Microsoft wants to make life easier for server admins

Not all server admins will have expertise in PowerShell scripting to do everyday tasks in managing Windows Server environment. Microsoft is trying to make life easier for those server admins with a new GUI tool for managing Windows servers. Project “Honolulu” is a flexible, locally-deployed, browser-based graphical management solution for Windows Server, version 1709, and several other versions of Windows Server.

Deployment Project “Honolulu” is quick and easy, also it doesn’t require Internet. It covers the core set of administrative tasks for troubleshooting, configuration, and maintenance. Microsoft has also added some features which were previously manageable only via PowerShell to this new GUI experience.

With Project “Honolulu” Technical Preview, Microsoft is introducing a brand-new solution for managing hyper-converged clusters (Hyper-V with Storage Spaces Direct). Using this, admins can provision and manage VMs and volumes, see drives, servers, and their health status across the cluster. They can also check out historical and real-time performance charts for cluster-wide CPU/memory/network usage and storage IOPS, throughput, and latency, then drill in to see metrics for individual VMs, volumes, and drives.

Microsoft will launch the Technical Preview release of Project “Honolulu” later this month at Microsoft Ignite conference.