Lead Image © Kati Molin, Fotolia

11 Tricks for Windows servers

Knowledge

Article from ADMIN 59/2020

By Thomas Joos

A number of techniques applied in PowerShell or other management tools can run Windows servers more effectively, harden them, and improve their performance.

Fine-tuning Windows servers doesn't have to be a complex process. Easily manageable commands and settings can have a great effect. In this article, I look at 11 practical tips for Windows servers.

1. Remote Desktop Settings

In many organizations, employees use the Remote Desktop tool, usually activated in the server's graphical user interface or from the Server Core text-based menu. On servers with a graphical user interface, the quickest way to find the settings is to call sysdm.cpl. However, you can also enable the remote desktop from the registry with the settings found in the HKLM | SYSTEM | CurrentControlSet | Control | Terminal Server key. With this approach, you can activate Remote Desktop by importing registry entries. The most important entry is fDenyTSConnection . A value of 0 activates Remote Desktop, and a value of 1 disables it. To see which users are connected to a server (Figure 1), run the command:

qwinsta /server:<server name>

Figure 1: Remote Desktop Protocol connections are displayed by the qwinsta command.

To deny access to certain users, use group policies. To block access to the Remote Desktop Services (e.g., for local administrators), you should manage the

...

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).