Hello everyone, how are you all doing today? I hope you are all having a great week so far. My week has been great, nothing to complain about, at least not yet lol, anyway please read on…
Today we will feature one of the best products Microsoft has ever released. Windows Server 2016. I am serious though, it is a great product, I have a 5 license version on my private server and so far I love it. We have been using it or the past few months, I took awhile to upgrade from my trial/beta version but once I upgraded to the full version of Windows Server 2016, I haven’t looked back. It runs smooth with SQL and I could argue it rivals a lot of the Linux Server setups we have all come to know and love? Let me explain…
[ Download Windows 2016 Server ] – A premium server that is flexible, fast and easy to manage.
Update: Windows Server 2019 has been released!
Windows 2016 Features
Windows Server Features
- Active Directory Federation Services: 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 Anti Malware 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: pre authentication 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.
New or changed Networking Features
- DHCP: as Network Access Protection was deprecated in Windows Server 2012 R2, in Window 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
New Hyper-V Features
- 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, codenamed Nano Server, a minimal footprint installation option of Windows Server, optimized for Windows Server Containers andHyper-V Containers, as well as other cloud-optimized scenarios. According to the announcement, Microsoft removed the GUI stack, 32-bit support (WoW64), MSI and a number of default Server Core components. There is no local logon or Remote Desktop support. All management is performed remotely via WMI and PowerShell.
Windows Server 2016 is the platform for building an infrastructure of connected applications, networks, and web services, from the workgroup to the data center.
Windows Server 2016 Download Links
Windows 2016 Screenshots
