How Do I … on Core?

A best practice for running Hyper-V is to run on Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008. If you follow another best practice, and do not run any workload in the parent partition (running all workloads as VMs in child partitions), then, once you get setup, there is really not much at all you have to do on the parent partition.  The lack of a UI is not such a big thing in that (majority) case.

Until you need to <foo>…or <bar>, or (heaven forfend) <baz>.

So, how do you do something on Core when you have only a command line*?

You probably be won’t be doing whatever it is very often, so you probably haven't memorized the commands. Bookmark this post for reference ;-)

Start at the Windows Command Reference.

The A-Z List shows an alphabetical list of all of the commands

Read the Command-Line Syntax Key for the command formatting

Or, if you are task-oriented, look in the Technology Lists for the commands listed by their associated technology

Read the Server Core blog for tips.

See also the Windows Server 2008 Network Shell (Netsh) Technical Reference for commands to manage Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Network Policy Server (NPS), Network Access Protection (NAP), and Routing and Remote Access Services (RRAS), among many other technologies for which there are netsh commands. Netsh commands offer an alternative to configuring network technologies using the Windows interface. You can run netsh commands in batch files and scripts, and you can run them from the netsh prompt by manually typing commands. You can use netsh commands to configure both local and remote computers.

* You can't use PowerShell on Core – because no .NET on core:-(