Installing Windows Server 2012

Windows Server 2012 is the latest edition of Microsoft’s server operating system and with it comes a lot of new features with a major emphasis on Cloud integration.

This blog post is all about the first look in Installing a Windows 2012 Server and it’s just the beginning of diving into Windows environment. Later in my blogs, I will also work on promoting the server as the first domain controller in a new forest.

The installation procedure has not changed much in comparison to earlier version, Windows Server 2008 R2.

So, lets begin with the installation. The screenshots can be seen below as we insert a bootable media in the drive.

Click <Install Now>.

Now, lets select the operating system we want to install.  I have selected Windows Server 2012 with a GUI.  The other option is server core is a limited installation without GUI however with that server can be remotely managed. For now click next.

Currently, I am interested in doing fresh installation of Windows Server, so click on Custom.

Once the required partition is created, click next. The Installation of Windows Server then proceeds.

Eventually, we will see the screen prompting for entering a password for the built-in Administrator account as can be seen in the screenshot.

Now, click Finish.

Finally, we are now able to see the new Windows Login Screen, which is fairly different from the log in screen that we have been seeing in earlier versions of Windows Server.

Once we hit Ctrl – ALT – Delete to sign in, and enter password., we would be able to see the new Server Manager Screen which totally simplifies the administration and configuration of Windows server.

This is the fresh installation of Windows Server 2012. I will come up with a new blog post on moving forward. Stay tunned! 🙂