Microsoft’s Windows Server team have released a preview of the next Windows Server product, Windows Server 2019, Microsoft has planned to release the final version of Windows Server 2019 in the second half of the calendar year 2018.
The new server product is a Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) release that will be available as a Desktop Experience and with Server Core installation options. It also includes integration for Project Honolulu, Microsoft’s new management platform that enables Azure and Windows Server management from the same browser-based interface.
You can try out a Windows Server Preview build through the Windows Server Insider Program. The product has the same licensing model as Windows Server 2016 but Microsoft notes that the company might (likely) increase the “pricing for Windows Client Access Licensing (CAL)”.
This blog will help you out to know new feature key area information about Windows server 2019 preview version.
What is new in Windows Server 2019
Microsoft highlights and improves the following four key areas in the preview build.
- Hybrid cloud scenarios
- Security
- Application platform
- Hyper-converged infrastructure
Hybrid cloud scenarios
Microsoft is mainly focusing on how to improve the customer experience in a hybrid cloud world. Taking advantage of public cloud innovation such as Artificial Intelligence and IoT, and connecting them with on-premise services is a huge enabler for customers.
At Microsoft Ignite 2017, Microsoft showed of the Technical Preview of Project Honolulu, a web-based management console for Windows Server.
Project Honolulu is a locally deployed platform to manage Windows and Windows Server. It will be available as a management platform in windows Server 2019. Project Honolulu is a flexible, lightweight browser-based customer-deployed platform and solution for Windows Server management scenarios for troubleshooting, configuration, and maintenance.
The Project Honolulu is to make it simpler and easier to connect existing deployments of Windows Server to Azure services. With Windows Server 2019 and Project Honolulu, customers will be able to easily integrate Azure services such as Azure Backup, Azure File Sync, disaster recovery, and much more so that they will be able to leverage these Azure services without disrupting their applications and infrastructure.
Security
On the security side, In Windows Server 2019 Microsoft brings various security improvements and it supports the following three areas – Protect, Detect and Respond
In the protect side Microsoft introduced Shielded virtual machines (VMs) in Windows Server 2016 to better protect VMs against attacks. Microsoft adds support for Linux virtual machines to Shielded VMs. It also includes extending VMConnect to improve troubleshooting of Shielded VMs for Windows Server and Linux.
That is not all!
Windows server 2019 support provides Encrypted Networks that will let admins encrypt network segments, with a flip of a switch to protect the network layer between servers.
On the Detect and Respond front side, Microsoft includes Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) that provides preventative protection, detects attacks and zero-day exploits among other capabilities, into the operating system. This gives customers access to the deep kernel and memory sensors, improving performance and anti-tampering, and enabling response actions on server machines.
Application platform
Microsoft provides good performance for Windows Server containers and the Windows Subsystem on Linux in Windows Server 2019.
The Server Core base container image size was reduced by 72% from its current size of 5 Gigabytes. It helps to improve the time it takes to deploy the image.
Other added feature has they improved Windows Subsystem on Linux(WSL), helping Linux users bring their scripts to Windows at the time of using OpenSSH, Curl & Tar.
Hyper-converged infrastructure(HCI)
Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is one of the latest technologies in server industry and it describes a fully software-defined IT infrastructure that virtualizes all of the elements of conventional “hardware-defined” systems. HCI includes, at the minimum, virtualized computing (a hypervisor), a virtualized SAN (software-defined storage) and virtualized networking (software-defined networking).
In Windows Server 2019, Microsoft is building on this platform by adding scale, performance, and reliability. Microsoft adding the ability to manage HCI deployments in Project Honolulu, to simplify the management and day-to-day activities on HCI environments.
And Microsoft also mentions that System Center 2019 will be available to manage Windows Server 2019 infrastructures.
Finally, I have listed the few key points for your short reference.
- It supports Windows defender advanced threat protection service
- will be able to run the Linux containers
- Compared to previous versions, there is a reduction in the size of the server core base image
- Windows Subsystem for Linux will be built into Windows Server 2019
- Kubernetes management of Windows Server 2019 hosts is available
- Project Honolulu (Microsoft’s graphical management tool for Windows Server that’s been in preview) will be generally available
How to Get Started
Build 17623 can be downloaded from the Insider website in disk image (.iso) or Hyper-V (.vhdx) formats. The initial build is available in 18 languages, including Chinese, English, German, Korean and Russian.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windowsinsiderpreviewserver
Conclusion
Microsoft has released Windows Server 2019 Preview version. Microsoft has highlighted and improved some new features in this version when compared to the previous one. The new server product is a Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) release that will be available as a Desktop Experience and with Server Core installation options. The New Windows Server 2019 with new features will help in modernizing IT technology.
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