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Microsoft
Windows Server

by Geoff Keston

Copyright 2019, Faulkner Information
Services. All Rights Reserved.

Docid: 00021072

Publication Date: 1907

Report Type: PRODUCT

Preview

With Windows Server 2016, Microsoft reoriented its
operating system for cloud applications. This change pressures
organizations not just to learn new features but to adopt a different
philosophy about how enterprise IT services are deployed and managed.
Some of the new concepts that system administrators will need to
understand include containers, DevOps, microservices architectures,
nano servers, software-defined networking, and software-defined
storage. And Microsoft has now released Server
2019, which further develops these new features.

Report Contents:

• Description
• Vendor
• Applications
• Environment
• Support
• Pricing
• Competitors
• References
• Web
  Links

Description

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The release of Microsoft Windows Server 2016 introduced some
fairly novel features, in particular capabilities that help
administrators
manage cloud environments. Server 2019, which is now available, is not
as radical of a change. It mainly builds upon some of the
newly added features in Server 2016 rather than reimagining the
operating system.

Server 2016

Windows Server 2016 is Microsoft’s current version of
its
operating system for
enterprise network administration, cloud and service delivery, and Web
and application hosting.

This version of the operating system continues Microsoft’s
aggressive push into the cloud market. 

 

Microsoft calls the design of Server 2016 “Azure-inspired,” a
reference to its cloud platform, which competes directly with Amazon
Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. Offered as a service, Azure:

• Gives users access to cloud-based versions of
  Microsoft software such as SQL and Active Directory;
• Lets users build applications for their employees
  or to sell to their own customers as a service.

The previous version, Server 2012, had many cloud-oriented and
virtualization features (such as desktop virtualization), and 2016
enhances them and adds others. With these changes, Windows Server is
now primarily designed for enterprises that operate a
hybrid cloud, which includes some on-premises software and some Azure
cloud applications, or that plan to move locally deployed software to
the cloud. Azure and Server 2016 can share data and integrate
functions, on-premises applications can be transferred to Azure using
functionality that is built into Server 2016, and Microsoft offers
discounts when Windows licenses are transferred to Azure.

Another key cloud-related feature is that Server 2016 aims to
help enterprises better secure virtual
environments, in particular “multi-tenant environments,” such
as when a company is hosting cloud services for several customers. Part
of this goal is to protect against insider threats since, in cloud
environments, there are often multiple
administrators handling different functions. For example, some
enterprises assign fabric administrators to
manage physical
infrastructure and assign a separate group of service
administrators to manage software. Given that not every administrator
needs full
rights, Microsoft has added two features to Server 2016 that enable
administrative access to be limited:

• Just enough administration
  allows administrative rights to be granted with a narrow scope so that
  a particular administrator can perform a limited set of functions
  without having the power to accidentally or intentionally do widespread
  damage.
• Just in time administration
  limits the time that
  administrative rights apply.

For IT administrators, the cloud-oriented features of Server 2016 force
a rethinking of processes such as:

• Application delivery
• Application development
• Licensing management
• Load balancing and performance management
• Storage management

These processes need to be reconsidered for hybrid or Azure
environments, in which data and computing are likely to be distributed
and to be delivered using a service model. Other new features will
force further rethinking. For example, containers create “a steep
learning curve” for administrators, says Brien Posey, a
Microsoft MVP. Describing his experience working with containers, he
says that “I just can’t help but to get the feeling that Microsoft is
still trying to figure out where containers fit into its current
ecosystem.”¹ (See Table 1 below for more
information on containers.)

But much of the core functionality remains familiar from
previous
versions of Windows Server:

• Identity management and authentication
• Server management and automation
• Storage management
• Application and Web hosting with IIS

Server 2019

Microsoft describes four “themes” that guided the design of Server
2019:²

• Features have been added to help administrators operate
  hybrid clouds,
  which use a mixture of on-premise installations and various types of
  cloud services. A key part of this is what the company calls “Project
  Honolulu,” a browser-based interface that helps to connect Windows
  Server with Microsoft’s cloud service, Azure.
• Some existing security features have been enhanced or
  extended. Shielded
  VMs have been updated to support Linux VMs, and Windows Defender
  Advanced Threat Protection is now embedded in the operating system. The
  embedding of Defender “gives customers access to deep kernel and
  memory sensors, improving performance and anti-tampering, and enabling
  response actions on server machines,” according to Microsoft.
• Containers were added in Server 2016 (see Table 1 below),
  and in
  Server 2019 the image size
  of containers is being reduced to quicken delivery times and improve
  performance. Additional support for Linux containers has been added as
  well.
• The performance of hyper-converged infrastructure, a new
  feature in Server 2016, has been improved, and the introduction of
  Project
  Honolulu (now officially called Windows Admin Center) aims to make
  managing such an infrastructure easier.

At the time of the general release of Server 2019 in October 2018,
Microsoft reported that hardware for the new platform was slow to
be certified, because the “release-to-manufacturing” stage of the
pre-release process was omitted due to the trend toward virtual and
cloud environments.³ Upgrades “in-place” from 2016 to 2019 are also available.⁴

Applications

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Table 1 describes the most notable new or significantly enhanced
features of Server 2016.

 

Since the initial release of Server 2016, Microsoft has
updated the
platform through a new program of twice-yearly releases.⁵
These releases (along with smaller, more frequent updates and
patches) have introduced changes to the Server
platform, so many of the new features of Server 2019 will be familiar
to administrators.

Table 2 describes the key features added to Server 2019.