Adding a role to WS2008: Easy as can be

The roles that you can add to Server 2008 appear in a checkbox list that you will see after you click the Add Roles link in the context menu of the Roles node. You can add multiple roles at one session; for example, in Figure 2 (click "read more" to see), we've selected DNS, File Services, and Network Policy and Access Services as the three roles to add to the machine.

Figure 2. Select the role or roles you want for your Windows 2008 box.

Depending on your choices, the wizard's subsequent screens may provide informative text and links for additional information in the help system (although most of these seem to be unavailable as of the Beta 3 release).

Note that some of the above roles have optional subordinate roles. Also, some roles give you a choice of which "role services" to install and activate. The Add Roles Wizard will prompt you to select role services if there are choices to be made. For example, as shown in Figure 3, if you choose to add the Network Policy and Access Services, you can select from various role services. This screen shows that you could choose to install the Network Policy Server without installing the Routing service.

Figure 3. Pick and choose from the services you need for a given role.

For another example, if you choose to install the File Services role, you can choose among various role services: DFS, File Server Resource Manager, Services for NFS, Windows Search Service, and Windows Server 2003 File Services (FRS and the Indexing Service).

Once you've made your role services choices for each role that you've selected for installation, a summary screen appears, and you can confirm your choices by clicking an Install button. The installation processes can take some time, so this may be a good time to return some phone calls. When you return to Server Manager, your roles should be installed-and you'll see that you can now check their related event logs and service status within the Server Manager, where the navigation pane is set to display information about the DNS Server role. You can also stop and restart the related system services here.

See previous posts:

What Are Roles?

Meet Windows Server 2008 'Server Manager' -- your new management cockpit

The Look and Feel of Server 2008