Windows Admin Center

Windows Admin Center at a glance

Windows Admin Center is Microsoft's browser-based management console for Windows Server, failover clusters, hyper-converged deployments and Windows clients. Administrators use it to handle roles and features, services, event logs, certificates, network settings, storage, virtual machines and updates without opening a separate MMC snap-in or a remote desktop session for every task. You install a gateway on a management workstation or server, which reaches the managed systems over WinRM; extensions add capabilities from Microsoft and from hardware vendors.

Microsoft publishes new builds at irregular intervals and maintains the extensions on their own lifecycle alongside them. The move to the modernised gateway architecture changed both the installation path and the prerequisites considerably.

Before updating, back up the gateway configuration and note the certificate and port in use, because a reinstall asks for these details again. Check that the extensions you rely on are available for the new build, and plan a short maintenance window: while the gateway itself is being updated, the console is unavailable to every administrator.