WINDOWS SERVER 2019 IS HERE

What’s new in Windows Server 2019

Windows Server 2019 is built on the strong foundation of Windows Server 2016 – which continues to see great momentum in customer adoption. Windows Server 2016 is the fastest adopted version of Windows Server, ever! We’ve been busy since its launch at Ignite 2016 drawing insights from your feedback and product telemetry to make this release even better.

We also spent a lot of time with customers to understand the future challenges and where the industry is going. Four themes were consistent – Hybrid, Security, Application Platform, and Hyper-converged infrastructure. We bring numerous innovations on these four themes in Windows Server 2019.

Hybrid cloud scenarios:

We know that the move to the cloud is a journey and often, a hybrid approach, one that combines on-premises and cloud environments working together, is what makes sense to our customers. Extending Active Directory, synchronizing file servers, and backup in the cloud are just a few examples of what customers are already doing today to extend their datacenters to the public cloud. In addition, a hybrid approach also allows for apps running on-premises to take advantage of innovation in the cloud such as Artificial Intelligence and IoT. Hybrid cloud enables a future-proof, long-term approach – which is exactly why we see it playing a central role in cloud strategies for the foreseeable future.

At Ignite in September 2017, we announced the Technical Preview of Project Honolulu – our reimagined experience for management of Windows and Windows Server. Project Honolulu is a flexible, lightweight browser-based locally-deployed platform and a solution for management scenarios. One of our goals with 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 they will be able to leverage these Azure services without disrupting their applications and infrastructure.

Security:

Security continues to be a top priority for our customers. The number of cyber-security incidents continue to grow, and the impact of these incidents is escalating quickly. A Microsoft study shows that attackers take, on average, just 24-48 hours to penetrate an environment after infecting the first machine. In addition, attackers can stay in the penetrated environment – without being noticed – for up to 99 days on average, according to a report by FireEye/Mandiant. We continue on our journey to help our customers improve their security posture by working on features that bring together learnings from running global-scale datacenters for Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and several other online services.

Our approach to security is three-fold – Protect, Detect and Respond. We bring security features in all three areas in Windows Server 2019.
On the Protect front, we introduced Shielded VMs in Windows Server 2016, which was enthusiastically received by our customers. Shielded VMs protect virtual machines (VM) from compromised or malicious administrators in the fabric so only VM admins can access it on known, healthy, and attested guarded fabric. In Windows Server 2019, Shielded VMs will now support Linux VMs. We are also extending VMConnect to improve troubleshooting of Shielded VMs for Windows Server and Linux. We are adding 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, in Windows Server 2019, we are embedding 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 deep kernel and memory sensors, improving performance and anti-tampering, and enabling response actions on server machines.

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI): 

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI): HCI is one of the latest trends in the server industry today. According to IDC, the HCI market grew 64% in 2016 and Gartner says it will be a $5 billion market by 2019. This trend is primarily because customers understand the value of using x86 servers with high performant local disks to run their compute and storage needs at the same time. In addition, HCI gives the flexibility to easily scale such deployments.

Customers looking for HCI solutions can use Windows Server 2016 and the Windows Server Software Defined program today. We partnered with industry leading hardware vendors to provide an affordable and yet extremely robust HCI solution with validated design. In Windows Server 2019 we are building on this platform by adding scale, performance, and reliability. We are also adding the ability to manage HCI deployments in Project Honolulu, to simplify the management and day-to-day activities on HCI environments.