Samba is amazing, Windows server is a lot less so. The problem with Windows server is that it takes tons of steps to do basic things. On Samba I had Samba tool and it was very nice and friendly. On Windows server you have a ton of different management panels.
If there was a way I could hold off I would but due to changing requirements I didn’t have much of a choice. (We needed Windows Server bare metal and I was not about to go and buy another machine.)
In the same way as if your Windows Server on bare metal doesn’t start after an update, via the console.
I recall that ESXi doesn’t let you do crap from the console. Just configure management. Be interesting to hear what options Prox and Hyper-V may have.
You use console to turn on embedded shell then Ctrl+Alt+Fn over to it (I forget whether it’s on f1 or f2), then you can use
esxcliand all the rest of that to fix it up.Once you get enough networking/storage pieces sorted out you can get back into the management HTML UI and SSH
Then when you’re done fixing, turn shell and SSH back off.