When you are working on Windows 2008 core, you get requirement to disable firewall functionality to allow all programs communication. The default firewall settings blocks most of the ports(including remote management) and administrator has to explicitly open them on need basis. The default Core console allows you to perform only few network operations like listing and assigning IP address, but if you want to perform advanced operations like disabling firewall functionality in all profiles(see my post https://techibee.com/windows-2008/what-is-domain-public-and-private-profiles-in-windows-2008-firewall/478 for different profiles in 2008 firewall), you need to rely on some command line options.
Netsh is one of the very useful command line utilities in windows environment. Now in this post, I will show you how to disable firewall profiles(Private, public, domain) on a windows 2008 Core. You need this command in Server Core environment because, you cannot manage firewall remotely as there is a provision and you can not manage it from local host as core supports no GUI. Only option is command line utility.
Now, let us see how we can disable firewall functionality from all profiles
netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off
If you want to turn off the firewall for individual profiles use the below commands
netsh advfirewall set domainprofile state off
netsh advfirewall set privateprofile state off
netsh advfirewall set publicprofile state off
You can turn on firewall back by simply replacing “off” with “on” in above commands.
Netsh utility allows us to perform more set of operations on different components of operating system. You can explore the help(netsh /?) to lean about it further.
You can also download a NetSH Technical reference guide from MS website. Refer to https://techibee.com/general/download-netsh-technical-reference-for-windows-2008windows-7/494 for more details.
Hope this helps.