Windows Server can be installed in two ways – full fat GUI or Server Core. The latter is Windows without Windows. The GUI components are stripped off and you’re just left with the core components. This results in a smaller server – I’ve got 2 machines running in my Hyper-V test environment. Both are set to use dynamic memory with 512MB startup RAM. The full GUI machine needs 1126MB while the Server Core version needs 566MB.
With Server Core all you get is a prompt for administration – unfortunately its cmd.exe but typing powershell starts PowerShell – including running a profile.
Without a GUI you need to use the command line to do everything – I’ll be doing my demos at the PowerShell Summit from Server Core machines so some things will have to wait until after then – and I’m going to do a series on posts on administering Server Core machines.
I’ve already shown you how to test if your machine is activated. This how you join it to the domain.
Make sure that the IP and DNS server addresses have been set so the machine can find a domain controller.
$cred = Get-Credential
Add-Computer -Credential $cred -DomainName sphinx -Restart
Create a credential for the account that can join the machine to the domain. use Add-Computer and supply the credential and domain name. The –ReStart parameter forces a restart post domain join.
if you want to see the results of calling Add-Computer then drop the restart switch and use Restart-Computer whenever you want the restart to happen
Richard Siddaway's Blog 