by Mike Neil, Corporate Vice President, Cloud + Enterprise
Doing more with less has been a theme for IT for years. The name of
the game today is speed. The move to the cloud-first world is about
getting ahead of the competition. New apps and new features for apps
drive business value, and that application-centric mindset means that
you need to think differently about how your datacenter stands up to the
need for speed. With Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016, our
approach is to bring cloud-born technologies to the traditional
datacenter, so that you can make the most of the resources you have
today while bringing innovation to your customers.
Today we’re releasing the latest technical previews of
Windows Server 2016 and
System Center 2016,
providing new and enhanced features that reflect our ongoing drive to
build speed into the 2016 wave of hybrid datacenter solutions. Technical
Preview 4 includes significant enhancements for both Windows Server and
System Center, many of which reflect valuable customer feedback on the
previews released earlier this year.
- Application platform features, including new capabilities for Nano
Server, Windows Server Containers updates and – new in this release –
Hyper-V Containers, offer great opportunities for modern app
development.
- Software-defined datacenter capabilities, across storage,
networking, and compute, let you reduce cost and increase agility. New
security features help address evolving threats and new threat vectors.
- Enhanced management capabilities, to give you advanced
software-defined datacenter support and intuitive monitoring
improvements.
Introducing Hyper-V Containers and Application Platform Updates
With Windows Server 2016, Microsoft is focused on delivering choice and flexibility in
container solutions.
We offer Windows Server Containers, which offer a lightweight container
option, and today we are introducing the first public preview of
Hyper-V containers,
which offer an additional deployment option for scenarios requiring a
higher level of isolation. With Hyper-V Containers, you get the
flexibility of the container model with the additional isolation
provided by a container-optimized version of Hyper-V. Security needs can
vary based on a wide variety of factors, and we’re excited about giving
you expanded choices for using containers across enterprise scenarios
including multi-tenant environments. To see the new Hyper-V Containers
in action, you can check out the
Microsoft Mechanics show, featuring Mark Russinovich.
Windows Server Containers were first released for you test in August,
and since then we’ve been building out enhancements to deliver on our
commitment to give you a first-class container experience. With Nano
Server support for Windows Server Containers, you can take advantage of
the dramatically reduced footprint of this headless installation option
for Windows Server. Shared folders let you map folders from the
container host into the container, providing both shared access to host
storage between containers as well as persistent storage for containers.
This release also enables resource controls, giving you increased
flexibility in how you work with the container environment.
A foundational element of the application platform innovation in
Windows Server 2016, Nano Server offers reduced servicing requirements
and improved security. New in Technical Preview 4, Nano Server now
includes support for Desired State Configuration to allow for deploying
and managing configuration for Nano Server installations. In addition,
Nano Server can now be a DNS Server or a Web Server (IIS), expanding the
scenarios supported. A key new feature is the Windows Server
Application (WSA) installer based on AppX, which provides a way to
install other agents, tools, and applications on Nano Server.
Software-defined Datacenter Enhancements
Moving forward with the software-defined datacenter capabilities in
earlier technical previews, we are adding features that make it easier
to run your infrastructure. Performance and reliability are key priority
areas for this release.
- Hyper-V: The hypervisor continues to evolve and now includes an
early preview of nested virtualization, along with Direct Device
Assignment, and improved PowerShell support for VM upgrades. Nested
virtualization can be used in dev and test scenarios and is a key
enabling technology for Hyper-V Containers.
- Networking: Technical Preview 3 introduced the new Azure consistent
SDN stack. Technical Preview 4 incorporates customer feedback in a
number of areas, including high availability for the network controller,
better East-West load balancing, enhanced container networking, and
support for live migration. In addition, in Technical Preview 4 we
introduce Virtual Machine Multi-Queue to enable 10G+ performance.
- Storage: We have improved Storage Spaces Direct to support all-flash
configurations with NVMe SSD and SATA SSD devices, and Erasure Coding
for increased storage efficiency. Also in this release, support for
Storage Health Service provides easier health monitoring and more
streamlined operations, with a single monitoring point per cluster.
Storage QoS now supports adjusting the normalization size of the
algorithm from the current default 8 KB settings. Additional
enhancements are designed for increased control, such as maximum
bandwidth settings for a VHD/X.
- Security: Enhancements to shielded VMs and the Host Guardian Service
are directed toward ensuring readiness for production environments.
Just Enough Administration, which limits administrator rights for
additional security, has been expanded to domain controllers and server
maintenance roles.
Delivering IT management anywhere
Running at cloud scale also produces technology innovation for
management. System Center 2016 brings cloud learnings to the datacenter,
enabling seamless management of complex environments. Moving into the
hybrid world, System Center 2016 combines with Microsoft Operations
Management Suite to provide an integrated, 360-degree view across any
cloud, any operating system, from infrastructure to applications.
Management anywhere means IT has the ability to take robust data about
system performance, security, and emerging issues and turn that into
action as rapidly as possible. With management tools designed to handle
complexity, IT can allow for more agility in the environment as a whole.
Core enhancements in System Center 2016 Technical Preview 4 include:
- Advanced software-defined datacenter support for Windows Server 2016
including new technologies such as patching of hosts while
provisioning, simplified logical network creation, scale-out file server
with Storage Spaces Direct and SAN storage automation, and improved
storage monitoring.
- Protecting customer IP through shielded VM’s and Guardian Host deployment and management
- Easy to use monitoring improvements in Operations Manager through data-driven management of alerts and enhanced visualization
We’re building Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 to address
your needs. We hope you’ll take a look at the latest technical previews
to see how all these capabilities and features might make a difference
to your business. See how these new versions might be an amazing moment
for you.
