How to setup Windows Server? Part 1: The Server

If you are a non-techy or do not want the headache, I can offer to install it for you. You can just put a comment on this post or reach me out on Twitter at @ghulamostafa.

For many of us, we still use ASP.NET or ASP.NET Core to build our applications. Unlike the other web platforms, hosting an ASP.NET web application, we do require a Windows Server Instance. There are shared hosting services available but you may not have complete control over the environment and if you do need any additional component, you may not be able to install it.

In this article, we will go through by acquiring a Windows Server Instance.

For this article, we will use Vultr. They provide On-Click installation service for a Windows Server. By clicking this link, you will get free 100$ credits to test out the platform.

After signing up and logging in, you shall see the screen of Products. Click on the plus button that would redirect you to the server type selection.

On clicking the plus button, you shall see the following where you will be selecting the Cloud Compute and then chose the Location that is the closest to you. Since I am in Middle East the closest one for me is Frankfurt, Germany.

After choosing the location, scroll down to select the server you would like to install. Vultr provides many other operating systems as well but for our article, we would choose Windows Server 2016.

Give it a name and click deploy.

The Server deployment would take few minutes and you would see the message that installing

Now that the server is installed, you can go ahead and download the Remote Desktop Connection (RDP) for connecting to your server. After downloading and running the RDP Connection, it would ask for the password which can be found on the same page where you downloaded the RDP Connection from.

Since you are connecting for the first time at a new server, it would ask for confirming the certificate. You shall check the Don\’t ask me again and click Yes.

After logging in your server, you shall see the screen for Server Manager.

Now we have our Windows Server up and running. The only thing you should do is to set the time according to your region.

For installing IIS, please click this link.

For installing MS SQL Server, please click this link.