I have been exploring Windows 2012 over the past week or so. Things look a little different to previous versions of Windows Server more on that later...This is just a short post to show how you go about shutting down or restarting a Windows 2012 server because on first glance it might not be obvious. There is a lack of a ‘Start’ or ‘Windows’ button in this version of the OS

Shutting down and restarting

1. Open Server Manager
2. On the left hand pane chose local server
3. Click the tasks drop-down menu and choose Shut Down Local Server

This doesn't mean that you will be shutting down the server, you then get a screen like the one shown below where you get to choose what you want to do. Sign out, Shutdown, Restart etc

To me at least, how to do this was not immediately obvious so I thought it worthy of a post – I hope you find useful