Server Manager in Windows Server 2012 has added some great features. It is totally redesigned and response time is much faster, no more waiting. It allows System Administrators to better manage and view their servers. You can now group servers together for viewing alerts, can remotely deploy roles and features, perform tasks on multiple servers at a time, and add servers from a few different generations of Windows Server.
Below I have shown some of these features.
When you click on the Notification Menu item this will show you all notifications related to Server Manager and any task, to the left of that icon you will see the Refresh icon, this will allow you to refresh the items on the Dashboard.
The Manage Menu Item gives you quick access to the follow items, and gives the ability to add other servers to your console.
You can also add multi servers to Server Manager to manage from one central location. With this you can have a single pan of glass for management, or event viewing. Server Manager can manage more than Server 2012, it can also manage server 2008/R2/2003/R2 they will just need to have WinRM 3.0 installed.
You can also place servers in Groups, this way you will be able to display a subset of Events. You could group all DC’s, Exchange Servers, or Web Servers.
As you can see from the list below, these are the different task you can manage from the server.
From the Server Manager Properties you can set the refresh interval (Range from 1-14400), and set the server manager to not start at logon.
Tools Menu gives you access to many of the tools you may use on a daily basis, without having to look for them in the start menu or control panel.
From the View Menu, you can change the Zoom, but the most useful feature here is to hide the Welcome Tile.
This is the welcome tile, you can hide this with the hide button or from the View menu.
As you add more Roles to your Server the left hand side of the Server Manager Window will populate
As you can see from the File and Storage Services Role
The Local server section is where you can change all the local settings, such as computer name, IP addressing, Updates, and many other things. One thing to keep in mind anytime you change one of these settings, it will not reflect the change on the screen. You need to click TASKS in the top right hand corner and then select refresh. As you scroll more down the page, you will also find this is where you can look at events, BPA, Features/Roles, and even view performance metrics.
The All Servers location is very similar to the Local Server, however it will allow you to manage more than one system, and will show you statistics for more than one server. The dashboard will also reflect all the information collected from all the servers you have in your Server Manager Console.
The Cloud Eh!? 
What did you install Server 2012 on? Thinking of playing with it in my “spare” time lol