The best of Windows Server 2016 - Thomas Maurer

@ITCAMPRO #ITCAMP17Community Conference for IT Professionals
The best of Windows Server 2016
Thomas Maurer
Cloud Architect @ itnetX
Microsoft MVP
www.thomasmaurer.ch
Twitter: @ThomasMaurer

Thomas Maurer
• Cloud Architect, itnetX
– Microsoft Cloud
– MCSE Private Cloud
– MCSE Server Infrastructure
– MCSD Azure Solution Architect
– Microsoft MVP Cloud & Datacenter
• Twitter & Blog
– www.thomasmaurer.ch
– @thomasmaurer

MMS Minnesota 2014

• Nano Server
• Storage
• Hyper-V
• Containers
• Servicing
• One More Thing…
Agenda

NANO SERVER

• Reboots impact my business
– Why do I have to reboot because of a patch to a component I never use?
– When a reboot is required, the systems need to be back in service ASAP
• Server images are too big
– Large images take a long time to install and configure
– Transferring images consumes too much network bandwidth
– Storing images requires too much disk space
• Infrastructure requires too many resources
– If the OS consumes fewer resources, I can increase my VM density
– Higher VM density lowers my costs and increases my efficiency & margins
Todays Datacenter Challenges

Security Impact

What’s Nano Server?

The next step in the journey…

▪ An installation option, like Server Core
▪ Not listed in Setup because image must be
customized with drivers
▪ Separate folder on the
Windows Server media
Nano Server in Windows Server 2016

DEMO: NANO SERVER

NANO SERVER: LET’S TALK NUMBERS!

Servicing Improvements*
0
5
10
15
20
25
Critical Bulletins
Nano Server Server Core Full Server
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Important Bulletins
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Number of Reboots
23
8
2
9
23
26
6
11
3
* Analysis based on all patches released in 2014

0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
Setup Time (sec)
Nano Server Server Core
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Disk Footprint (GB)
Deployment Improvements
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
VHD Size (GB)
.41
6.3
40
300
4.84
.4

Nano Server Image Builder

• Easy to deploy
• Lightweight
• Easily integrates with our automated
approach
• Works with our existing deployment
workflows; WDS and boot from VHDX
• Reduces operational costs
• Highly stable
• Key for fabric deployments
• Delivers on scale and performance
Nano key wins

STORAGE

Software Defined Storage v3
Storage Spaces Direct
Use standard servers with local storage to build highly
available and scalable software-defined storage
Storage Replica
Create affordable business continuity and disaster
recovery among datacenters
Storage QoS
Prevent noisy neighbors from impacting high priority
workloads with a Storage QoS policy

Industry-standard servers with internal drives
Storage Spaces Direct at a glance

No shared storage, no fancy cables – just Ethernet

Create Failover Cluster

Software-defined “pool” of storage

We’re ready to create volumes!

Scale-Out File Server (SoFS)
SMB3
File Shares

Hyper-Converged

Add new node to cluster

Scenarios
SCALE-OUT FILE SERVER CLUSTER
HYPER-V CLUSTER
Hyper-converged Converged (Disaggregated)
HYPER-V CLUSTER(S)

• 2 node minimum
– 2+ cache drives
– 4+ capacity drives
• Up to 16 servers
• Up to 416 disks
Scale out to Max

DEMO: STORAGE SPACES DIRECT

DELL PowerEdge R730XD
HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9
Cisco UCS C240 M4
Intel MCB2224TAF3
Quanta D51B-2U (MSW6000)
DataON S2D-3110
Fujitsu Primergy RX2540 M2 Inspur NF5280M4
Lenovo X3650 M5 NEC Express5800 R120f-2M
RAID Inc. Ability™ HCI Series S2D200 SuperMicro SYS-2028U-TRT+

Demo Equipment
 4x Quanta D51 PH Servers
 2x Intel Xeon E5-2620v3, 12 Cores
 64 GB RAM
 2 x 800 GB HGST NVMe SSDs
(Caching Devices)
 12 x 960 GB Samsung Pro SATA SSDs
(Performance / Capacity Tier)
 LSI 3008 SAS3 Controller
 Dual-port Mellanox ConnectX-3 Pro, 40GbE
 Mellanox 40GbE Switch
 SX1012 12 x 40Gbps / 48 x 10Gbps
70k$
21TB
Netto

- 16x HPE DL380 G9
- 2x Intel Xeon 16 Core
- 768 GB RAM
- 2x 1.6 TB NVMe
- 16x 1.6 TB SSD
- 2x Mellanox ConnectX-4 100GbE
- 280 TB Usable Flash Only Storage
Extend S2D Clusters

S2D Hardware

REFS FILESYSTEM

• Resilient File System
• It maximizes data availability, despite errors that
would historically cause data loss or downtime.
• Taking advantage of an intelligent file system for:
–Rapid fixed disk creation
–Rapid disk merge operations
ReFS Accelerated VHDX Operations

DEMO: REFS FILESYSTEM

STORAGE REPLICA

Storage Replica

• Volume based block-level storage replication
• synchronous or asynchronous
• HW agnostic (any type of source / destination volume)
• SMB3 as transport protocol
• Leverages RDMA / SMB3 Encryption Multichanneling
• I/Os pre-aggregated prior transfer
Storage Replica at a glance

HYPER-V

Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2 Hyper-V
High performance live migration
(compression/RDMA)
Zero downtime upgrades
Automatic VM Activation
Live VM export
Guest backup improvements
Enhanced VMConnect
Dynamic memory host balancing
First class Linux support – Dynamic memory, file
system consistent host based backup
RemoteFX over WAN
Generation 2 Virtual Machines
Secure boot in a VM
User defined meta data for VHDX
PowerShell for all Hyper-V operations
Hyper-V Metrics
Shared nothing live migration
High performance auto tiered storage spaces
Write back cache with spaces
Storage QoS
Shared VHDX for guest clustering
VHDX online resize
Storage deduplication with live VMs for VDI
Hyper-V Recovery Manager (Microsoft Azure
Site recovery)
Azure Backup
Inbox multi-tenant site-to-site VPN gateway for
physical & virtual networks
Protected VM Networks/Virtual RSS
Enhanced LBFO performance with NIC teaming
Hyper-V Extensible Switch
4K Sector support
Hyper-V over SMB
Hyper-V over Spaces & ReFS
64 VP, 1 TB VMs
SR-IOV for 10+GB networking
64TB VHDX
Hyper-V Replica
Network Virtualization
USB redirection over RemoteFX vGPU
Hot add/remove of storage
VHDX resiliency
Dynamic & differencing VHDX performance
improvements
384 LP, 4TB physical system
2+ Million IOPS to a single VM
Resource Pools
NUMA in a VM
1024 running VMs on a host

Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-VWindows Server 2016 Hyper-V
High performance live migration (compression/RDMA)
Zero downtime upgrades
Automatic VM Activation
Live VM export
Guest backup improvements
Enhanced VMConnect
Dynamic memory host balancing
First class Linux support – Dynamic memory, file system
consistent host based backup
RemoteFX over WAN
Generation 2 Virtual Machines
Secure boot in a VM
User defined meta data for VHDX
PowerShell for all Hyper-V operations
Hyper-V Metrics
Shared nothing live migration
High performance auto tiered storage spaces
Write back cache with spaces
Storage QoS
Shared VHDX for guest clustering
VHDX online resize
Storage deduplication with live VMs for VDI
Hyper-V Recovery Manager (Microsoft Azure Site
recovery)
Azure Backup
Inbox multi-tenant site-to-site VPN gateway for
physical & virtual networks
Protected VM Networks/Virtual RSS
Enhanced LBFO performance with NIC teaming
Hyper-V Extensible Switch
4K Sector support
Hyper-V over SMB
Hyper-V over Spaces & ReFS
64 VP, 1 TB VMs
SR-IOV for 10+GB networking
64TB VHDX
Hyper-V Replica
Network Virtualization
USB redirection over RemoteFX vGPU
Hot add/remove of storage
VHDX resiliency
Dynamic & differencing VHDX performance improvements
384 LP, 4TB physical system
2+ Million IOPS to a single VM
Resource Pools
NUMA in a VM
1024 running VMs on a host
Shielded VM support
vTPM
Key Storage Drive for Gen 1 VM
Guest VSM (enable Device Guard &
Credential Guard in a VM)
VM Isolation
Linux Secure Boot
Distributed Storage QoS
REFS Block
REFS Fast Fixed Disk Creation
RemoteFX improvements
Discrete Device Assignment of GPU
Headless mode support
Resilient Change Tracking (RCT)
Backup improvements
Backup of Shared VHDX
Nested virtualization
VMCX configuration file
Nano Server Host Support
Multi-host management (WMI)
Hypervisor Power Management
(connected standby works)
Virtual machine grouping
IC Upgrade via Windows Update
HvSocket (Guest-Host)
TimeSync improvements
240 VP, 16TB VMs
Support for Containers
VM configuration version & upgrade
Runtime Memory Resize
Hot / add remove of NICs
Production Checkpoints
Storage Resiliency - All Paths Down
Online Resize for Shared VHDX
Hot add / remove of replicated VHD
Rolling Cluster Upgrade
Cluster Compute Resiliency
Cluster Node Quarantine
Device Naming of NIC
512LP, 24TB Host
Direct Device Assignment

Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V scale limits
Capability
Windows Server 2012/2012 R2
Standard and Datacenter
Windows Server 2016
Standard and Datacenter
Physical (Host)
Memory Support
Up to 4 TB per
physical server
Up to 24 TB per
physical server (6x)
Physical (Host) Logical
Processor Support
Up to 320 LPs Up to 512 LPs
Virtual Machine
Memory Support
Up to 1 TB
per VM
Up to 16 TB
per VM (16x)
Virtual Machine Virtual
Processor Support
Up to 64
VPs per VM
Up to 240 VPs
per VM (3.75x)

Challenges in protecting high-value assets

Designed for ‘zero-trust’ environments

• Operational
• Hot Add / Remove Network Adapters
• Online Memory Resize
• PowerShell Direct
• Cluster Rolling Upgrades
• Software Defined Networking Stack
• Backup and Checkpoints
• …
Improvements

DEMO: HYPER-V

CONTAINERS

• LXC (Linux Containers) is an operating-system-level
virtualization environment for running multiple
isolated Linux systems (containers) on a single Linux
control host. Containers provide operating system-
level virtualization through a virtual environment
that has its own process and network space, instead
of creating a full-fledged virtual machine.
What are Containers

Containers:
Applications traditionally built and deployed
onto physical systems with
1:1 relationship
New applications often required new
physical systems for isolation of resources
Higher consolidation ratios and
better utilization
Faster app deployment than in a traditional,
physical environment
Apps deployed into VMs with
high compatibility success
Apps benefited from key VM
features i.e., live migration, HA
Further accelerate of app deployment
Reduce effort to deploy apps
Streamline development and testing
Lower costs associated with app deployment
Increase server consolidation
Package and
run apps within

Bare-Metal

Virtual Machines

Container Run-time

Modern app dev, flexible isolation

SERVICING MODEL

LTSB servicing model
This is the traditional servicing model
Windows Server has always used
5 + 5 years of servicing
Security and quality fixes only
No new features or functionality
Two Windows Server 2016 installation
options use this model
Server with Desktop Experience
Server Core

Current Branch for Business (CBB)
Nano Server will
be CBB only
What does
this change?
Nano Server will not have an
LTSB with Windows Server 2016
and therefore not have 5+5
years of servicing
Nano Server installations will
have to move forward to future
CBB releases of Nano Server to
continue to be serviced
Licensing Nano Server will
require Software Assurance (SA)
What doesn’t
this change?
The quality, features, and
functionality of Nano Server
Installation of new CBBs are
always controlled by
administrators, no forced
upgrades

Windows Server Servicing
CBB4
WS 2012
WS 2012R2
WS 2016
CBB2
CBB3
Server with Desktop Experience and Server Core
LTSB
LTSB
Nano Server CBB1
Time
Features
Servicing for a CBB ends
after the release of the
2nd future CBB

LICENSING

Core Based Licensing

• License all the physical cores in the server
• Minimum of 8 core licenses required for each proc
• Minimum of 16 core licenses required for each server
• Core licenses will be sold in packs of two.
• 8 two-core packs will be the minimum required to license each physical server.
• The two-core pack for each edition is 1/8th the price of a two proc license for
corresponding 2012 R2 editions.
• http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2015/12/windows-server-2016-licensing-and-
pricing/
Windows Server 2016 Licensing

Switch now!
• From September 1, 2016, through June
30, 2017, customers who switch
workloads from VMware to Hyper-V can
get free Windows Server Datacenter
licenses when buying Windows Server
Datacenter + Software Assurance.
• http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2016/08/microsofts-
new-vmware-migration-offer-for-windows-server-
2016/

Q & A
www.thomasmaurer.ch
@ThomasMaurer

Many thanks to our sponsors & partners!
GOLD
SILVER
PARTNERS
PLATINUM
POWERED BY

The best of Windows Server 2016 - Thomas Maurer

More Related Content

What's hot

Viewers also liked

Similar to The best of Windows Server 2016 - Thomas Maurer

More from ITCamp

Recently uploaded

The best of Windows Server 2016 - Thomas Maurer