Windows Server 2016 arriving soon

By Digital News Asia July 15, 2016

Technical previews promise many new features
Multiple licensing schemes and easy upgrades

THE wait is almost over. Although not an official date, it is now clear that Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 will launch at Microsoft’s Ignite conference later this year.

We also now have details on how Windows Server 2016 will be serviced in future. Full installations of the operating system, including the GUI and shell, will be serviced on the ‘5 + 5’ model that Microsoft has used for previous operating systems. That means five years of mainstream support, during which both bug fixes and feature improvements are made and then five years of extended support, during which only security bugs will be fixed.

The new Nano Server will be handled in a different way. Nano Server installations will be updated in tandem with Windows 10 Current Branch for Business (CBB) release. CBB usually trails the main consumer branch by about six months. This gives new features a bit of time to receive some real-world testing before being distributed to more organisations.

CBB is expected to be updated two to three times a year, and this will apply to Nano Server deployments of Windows Server 2016 just as it does to CBB deployments of Windows 10. Unlike Windows 10, Nano Server systems will not update automatically to the latest CBB build when it becomes available.

The latest Technical Preview of Windows Server 2016, TP3, introduced a number of new features, such as Docker integration and Windows Server Containers, along with improvements to features introduced in previous previews. It also brings new security capabilities such as Shielded VMs, which protect virtual machine contents in a multitenant environment.

Windows Server 2016 supports rolling cluster upgrades from Windows Server 2012 R2, meaning you can perform these upgrades without taking down the cluster or migrating to new hardware. The process is similar in that individual nodes in the cluster must have all active roles moved or evicted to another node in order to upgrade the host operating system. Rolling cluster upgrades should reduce the effort needed and hopefully make the process of upgrading less painful for production environments.

For a good overview of the best features of Windows Server 2016, see this video.