure cloud readiness, identify risks, and estimate costs and complexity. A business case helps you build a business proposal to understand how Azure can bring the most value to your business—it includes information like on-premises vs Azure total cost of ownership, resource utilization-based insights to identify servers and workloads that are ideal for cloud, and more.

Learn more about Azure Migrate

Updates tool now available for Windows Client!

Ensuring everything is up to date is vital for the security and integrity of your system. While many servers are managed through Windows Admin Center, client management is also possible, and these machines should also be kept up to date. We understand that an update experience for Windows client in Windows Admin Center has been an outstanding request, with more than 175 upvotes on our feedback platform!

Your and continues to make Windows Admin Center better. In this release, we’ve enabled the Updates tool for Windows client in the Computer Management extension so you can start and schedule Windows 10 or 11 PC updates using the same experience you’re familiar with from managing your Windows Servers.

Other updates

Known issues

Some customers have reported seeing an issue stating: “Error occurred while decoding OAEP padding.” Refreshing your Windows Admin Center session should fix this issue.

Some customers have experienced issues with their Windows Admin Center Azure registration, including an error stating: “Cross-origin redemption is permitted only for ‘Single-page application.’” This is because we’ve updated our Azure libraries and authentication to the latest and most secure version. Learn how to troubleshoot this error.

When using Remote Desktop, your keyboard mapping may be incorrect, especially if you are using a combination of languages on your Windows Admin Center gateway application, your gateway machine, and the machine you’re RDPing into. When this issue is fixed, we will release an extension update for the Remote Desktop tool.

In the Virtual Machines tool, the Connect experience may be failing or not working properly, especially for Azure Stack HCI configurations. When these issues are fixed, we will release an extension update for the Virtual Machines tool.

In the meantime, you can bypass the Connect experience issues by disabling TLS 1.3 on the host server. To do this, you can set the following registry key to 0: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.3\Server

Windows Admin Center in Azure

Windows Admin Center in Azure continuously releases new updates each month, providing you with the latest and greatest that Windows Admin Center has to offer.

Check out our release history to view the amazing progress and detailed features. This new GA build of Windows Admin Center will be available for our Azure users over the coming weeks.

Windows Admin Center in Azure for Azure IaaS VMs is generally available. Try now.

Windows Admin Center in Azure for Azure Arc-enabled servers is in preview. Try now.

Windows Admin Center in Azure for Azure Stack HCI clusters is in preview. Try now.

Streamlined deployment

When using Windows Admin Center to manage your Azure IaaS VMs, you now have a new experience that makes it easy for you to configure pre-requisites and quickly connect to Windows Admin Center. The new flow checks and configures your network connectivity, verifies RBAC access, and configures just-in-time access making it simple for you to connect to Windows Admin Center successfully every time.

To try out this new flow, visit the new “Connect” blade in the Azure Portal:

Enterprise proxy support

Windows Admin Center in Azure now supports communication through a proxy server by using the HTTPS protocol. If your machine must connect through a proxy server to communicate over the internet, follow our documentation to set this up.

If you are using Arc-enabled server, Windows Admin Center automatically picks up the proxy configuration from the Arc agent, no additional configuration needed.

Partner ecosystem

Windows Admin Center is built to be an extensible platform, and we value the contributions of our partners to the Windows Admin Center ecosystem. Since our last release, Dell has released a new extension—Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure. Several partners, including Lenovo, Fujitsu, and HPE, have also updated their extensions since our last release.

Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure is now available!

The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, announced at Dell Technologies World 2023, is a new infrastructure platform built in collaboration with Microsoft to optimize Microsoft Azure hybrid cloud deployments. It provides deep integration and intelligent automation between layers of the Dell and Microsoft technology stack, accelerating time-to-value while eliminating complexity and boosting IT agility and productivity.

Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure is built on many years of innovation across a range of technologies by both Dell Technologies and Microsoft. This collaboration has culminated in the Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, which incorporates the Microsoft Azure Stack HCI OS. Dell Cloud Platform Foundation Software and Microsoft Azure Stack HCI OS are the key software pillars that enable Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure to empower customers to unlock the benefits of key enterprise use cases in their hybrid cloud environments.

Integration with Windows Admin Center through an extension reduces the number of management interfaces and simplifies management with familiar tools.

Watch this video to learn more about the Dell APEX Cloud Platform and see a demonstration of this extension.

Dell OpenManage update

The Dell OpenManage Integration extension has been updated to version 3.2.0. This update comes with the following changes:

Monitor hardware alerts for PowerEdge servers, AX nodes, and failover, and HCI clusters.
Provide users with an option to give feedback directly to the OpenManage Integration extension team.
View hardware update progress details when navigating to the Hardware update page.
Enhancements to the prerequisite check for server/cluster life cycle management.
Enhancements to the WS HCI cluster update (Windows Server 2019) by placing the disks of selected nodes into maintenance mode while ensuring uninterrupted operations for non-selected nodes.
Support viewing the complete hardware update history for a cluster.
Support for providing the "Manage as" credentials, instead of using custom credentials, for accessing the share path where DSU, IC, and DRM catalogs are placed.
Support for TLS 1.3 to improve security.

Lenovo XClarity Integrator for Microsoft Windows Admin Center update

The Lenovo XClarity Integrator extension has been updated to version 4.5.1. This update comes with the following changes since the last Windows Admin Center release:

Support for ThinkAgile MX Best Recipe 2307
Support of the ThinkAgile MX Best Recipe 2305
Support the topology view for SR650 V2/V3
Support one-click server hardware, Lenovo XClarity Integrator, Windows Admin Center logs and cluster diagnostic data collection
Add UI prompts if OS Native Management is not applicable when a system's XCC is running in the Strict Security mode
Enablement of 256-character passwords
Enablement of retimer inventory
Support of the cluster level power consumption metering
Adding a UI message that OS Native Management is not applicable when a system’s XCC is running in the Strict Security mode
Support of system Power-on password for presenting its enablement state and failing system update when it’s enabled
Optimize the categorization of the system updates in repository by using FixIDs
Separate the Cluster Power Consumption and System Temperature(Inlet) from the server Dashboard
Support for the following hardware:
- Lenovo ThinkAgile MX630 V3 (7D6U)
- Lenovo ThinkAgile MX650 V3 (7D6S)
- Lenovo ThinkSystem ST650 V3 (7D7A, 7D7B, 7D7C)
- Lenovo ThinkSystem SR850 V3 (7D96, 7D97, 7D98)
- Lenovo ThinkSystem SR860 V3 (7D93, 7D94, 7D95)
- Lenovo ThinkSystem SR635 V3 (7D9G, 7D9H)
- Lenovo ThinkSystem SR655 V3 (7D9E, 7D9F)
Support for the following software:
- Lenovo XClarity Essentials OneCLI 4.2.0
- Lenovo XClarity Essentials OneCLI 4.1.0

Other extension updates

Fujitsu Software Infrastructure Manager (ISM) version 1.0.1 – Upgrade to Angular 11 for better performance and security.
Fujitsu ServerView Health version 2.0.2 – Upgrade to Angular 11 for better performance and security.
Fujitsu ServerView RAID version 2.0.3 – Upgrade to Angular 11 for better performance and security.
HPE Server and HPE Azure Stack HCI WAC extensions version 1.8.0 - This release makes use of HPESysInfoCmdlets version 1.6.0.0 to provide more storage information for Gen11 servers and clusters. Gen11 storage graphics images in the Azure Stack HCI Storage tab will be displayed when the data is available.

Download today!

We hope you enjoy this latest update of Windows Admin Center, the various new functionality in preview, and all the extensions now available. Learn more and download today!

As always, thanks for your ongoing support, adoption, and feedback. Your contributions through user feedback continue to be vital and valuable to us, helping us prioritize and sequence our investments.

Windows Admin Center is continuously evolving and growing as a tool and a platform, and we are beyond thrilled to have you part of our journey.

We’re also looking forward to the next version of Windows Server, coming soon! We recommend you check out this preview from Ignite.

Thank you,

Windows Admin Center Team (@servermgmt)

Windows Admin Center version 2311 is now in Public Preview!

Davanna-White — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 21:21:26 GMT

Announcing public preview of Windows Admin Center v2311

Today, we are releasing our latest version of Windows Admin Center to public preview – version 2311! Thank you to our customers, partners, and fans for helping us to continue to improve and make Windows Admin Center better!

In this release, we’ve made improvements to some of our most used tools, added new experiences around Azure hybrid services like Azure Arc and Azure Migrate, and updated our platform.

Platform updates

Azure Arc onboarding at-scale

Azure Arc-enabled servers lets you manage Windows physical servers and virtual machines hosted outside of Azure, using the Azure control plane. Windows Admin Center provides an Azure Arc for servers onboarding experience through our Azure hybrid center. New in this release, we’ve extended this experience and made it available on our All Connections page—the first page you see when you open Windows Admin Center. Now you can select multiple machines and, with a few simple clicks, onboard them all to Azure Arc for Servers at once.

Platform Angular updates

In Windows Admin Center, every tool, every solution, and every experience that you use and see is built on Angular. Angular plays a critical role in every management task that you perform. In this release, Windows Admin Center takes a big step forward with an upgrade of our platform, from Angular 11 to Angular 15, bringing you the latest in Angular platform security and performance.

Angular is the framework upon which the Windows Admin Center UI is built. This means that every feature, control, button click, and user experience relies on our Angular infrastructure and benefits from this upgrade. You can expect faster loads and a smoother experience in this build of Windows Admin Center.

Note that not all extensions have been updated to use Angular 15 in this release. Extensions on Angular 11 continue to be backwards compatible.

UI updates

We're excited to announce a series of UI updates to the Windows Admin Center, bringing it closer in design to the Azure Portal for a consistent user experience. Pivots have been redesigned, and typography improved with updated font sizes and semi bold headings. Form components are now 24px in height, and buttons with text have adopted Azure styles. These refinements aim to enhance usability, aligning with our commitment to a user-centric design that echoes the elegance of the Azure Portal.

Tool updates

Virtual Machines

Virtual Machine management is a key component in day-to-day infrastructure management. Windows Admin Center is making continuous improvements in the VM management experience. For this release, we focused on the “Import VM” functionality. In this release, we’ve enabled the reconfiguration of virtual switches on destination hosts where there are incompatible virtual switches. We’ve also clarified some of the failure notifications that may occur during the import experience.

In addition to the changes we’ve made to the import experience, we also reduced the VM tool load times. We encourage you to use the tool, provide feedback on your experiences, and let us know what additional features you would like to see in the future.

Server Overview

The server Overview tool has been a staple for IT administrators to get a bird’s eye view of their server’s health. This tool provides key insights into their server’s CPU usage, memory utilization, networking throughput and much more. Our team is dedicated to ensuring that this experience continues to provide value to our customers. To that end, we have made several improvements to this tool based on your feedback.

These improvements come in 2 parts, (1) error consolidation and (2) error messaging improvements.

We have heard your feedback about errors in the overview tool. We have updated the underlying logic to handle certain scenarios to improve the meaning and relevance of these errors. Please see the below before and after examples. 

The second piece of improvements are the error messages themselves. We have heard your feedback about certain errors being unreadable, unactionable, and even confusing at times. We have done a lot of work, collaborating with the design team and user researchers here at Microsoft to ensure that the error messages are more readable with 3 key things if they are relevant: (1) what went wrong, (2) what caused it, if relevant, and (3) how to fix it.

Azure Migrate

Azure Migrate provides a simplified migration, modernization, and optimization service for Azure, including ways to assess the benefits of Azure migration of your specific machines.

Learn more about Azure Migrate

Updates tool now available for Windows Client

Ensuring your systems are up to date is vital for the security and integrity of your system. While servers make up a majority of the machines managed through Windows Admin Center, client management is also possible, and these machines should also be kept up to date. We understand that an update experience for Windows client in Windows Admin Center has been an outstanding request for multiple years, with more than 175 upvotes on our feedback platform!

Your feedback matters and continues to make Windows Admin Center better. In this release, we’ve enabled the Updates tool for Windows client in the Computer Management extension so you can start and schedule Windows 10 or 11 PC updates using the same experience you’re familiar with from managing your Windows Servers.

Known issues

This release has the following known issues:

Remote Desktop tool
- Incorrect keyboard mapping in this tool may occur.
- Some users reported an issue where you must clear your cookies after using the Remote Desktop tool for the first time to continue using it.
"Connect” experience in the Virtual Machines tool
- Experience failing to load for VMs on HCI machines.
Azure Arc at scale / “Connect to Arc” experience on the All Connections page
- The Azure Arc status on the All Connections page may not always match the status seen when connected to a server, especially after onboarding single servers through the Azure Hybrid Center experience.
- The “Connect to Arc” icon is currently the Azure icon. This is a placeholder and will be changed.
All Connections page
- When updating the “Managing as” credentials for a cluster connection, some users have reported that a server connection with the same name gets created.

Download today!

We hope you enjoy this latest update of Windows Admin Center, the various new functionality in preview, and all the extensions now available. Learn more and download today!

As always, thanks for your ongoing support, adoption, and feedback. Your contributions through user feedback continue to be vital and valuable to us, helping us prioritize and sequence our investments.

Windows Admin Center is continuously evolving and growing as a tool and a platform, and we are beyond thrilled to have you part of our journey.

Thank you,

Windows Admin Center Team (@servermgmt)