Windows Server 2012 : Installing roles and features (part 2) - Installing roles and features using Windows PowerShell

You can use the Get-WindowsFeature cmdlet to retrieve information about roles, role services, and features available on a remote server. For example, the following command displays a list of all available roles and features and their current install state on server SEA-SRV-1:

Get-WindowsFeature -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1

To display a list of all installed roles and features on the server, pipe the output of the preceding command into the Where-Object cmdlet and use Where-Object to filter out everything except roles and features whose InstallState property is equal to Installed:

Get-WindowsFeature -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1 | Where-Object InstallState -eq Installed

You can narrow your results even further by using the –name parameter of the Get-WindowsFeature cmdlet to select only roles and features that begin with “Print”like this:

Get-WindowsFeature -Name Print* -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1 | Where-Object InstallState -eq
Installed

The output from running this command against server SEA-SRV-1 verifies that the Print Server role service of the Print And Document Services role is installed:

Display Name                                  Name                       Install State
------------                                  ----                       -------------
[X] Print and Document Services               Print-Services                 Installed
    [X] Print Server                          Print-Server                   Installed

Get-WindowsFeature - ComputerName SEA-SRV-1 | Where-Object {$_.InstallState -
eq Installed}

You can use the Install-WindowsFeature cmdlet to install roles, role services, and features available on a remote server. You can also use the alias Add-WindowsFeature to invoke this command. For example, the following command installs the DHCP Server role on server SEA-SRV-1:

Install-WindowsFeature -Name DHCP -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1

The output from running the preceding command looks like this:

Success Restart Needed Exit Code      Feature Result
------- -------------- ---------      --------------
True    No             Success        {DHCP Server}

To install the DHCP Server role together with the management tools for this role, add the –IncludeManagementTools parameter to the preceding command. If a restart is required for the installation of a role or feature to install properly, you can force this to happen by including the –Restart parameter in the command.

To install all of the Remote Server Administration features on this server, use this command:

Install-WindowsFeature -Name RSAT -IncludeAllSubFeature -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1

Although Server Manager can be used to install roles and features only on a single server at a time, you can use PowerShell to install roles and features on multiple computers at the same time. You can do this by using the Invoke-Command cmdlet to run the Install-WindowsFeature command on multiple computers. For example, this command installs the XPS Viewer feature on servers SEA-SRV-1 and SEA-SRV-3:

Invoke-Command -ComputerName SEA-SRV-1, SEA-SRV-3 -ScriptBlock {Install-WindowsFeature -
Name XPS-Viewer}

The output from running the preceding command looks like this:

Success Restart Needed Exit Code      Feature Result                    PSComputerName
------- -------------- ---------      --------------                    --------------
True    No             Success        {XPS Viewer}                      SEA-SRV-1
True    No             Success        {XPS Viewer}                      SEA-SRV-3

If the binaries for the role or feature you want to install have been removed from the server, you can use the –Source parameter to specify the location of the binaries needed to install the role or feature. If you don’t specify this parameter, the necessary binaries will be downloaded from Windows Update unless this behavior has been disabled using Group Policy. Note that downloading role or feature binaries from Windows Update can take some time.