Secure. Evolve. Innovate.
with Windows Server 2016
The cloud offers a new model that delivers faster time to value
and innovation. Many organizations, however, face business
requirements that are best met by a hybrid cloud model.
For organizations that need it all—security, efciency, and
innovation—Windows Server 2016 delivers. It is the cloud-ready
operating system that supports your current workloads while
introducing new technologies that make it easy to transition to
cloud computing.
Security at the OS level
Windows Server 2016 includes built-in breach resistance to help thwart
attacks on your systems and meet compliance goals. Even if someone nds
a way into your environment, the layers of security built into Windows Server
2016 limit the damage they can cause and help detect suspicious activity.
• Protect your virtual machines. Use the unique Shielded Virtual Machines
feature to encrypt your VMs with BitLocker and help ensure they can run
only on hosts approved by the Host Guardian Service.
Run Windows Server 2016
in the cloud
Most organizations today run a mixture of
on-premises and cloud-based workloads.
Windows Server 2016 is designed to
work as well in the cloud as on-premises.
Many customers already “lift and shift”
applications into a Windows Server-based
IaaS virtual machine in the cloud; they
gain immediate benets of scale and
agility, while letting someone else run
the compute and storage infrastructure.
Others are updating traditional .NET-based
applications by moving them into Windows
Server containers. Containers provide
immediate agility benets, and make it
easier to update and extend applications
using new cloud-based services.
• Help secure admin credentials. Protect admin credentials from Pass-
the-Hash attacks using Credential Guard and Remote Credential Guard,
and control administrator privileges with Just-In-Time Administration and
Just Enough Administration, which together help minimize the time and
capability granted for specic privileges.
• Protect the operating system. Resist breaches with built-in Control Flow
Guard, which helps prevent memory corruption attacks, and Windows
Defender, optimized for server roles. Help ensure only trusted software
can be run on the server with Device Guard.
• Improve ability to detect attacks. Use advanced auditing capabilities
to help detect malicious behavior.
• Meet compliance requirements. Built-in security components help
address certication requirements for government and industry
data-protection regulations, including SOX, ISO 27001, PCI DSS 3.2,
and FedRAMP. Find more information at www.microsoft.com/en-us/
cloud-platform/windows-server-security#compliance.
Save up to 50 percent on Azure
Windows Server customers with Software
Assurance can use their existing licenses to
save up to 50 percent on Azure IaaS virtual
machines. Check out the Azure Hybrid Use
Benet to get started at www.azure.com/ahub.
“ We’re moving towards a world where we
—
don’t need to know where our data is
on-premises or in the cloud. The
combination of Storage Spaces Direct,
Hyper-V, scale-out ash storage, and SMB3
allows us to focus on functionality rather
than location. With Windows Server 2016,
migration is no longer a project, just a task.”
– Ulf Preisler, IT Director
Danske Fragtmænd
Secure. Evolve. Innovate.
Evolve your infrastructure
Datacenter admins are struggling to reduce costs while handling more data.
Meanwhile applications stretch the operational fabric and create infrastructure
backlogs that can slow business. As organizations push the boundaries of highly
virtualized environments, they can use Windows Server 2016 capabilities to gain
cloud-like efciencies in their datacenters. Advanced software-dened compute,
storage, and networking features can help meet operational and security challenges.
Resilient compute
Run your datacenter with a highly automated, resilient server operating system.
• Trust your workloads to an enterprise-class hypervisor. You can be condent
your workloads will perform on Hyper-V, which Microsoft uses to run hyper-scale
datacenters around the globe. When needed, you also can easily migrate
a Hyper-V workload from on-premises to a Windows Server VM in Azure.
Remote Desktop Services
with Windows Server 2016
Desktop virtualization is one way IT
leaders can more securely deliver
applications to the wide array of
devices that mobile workers use on the
job. Because apps don’t execute on
the client devices, IT also helps secure
corporate data, extends the life of
older equipment, and gets more out
of newer, lower-cost hardware. The
remote desktop experience just got
better with Windows Server 2016:
• Reduce datacenter footprint. Increase availability and reduce resource usage
with “just enough OS” using the Nano Server installation option, with an image
that is 25x smaller than Windows Server 2016.
• Upgrade efciently. Upgrade infrastructure clusters to Windows Server 2016
with zero downtime for your Hyper-V or Scale-out le server workloads, and
without requiring new hardware, using Mixed OS Mode cluster upgrades.
• Stay open. Deploy applications on multiple operating systems with best-in-class
support for Linux on Hyper-V.
• Automate server management. Use PowerShell and Desired State Conguration
to automate routine operations.
• Manage remotely. Control Windows servers from anywhere using Server
management tools, a new Azure-based GUI—especially useful for managing
headless installation options such as Nano Server.
Affordable high-performance storage
Storage systems are critical to the performance of most business applications.
But traditional, expensive, manually congured storage systems can prevent
organizations from realizing the efciency benets of a software-dened datacenter.
In contrast, the Azure-inspired, software-dened storage capabilities in Windows
Server 2016 use policies and automation to reduce costs and add scale.
Support for cloud-managed
domain services
Deploy easily in the cloud or onpremises, helping mobile workers be
productive anywhere, anytime.
More efficient cloud deployment
Reduce the number of VMs required
for deployment in Azure IaaS, which
combines services into a single VM.
Better graphics experience
Graphics cards (GPUs) can be assigned
to a virtual machine, unleashing the full
power of available server-class graphics
cards to virtual desktops and apps, thus
using the native driver of the GPU.
Enhanced connection broker
Connection broker can now handle up
to 10,000 concurrent connections.
• Reduce storage cost. Build highly available, scalable hyper-converged storage
solutions at a fraction of the price of SAN or NAS. With Storage Spaces Direct, use
industry-standard servers with local storage, including high speed solid-state drives.
• Create affordable business continuity. Prepare for the worst using Storage
Replica synchronous storage replication for disaster recovery among datacenters.
• Prioritize storage resources. Ensure critical applications receive priority access
to storage resources using storage Quality of Service (QoS) policies.
Secure. Evolve. Innovate.
Azure-inspired networking
Traditional network infrastructures are rigid and complex. Organizations can respond
faster to market changes by moving the network control layer from hardware to
software to create a software-dened network. This enables them to centrally
congure and manage physical and virtual network devices such as routers,
switches, and gateways, resulting in automatic load balancing and the ability to
shift workloads without setting switches. IT can continue to use existing physical
switches, routers, and other hardware devices with the virtual controllers, while
achieving deeper integration between the virtual network and the physical network.
• Manage by policy. Deploy and manage workloads across their entire lifecycle
with hundreds of networking policies (isolation, QoS, security, load balancing,
switching, routing, gateway, DNS, etc.) in a matter of seconds using a scalable
Network Controller.
• Enhance network security. Dynamically segment your network based on
workload needs using a distributed rewall and network security groups to
apply rich policies within and across segments. Layer enforcement by routing
trafc to virtualized rewall appliances for even greater levels of security.
• Gain workload mobility. Take control of your hybrid workloads, including
running them in containers, and move them across servers, racks, and clouds
using standards-based VXLAN and NVGRE overlay networks and multitenanted hybrid gateways.
Application innovation
Increasingly, organizations use apps to help differentiate themselves from the
competition. Apps help win, engage, and support customers. Developers building
and updating the apps tend to have little patience for the realities of IT infrastructure.
They don’t want to wait long for IT services, and they want apps in production to
work the same way the apps work on developers’ machines.
Management options
Microsoft System Center 2016
Whether you have a few servers or a
few thousand, System Center provides
efcient deployment and management
functionality.
PowerShell and Desired State
Conguration
Dene, deploy, and manage your
software environment through
PowerShell scripting and Desired State
Conguration, using a single console.
Server management tools
Use Server management tools, a free
cloud service, to manage Windows
Server instances both on-premises
and in Azure.
Operations Management Suite
To manage and help protect workloads
in multiple cloud types, you can
extend management to Operations
Management Suite (OMS) services
for visibility and control across Azure,
AWS, Windows Server, Linux, VMware,
and OpenStack systems.
Windows Server 2016 supports application innovation using container technology
and microservices. Containers can help speed application deployment and
streamline the way IT operations and development teams collaborate to deliver
applications. In addition, developers can use microservices architectures to separate
app functionality into smaller, independently deployable services, which make it
easier to upgrade part of the app without affecting the rest.
Windows Server 2016 helps organizations update and innovate with their apps in
three ways:
• Secure fabric for existing applications. Give your hard-working client-server
applications some assistance. You can run existing apps on Windows Server
2016 without modifying them, which enables them to take advantage of
enhanced security and efciency features.
“Most of our application portfolio
consists of older legacy applications
that are cumbersome to update.
By moving these applications
into Windows Server containers
and embracing a microservices
architecture, we can break these big
applications apart and update the
pieces independently. This will reduce
customer downtime and increase
business agility.”
– Stephen Tarmey
Chief Architect
Tyco International
Secure. Evolve. Innovate.
• Deliver container benets to existing apps. Containers help you move
existing applications into a modern DevOps environment with little or no
code changes, while gaining benets such as continuous application delivery
and better security. Containers can help you introduce new architectures,
including microservices, which improve application agility and scale. Also,
when developers package apps into containers for delivery to IT, they help
standardize on a platform that streamlines deployment on-premises, to any
cloud, or to a hybrid architecture across clouds. Now developers can use a
production-ready, fully-supported version of Docker Engine to build, ship, and
run containers in Windows Server 2016
• Build cloud-native and hybrid apps. Create new microservices applications
using fewer and compressed resources, and more agile “just enough”
technologies. Use containers to build, test, and deploy the apps to any cloud,
including Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. Developers will appreciate the
lightweight Nano Server installation option, which delivers Windows Server
2016 as a quick-start, practical platform optimized for building next-generation
applications with containers or microservices.
Windows Server 2016
editions
Windows Server 2016 Datacenter for
highly virtualized datacenter and cloud
environments.
• Features exclusive to the Datacenter
Edition include Shielded Virtual
Machines, software-dened
networking, Storage Spaces Direct,
and Storage Replica.
Windows Server 2016 Standard for
physical or minimally virtualized
environments.
Windows Server 2016 Essentials for
small businesses with up to 25 users
and 50 devices.
Installation options
Customers who choose the Datacenter or Standard editions are able to customize
their installation of Windows Server 2016 by choosing from three options:
Option Scenario Details
Server Core Small-footprint, headless operating
system removes the desktop UI from
the server and runs only required
components.
Nano Server Extremely small, headless operating
system ideal for reducing your
datacenter footprint or running
applications that use containers and
microservices.
Server with Desktop
Experience
(previously known as
Server with a GUI)
Provides user experience for those
who need to run an app that requires
a local user interface or for a Remote
Desktop Services Host.
• Includes local graphical tools such as Task Manager and
PowerShell for local or remote management.
• Does not include MMC or Server Manager.
• Supported as Long Term Servicing Branch (LTSB).
• Manage remotely, via PowerShell or the web-based Server
management tools, or use existing remote management tools
such as MMC or System Center.
• Requires Software Assurance and Current Branch for Business
servicing model.
• Experience a full Windows client shell and experience,
consistent with Windows 10.
• Use with Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and Server
management tools available locally on the server.
• Supported as Long Term Servicing Branch (LTSB).
Take the next step. Learn more at
www.microsoft.com/windowsserver
© 2017 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This document is for informational purposes only. Microsoft makes no warranties,
express or implied, with respect to the information presented here.
Loading...