The technical preview of Honolulu is out. What is “Honolulu”? It’s a new browser-based Server management experience for the remote administration of Windows Server. Well, I’ve tried it out and now I am going to describe in form of first steps what I’ve done and what you can do with Honolulu.

Download

First I have to download Honolulu here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-honolulu

The Installation of Honolulu on Windows 10 or “Don’t be afraid to fail” 😉

Readers know more than others. That’s what I always told my students. If I would have read the manual, then I would know that Honolulu cannot be installed on a Domain Controller. But I haven’t read the manual (Installation Instructions).

So I decided to install it on a client computer which is joined to an Active Diretory Domain. I leave the settings to default.

Nice to see that the project is using WinRM and PowerShell remoting.

More about PowerShell remoting and Trusted Hosts in my article PowerShell Remoting: How to connect to Remote Hosts in a Domain- and in a Non-Domain Environment (Trusted Hosts)

Exploring Honolulu

Then I click on Install and open it. By the way: It’s saved as an app:

I add my server computer dc01.

I choose server connection.

In the empty field, I type dc01. That is one my domain controller running Windows Server 2016. (It should work on Windows Server 2012 as well)

And dc01 is there!

For this few first steps let’s explore what we can do with it.

Nice Overview.

Change remote desktop settings remotely.

Change network adapter settings …

Install Roles and Features …

Create Folders and Files …

Nice.

Is it a Game Changer?

What do you think? Is it a game changer or not? I would say no, but it’s a huge step forward to improve and simplify the remote-management of Windows Servers.