Windows Server 2019 include a number of enhancements to allow for administrators who wish a tighter link with the Azure cloud platform, Microsoft said.
Microsoft touted new Windows Server 2019 features around cloud and containers, nonetheless IT professionals be interested in how the new operating platform handles more nitty-gritty tasks.
The number one Windows Server 2019 preview included new capabilities around hybrid cloud computing, security, application development and Active Directory. On top of that boasted an improved in-place upgrade feature and raised concerns about price increases.
And see if the in-place upgrades perform the duties of well in your new version after they did in Windows Server 2016, put on nudge some users on older Windows Server versions to make the switch, said Didier Van Hoye, a technical architect positioned in Belgium coupled with a Hyper-V MVP.
“Many of your customers still cannot treat their servers as cattle,” Van Hoye said. “They have their very own holy cows, so to speak. If they can move due to this in-place upgrade, considering that Windows Server 2019 has great application compatibility, then i am sure tremendous benefit.”
Microsoft delivered an exam version of Windows Server 2019 last month and said general availability comes into play the second a part of this year. IT professionals can download the Windows Server 2019 preview build if they sign up for the Windows Insider Program for Business.
Windows Server 2019 features for virtualization and storage
Windows Server 2019 adds a good solid scale-out failover feature, dubbed cluster sets, which aims enhance availability and flexibility to shift VMs across other clusters. These will minimize the risks involved in building a large failover cluster for a passing fancy domain, Van Hoye said.
“It’s normally much better to have multiple clusters instead of just one giant cluster. But then, of course, you lose some capabilities,” Van Hoye said. “Cluster sets deter those limitations and give you the same virtual machine mobility and simplicity of migration you have on a cluster.”
The preview release improves the node count by orders of magnitude, Microsoft said. Windows Server 2016 capped the nodes per cluster at 64.
Other notable storage improvements through this release are deduplication with Resilient File System — which presents the fairly new file system feature parity with NTFS — and increased capacity with Storage Spaces Direct software-defined storage, said Jeff Woolsey, principal program manager for Windows Server at Microsoft.
The Windows Server 2019 preview build adds shielded VMs for Linux — an attribute Windows Server 2016 introduced for Windows VMs. Moreover it includes Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Exploit Guard to stop malware attacks on server hosts as well as an encrypted networks function to cover data while it travels between VMs and hosts.
Windows Server 2019 preview paves option to cloud
This increased security goes together with any cloud aspirations an IT department might well have, Van Hoye said.
“They need that insurance that data will be kept private,” he was quoted saying.
Windows Server 2019 also catches as long as the Windows client’s ability to work regularly into Azure Active Directory devoid of producing on-premises Active Directory component essential for previous server versions.
This enhancement, mixed with Project Honolulu, enables administrators to right-click around a VM for seamless utilisation of Azure services for backup, replication and protections by its Azure Security Center, Woolsey said. Project Honolulu is seen as a free remote server management application that unites multiple administrative tools derived from one of web-based interface.
Are not any immediate provides add similar hybrid features for other clouds, when the customer demand is made for “deep Azure integration,” Woolsey said.
Project Honolulu still is in its nascent stage, on the other hand shows promise as being a feasible replacement to your classic Microsoft Management Console (MMC).
“To entice administrators to relocate away from MMC, that replacement is possibly better,” Van Hoye said. “Until now, we’ve seen some replacements or new strategies for doing activities that were good, but not better. They’d missing features. You stowed doing a component of your work inside of the older tools and had this fragmented toolbox to obtain your job done.”
Windows Server 2019 covers Semi-Annual Channel features
Windows Server 2019 represents next version of the server operating system’s Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) that Microsoft recommends for general use, along the lines of file servers, apps that a GUI besides other infrastructure roles. Releases to the Semi-Annual Channel (SAC) for Windows Server arrive every six months, with features for organizations with advanced application development needs — particularly around containers.
Windows Server 2019 takes features that started the SAC releases, including Linux containers support, Windows Subsystem for Linux, and support for ones open source command-line tools bsdtar and curl.
These infusions of Linux on Windows systems may well be a boon for administrators who need to maintain control from a mixed-OS data center.
The SAC and LTSC have Server Core deployment options, but they’re not interchangeable. Microsoft tailored Server Core in SAC for container use and removed its infrastructure role capabilities, for example Storage Spaces Direct, after customers said the few between releases managed to make it difficult to upgrade, Woolsey said.
This divvying of duties between the two server channels appears reasonable, Van Hoye said.
“For the core infrastructure, reliability and longevity might be more important than having access the newest feature,” he stated.
Microsoft plans to trim huge Server Core from 5 GB to 1.6 GB in Windows Server 2019 inside a move to improve application performance and cut download times, said Erin Chapple, director of program management for Windows Server, using a blog post. The company also titans improve Kubernetes cluster management kept in storage, networking and compute, Chapple said.
Goodbye R2, hello price increases?
The Windows Server 2019 preview also marks get rid of Microsoft’s R2 naming convention. You start with Windows Server 2003, Microsoft released an R2 type of the server OS, including fixes and extra features, about two yrs after the main release. Ordinarily, an R2 release might possibly be next for Windows Server 2016, but “R2s are executed,” Woolsey said.
The alteration in the naming scheme will be a marketing decision, but it is also a tactic to break bad IT habits, Woolsey said. Many admins would not install a new server OS so that the R2 release appeared depending upon the presumption that it really signaled a more stable release, but that is no longer the situation, he added.
Long ago, an organization could move its client access licenses (CALs) among the preceding Windows Server version towards the R2 release eventually improves price increase. Organizations did not have to buy CALs till the next new server release. But price increases for Windows Server 2019 CALs are “highly likely,” as outlined by Chapple’s blog post.
This transformation might not be a surprise to the majority, because Microsoft hinted any when it dropped the R2 version in SQL Server 2014. These gradual price increases for on-premises products, put together with the challenges of implementing these rapid release cycles, cause it to become difficult to prevent the added value of Software Assurance, said Wes Miller, research analyst at Directions on Microsoft.
“In general, each of Microsoft’s products are already increasingly pushing towards subscriptions within a form and other,” he explained.