Windows Server 2016 is an upcoming server operating system developed by Microsoft as
part of the Windows NT family
of operating systems, developed concurrently with Windows 10. The
first early preview version (Technical Preview) became available on 1 October
2014 together with the first technical preview of System Center, and is currently in public beta testing. The
final release date for the server is expected to be in Q3 2016, that is, not
released simultaneously with the client operating system Windows 10 as
was the case with the last three operating system releases.
Features
Active Directory Federation Services: It is
possible to configure AD FS to authenticate users stored in non-AD directories,
such as X.500 compliant Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
directories and SQL databases.
·
Windows Defender: Windows
Server Antimalware is installed and enabled by default without the GUI, which
is an installable Windows feature.
·
Remote
Desktop Services: support for OpenGL 4.4 and OpenCL 1.1,
performance and stability improvements; MultiPoint Services role (see Windows
MultiPoint Server)
·
Storage Services: central Storage QoS
Policies; Storage Replicas (storage-agnostic,
block-level, volume-based, synchronous and asynchronous replication using SMB3 between
servers for disaster
recovery).Storage Replica replicates blocks instead of files; files
can be in use. It's not multi-master, not one-to-many and not transitive. It
periodically replicates snapshots, and the replication direction can be
changed.
·
Failover
Clustering: cluster operating system rolling upgrade, Storage
Replicas
·
Web
Application Proxy: preauthentication for HTTP Basic application publishing, wildcard domain
publishing of applications, HTTP to HTTPS redirection, Propagation of client IP
address to backend applications
·
IIS 10: Support for HTTP/2
·
Windows
PowerShell 5.0
·
Soft Restart, a Windows feature to speed up the booting
process by skipping hardware initialization, and resetting software only.
·
Telnet server is not
included.
Networking
features
·
DHCP: as Network
Access Protection was deprecated in Windows Server 2012 R2, in
Windows Server 2016 the DHCP role no longer supports NAP
·
DNS:
·
DNS
client: service binding – enhanced support for computers with more than one network interface
·
DNS Server: DNS policies,
new DDS record types (TLSA, SPF, and unknown records), new PowerShell cmdlets
and parameters
·
Windows Server Gateway now supports Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnels
·
IP
address management (IPAM): support for /31, /32, and /128
subnets; discovery of file-based, domain-joined DNS servers; new DNS functions;
better integration of DNS, DHCP, and IP Address (DDI) Management
·
Network Controller, a new server role to
configure, manage, monitor, and troubleshoot virtual and physical network
devices and services in the datacenter
·
Hyper-V Network
Virtualization: programmable Hyper-V switch (a new building block of
Microsoft’s software-defined networking solution); VXLAN encapsulation
support; Microsoft Software Load Balancer interoperability; better IEEE
Ethernet standard compliancy
Hyper-V
Rolling Hyper-V cluster
update: unlike upgrading clusters from Windows 2008 R2 to 2012 level, Windows
Server Technical Preview cluster nodes can be added to a Hyper-V Cluster with
nodes running Windows Server 2012 R2. The cluster continues to function at a
Windows Server 2012 R2 feature level until all of the nodes in the cluster have
been upgraded and the cluster functional level has been upgraded.
·
Storage
quality of service (QoS) to centrally monitor end-to-end storage performance
and create policies using Hyper-V and Scale-Out File Servers
·
New,
more efficient binary virtual machine configuration format (.VMCX extension for
virtual machine configuration data and the .VMRS extension for runtime state
data)
·
Production
checkpoints
·
Hyper-V
Manager: alternate credentials support, down-level management, WS-Management protocol
·
Integration
services for Windows guests distributed through Windows Update
·
Hot
add and remove for network adapters (for generation 2 virtual machines) and
memory (for generation 1 and generation 2 virtual machines)
·
Linux secure boot
·
Connected Standby compatibility
Nano
Server
Microsoft announced a new installation
option, Nano Server, a minimal footprint installation option of Windows Server.
It excludes the graphical user interface, Wo W64 (support for 32-bit software) and Windows Installer. It does
not support console logon, neither locally nor via Remote
Desktop Connection. All management is performed remotely via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and Power-Shell.
Microsoft engineer Jeffrey Snover claims that Nano Server had 93 percent lower VHD size, 92 percent
fewer critical security advisories, and 80 percent fewer reboots than Windows
Server.
Development
Microsoft has been reorganized by Satya Nadella, putting the
Server and System
Center teams together. Previously, the Server team was more
closely aligned with the Windows client team. The Azure team is also
working closely with the Server team.
Preview
releases
A public beta version of
Windows Server 2016 branded as
"Windows Server Technical Preview" was released on October 1, 2014;
the technical preview builds are aimed towards enterprise users. The first
Technical Preview was first set to expire on 15 April 2015 but Microsoft
later released a tool to extend the expiry date, to last until the second tech
preview of the OS in May 2015.The second beta version, "Technical Preview
2", was released on May 4, 2015. Third preview version, "Technical
Preview 3" was released on August 19, 2015. "Technical Preview
4" was released on November 19, 2015.
Public
release
Windows Server 2016 is expected to be released
to manufacturing in the second half of 2016. Unlike its
predecessor, Windows Server 2016 is licensed by the number of CPU cores rather than
number of CPU sockets—a
change that has similarly been adopted by BizTalk Server 2013 and SQL
Server 2014.
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