The Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) package allows administrators to utilize the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to manage Windows Server 2008 R2 remotely. These tools become incredibly useful when working with Microsoft Server 2008 R2 Core servers as they do not provide a GUI for tasks such as Active Directory management or DNS/DHCP management.
Typically you need to be a member of the domain you wish to manage servers on but there are a few command line options to help work around this limitation.
Step #1
Download and install RSAT from Microsoft by browsing to the Microsoft Download Center and grabbing the version of RSAT that is compatible with your workstation.
Step #2
After installation, you will need to go to the Control Panel and navigate to the Programs and Features section. From there you can access the Turn Windows Features on or off area.
You will then see a list of features you can (un)install. The root folder is the Remote Server Administration Tools and most of the interesting bits for this are found in Role Administration Tools. You can then select the roles that your remote server utilizes such as DHCP, DNS, or Active Directory (AD DS and AD LDS Tools). Click OK to apply changes.
Step #3
Create a .BAT (batch) file on your desktop and right click on it to edit the contents. Alternately, you can create a .TXT (text) document to edit the contents and then later rename the file to have the .BAT extension. Add the following lines to the file and save it. You will need to fill in the sections contained in < and >. The domain controller (DC) name can usually be set to the domain name if only one DC is in production.
@echo off
runas /netonly /user:<domain>\<username> “mmc /server=<DC or domain>”
Make sure when calling this script you right click on it and choose Run as Administrator. The script will prompt you for a password for your domain user and will then launch the MMC application. From here you’re free to use MMC as you would anywhere else by adding snap-in objects such as DHCP, DNS or AD DS.