Microsoft today announced the release of Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 Technical Preview 4.
This new build includes new features that enables hybrid datacenter solutions.
The three main features: Hyper-V Containers, Software-defined datacenter capabilities and increase agility and Enhanced management capabilities:
Hyper-V: 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: high availability for the network controller, better East-West load balancing, enhanced container networking, and support for live migration. New: Virtual Machine Multi-Queue to enable 10G+ performance.
- Storage: 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.
Make innovation easier with Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 Technical Preview 4.
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
Download Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-technical-preview
Download System Center 2016 Technical Preview 4: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-system-center-technical-preview
Tagged: Hyper-V, System Center, TP4
