Windows Server management encompasses the various tools and processes used to deploy, configure, secure, and maintain Windows Server instances. Essentially, it’s about keeping your servers running smoothly and securely.
Maintaining a Windows server instance involves preventive and corrective actions to ensure server availability. Some preventive actions may include creating and testing backups to prevent data loss, applying OS and application patches to remediate vulnerabilities and fix bugs, creating a disaster recovery plan, applying measures to harden the server to prevent cyberattacks, monitoring and alerting about non-responsive components, etc. Some corrective actions may include rebooting, restarting, of non-responsive services and processes, identifying and replacing defective hardware, deleting unused files to optimize disk usage, fine-tuning settings, and resources for optimal performance, etc.
Monitoring the Windows Server services normally requires logging on to the server to be monitored and launching the task manager. Also, it requires checking the event log for errors or alerts. This is a manual, tedious and inefficient task that is not generally used. The best thing you can do is use dedicated software like NinjaOne, that communicates with the server and gathers information on running services and critical events, on multiple servers at the same time.