Windows Server Core: Installing Roles & Features

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

Roles and Features Available to Install

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

dism.exe /online /get-features

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

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

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

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 6.1.7600.16385

Image Version: 6.1.7600.16385

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

Feature Name : NetworkLoadBalancingHeadlessServer
State : Enabled

Feature Name : SUACore
State : Disabled

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

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

Installing a Role or Feature

To install a role or feature we use the command

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

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

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

Available Roles and Features in Windows Server 2008 R2 Core

 

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