Introduction to Azure Server Management Tools

When you’re an Azure systems administrator managing a large scale enterprise, you’ll do anything to simplify your job and make things easier. That’s why there’s Server Management Tools.

Azure Server Management Tools offers a wide range of remote management features

With Azure Server Management Tools, systems administrators will be able to manage both on-premises and cloud based servers. Since these server are headless, which is the direction the server industry is headed towards, they do not follow the traditional model of allowing remote machine access using Server Manager and MMC snap-ins. That’s why this tool set is so valuable.

Getting started with Azure Server Management Tools

Well, for one thing, you’ll need an Azure subscription. Can’t use Azure tools without one! Once you’re logged into the portal, you will need to navigate to the Azure Marketplace and choose More under the Categories to access the Server Management Tools feature set.

Azure Server Management Tools utilizes a gateway architecture to enable remote management of on-premises servers. You’ll configure connections to the gateway machine by creating a subscription, choosing a resource group, and since it’s your first time, creating a new gateway.

The next step is where you establish the necessary credentials to establish a connection. Once you’re successfully connected to the server, you can access a pretty cool deal of stuff (as seen in the screenshot above), such as resource utilization (CPU trends over the last 60 seconds, network, memory, disk management) and a list of processes currently running (which you can sort by memory usage to kill processes or create process dumps if need be).

You can also:

  • Run a new process from the UI on the target machine
  • Access the Device Manager and all its relevant details and properties, including auto-expanding trees which pinpoint any device that requires attention; you can also enable or disable devices if need be
  • Control a firewall, which is similar to the desktop firewall experience via the usage of rules and details
  • Utilize PowerShell scripts, using a script editor in the console or in the browser. You can also save scripts to the destination of your choice.

Pretty nifty stuff. And that’s not all, they promise. A Storage and Certificate manager are in the pipeline.

For more on Azure Server Management Tools, check out this video:

[tg_youtube video_id=”d5ke-pQRNB4″]

About The Author

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Scroll to Top