I can tell that I am not experienced at all with Windows Server Operating System. The last year I had some experience with Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2012 but that was for some little projects, and I have not in depth knowledge. Today I tried to turn off firewall on windows server 2012. The metro style got me on firewall rules when I typed firewall on search. Then the first thing I though as a linux admin was to stop the service and not keep searching for firewall turn off feature, I saw sometimes here and there.
I stopped the service and Ooops the Remote Desktop Connection was broken. I thought it might needs some time to reinitialize network interfaces. Waiting for a ping response from the server, I googled about that incident and I found a great powershell command to turn off and on the firewall:
netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state on
I posted this command just to remember that there is a simple way to just do it, even in Windows. 🙂
Now it’s time to describe the other way ( the gui one ) for Windows lovers:
Go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> Windows Firewall
Click on the left sidebar the link:
Turn Windows Firewall on or off
and then select for each level to turn it on or off.
The last thing I want to to say, either you are getting dirty hands on linux or windows, do not turn off firewall. You can disable it for a while or for testing purposes, but if you want to stay secure ( as secure as you can ) do not turn it off.