Windows Server 2019 Main Features!!

This article describes some of the new features in Windows Server 2019. Windows Server 2019 is built on the strong foundation of Windows Server 2016 and brings numerous innovations on four key themes: Hybrid, Security, Application Platform, and Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI).

General Features

Desktop experience

The Desktop Experience is back in Windows Server 2019! It is not included in Windows Server, version 1709, Windows Server, version 1803, or Windows Server, version 1809. As with Windows Server 2016, during setup of the operating system it is possible to choose between Server Core installations or Server with Desktop Experience installations.

System Insights

System Insights is a new feature available in Windows Server 2019 that brings local predictive analytics capabilities natively to Windows Server. These predictive capabilities, each backed by a machine-learning model, locally analyze Windows Server system data, such as performance counters and events, providing insight into the functioning of your servers and helping you reduce the operational expenses associated with reactively managing issues in your Windows Server deployments.

Storage Replica expanded to include:

• Test failover is a new feature that allows mounting of destination storage in order to validate replication or backup data. For more information, see Frequently Asked Questions about Storage Replica.

• Log Performance improvements v1.1

• Storage Replica is available in Standard Edition and can create 1 Partnership with 1 Resource Group with single 2TB volumes. The feature can replicate between clusters, asynchronously and synchronously.

Storage Migration Service

Storage Migration Service (SMS) is a new role included in Windows Server Standard and Datacenter editions. SMS is a job-based orchestration and proxy that:

• Allows you to inventory existing servers for their data, security, and network settings.

• Migrates that data, security, and network settings to a new, modern target by using the SMB protocol.

• Takes over the identity of the old server completely, while decommissioning the original source, in such a way that your applications are unaffected and unaware that migration has taken place.

Security

Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

ATP's deep platform sensors and response actions expose memory and kernel level attacks and respond by suppressing malicious files and terminating malicious processes.

• For more information about Windows Defender ATP, see Overview of Windows Defender ATP capabilities.

• For more information on onboarding servers, see Onboard servers to Windows Defender ATP service.

Windows Defender ATP Exploit Guard is a new set of host-intrusion prevention capabilities. The four components of Windows Defender Exploit Guard are designed to lock down the device against a wide variety of attack vectors and block behaviors commonly used in malware attacks, while enabling you to balance security risk and productivity requirements.

• Attack Surface Reduction(ASR) is set of controls that enterprises can enable to prevent malware from getting on the machine by blocking suspicious malicious files (for example, Office files), scripts, lateral movement, ransomware behavior, and email-based threats.

• Network protection protects the endpoint against web-based threats by blocking any outbound process on the device to untrusted hosts/IP addresses through Windows Defender SmartScreen.

• Controlled folder access protects sensitive data from ransomware by blocking untrusted processes from accessing your protected folders.

• Exploit protection is a set of mitigations for vulnerability exploits (replacing EMET)that can be easily configured to protect your system and applications.

Windows Defender Application Control (also known as Code Integrity (CI) policy) was released in Windows Server 2016. Customer feedback has suggested that it is a great concept, but hard to deploy. To address this, we have built default CI policies, which will allow all Windows in-box files and Microsoft applications, such as SQL Server, and block known executables that can bypass CI.

Hyper-converged infrastructure

Storage Spaces Direct

• Deduplication and compression Get up to 10X more storage for free with deduplication and compression for the ReFS filesystem. (Turn on with Windows Admin Center.) The variable-size chunk store with optional compression maximizes savings rates, while the multi-threaded post-processing architecture keeps performance impact minimal. Supports volumes up to 64 TB and files up to 1 TB each.

• Native support for persistent memory Unlock unprecedented performance with native Storage Spaces Direct support for persistent memory modules, including Intel® Optane™ DC PM and NVDIMM-N. Use persistent memory as cache to accelerate the active working set, or as capacity to guarantee consistent low latency on the order of microseconds. Manage persistent memory just as you would any other drive in PowerShell or Windows Admin Center.

• Nested resiliency for two-node HCI at the edge Survive two hardware failures at once with an all-new software resiliency option inspired by RAID 5+1. With nested resiliency, a two-node Storage Spaces Direct cluster can provide continuously accessible storage for apps and virtual machines even if one server node goes down and a drive fails in the other server node.

• Windows Admin Center Manage and monitor Storage Spaces Direct with the new purpose-built Dashboard and experience in Windows Admin Center. Create, open, expand, or delete volumes with just a few clicks. Monitor performance like IOPS and IO latency from the overall cluster down to the individual SSD or HDD. Available at no additional cost for Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019.

• Performance history Get effortless visibility into resource utilization and performance with built-in history. Over 50 essential counters spanning compute, memory, network, and storage are automatically collected and stored on the cluster for up to one year. Best of all, there’s nothing to install, configure, or start – it just works. Visualize in Windows Admin Center or query and process in PowerShell.

• Scale up to 4 PB per cluster Achieve multi-petabyte scale – great for media, backup, and archival use cases. In Windows Server 2019, Storage Spaces Direct supports up to 4 petabytes (PB) = 4,000 terabytes of raw capacity per storage pool. Related capacity guidelines are increased as well: for example, you can create twice as many volumes (64 instead of 32), each twice as large as before (64 TB instead of 32 TB). Stitch multiple clusters together into a cluster set for even greater scale within one storage namespace.

• Mirror-accelerated parity is 2X faster With mirror-accelerated parity you can create Storage Spaces Direct volumes that are part mirror and part parity, like mixing RAID-1 and RAID-5/6 to get the best of both. (Available at Windows Admin Center.) In Windows Server 2019, the performance of mirror-accelerated parity is more than doubled relative to Windows Server 2016 thanks to important architectural optimizations.

• Drive latency outlier detection Easily identify drives with abnormal latency with proactive monitoring and built-in outlier detection, inspired by Microsoft Azure’s long-standing and successful approach. Whether it’s average latency or something more subtle like 99th percentile latency that stands out, slow drives are automatically labeled in PowerShell and Windows Admin Center with ‘Abnormal Latency’ status.

Failover Clustering

• Cluster Sets Hyperscale a hyper-converged infrastructure by federating multiple Failover Clusters into a Cluster Set. Virtual Machines achieve fluidity across loosely coupled grouping of clusters for balancing and maintenance.

• Azure Enlightened Clusters Failover Clusters automatically detect and optimize the configuration when running in Azure IaaS virtual machines. Proactive failover and logging of Azure planned maintenance events to achieve the highest levels of availability. Simplified deployment by removing the need to configure the load balancer with Dynamic Network Name for Cluster Name.

• Cross-domain Cluster Migration Failover Clusters can now dynamically move from one Active Directory domain to another. Simplifying domain consolidation and allowing clusters to be pre-built and then shipped and domain joined onsite.

• Cluster Hardening Intra-cluster communication over Server Message Block (SMB) for Cluster Shared Volumes and Storage Spaces Direct now leverages certificates to provide the most secure platform. This allows Failover Clusters to operate with no dependencies on NTLM and enable security baselines.

• USB Witness A simple USB drive in a switch or device can now be used as a witness in determining quorum for a cluster. This extends the File Share Witness to support any SMB2 compliant device.

• Cluster Infrastructure The CSV Cache is now enabled by default to turbo boost virtual machine performance. MSDTC now supports Cluster Shared Volumes, to allow deploying MSDTC workloads on Storage Spaces Direct such as with SQL Server. Enhanced logic to detect partitioned nodes with self-healing to return nodes to cluster membership. Enhanced cluster network route detection and self-healing.

• Cluster Aware Updating Cluster Aware Updating (CAU) is now integrated and aware of Storage Spaces Direct, validating and ensuring data resynchronization completes on each node. Inspects updates to intelligently patch by only rebooting if necessary. Enables orchestrating restarts of all nodes in the cluster for planned maintenance, even when not patching.

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