• Increase security and reduce business risk with multiple layers of protection built into the operating system.
• Evolve your datacenter to save money and gain flexibility with software-defined datacenter technologies inspired by Microsoft Azure.
• Innovate faster with an application platform optimized for the applications you run today, as well as the cloud-native apps of tomorrow.

Technical Preview 5 is our final preview prior to launch and is feature complete, so download it today and try out all the new features in Windows Server 2016. Deploy, manage and secure Windows Server 2016 with the upcoming release of System Center 2016.

Windows Server 2016 includes 3 main editions:

• Datacenter: This edition continues to deliver significant value for organizations that need unlimited virtualization along with powerful new features including Shielded Virtual Machines, software-defined storage and software-defined networking.
• Standard: This edition is ideal for organizations that need limited virtualization but require a robust, general purpose server operating system.
• Essentials: This edition is designed for smaller organizations with less than 50 users.

These editions will be available for purchase on the October 2016 price list. More details on editions and pricing for Windows Server 2016 can be found here.

It’s also important to note that for the Standard and Datacenter editions, there are three installation options:

• Server with Desktop Experience: The Server with Desktop Experience installation option (previously known as Server with a GUI) provides an ideal user experience for those who need to run an app that requires local UI or for Remote Desktop Services Host. This option has the full Windows client shell and experience, consistent with Windows 10 Anniversary edition Long Term Servicing Branch (LTSB), with the server Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and Server Manager tools available locally on the server.
• Server Core: The Server Core installation option removes the client UI from the server, providing an installation that runs the majority of the roles and features on a lighter install. Server Core does not include MMC or Server Manager, which can be used remotely, but does include limited local graphical tools such as Task Manager as well as PowerShell for local or remote management.
• Nano Server: The Nano Server installation option provides an ideal lightweight operating system to run “cloud-native” applications based on containers and micro-services. It can also be used to run an agile and cost-effective datacenter with a dramatically smaller OS footprint. Because it is a headless installation of the server operating system, management is done remotely via Core PowerShell, the web-based Server Management Tools (SMT), or existing remote management tools such as MMC.

Announcing servicing guidelines for Windows Server 2016

In prior releases, Windows Server has been serviced and supported with a “5+5” model meaning that there is 5 years of mainstream support and 5 years of extended support and this will continue with Windows Server 2016. Customers who choose to install full Windows Server 2016 with a desktop experience or Server Core will maintain this servicing experience, which will be known as the Long Term Servicing Branch (LTSB).

Customers choosing the Nano Server installation will opt into a more active servicing model similar to the experience with Windows 10. Specifically, these periodic releases are known as Current Branch for Business (CBB) releases. This approach supports customers who are moving at a “cloud cadence” of rapid development lifecycles and wish to innovate more quickly. Since this type of servicing continues to provide new features and functionality, Software Assurance is also required to deploy and operate Nano Server in production.

Our goal is to provide feature updates approximately two or three times per year for Nano Server. The model will be similar to the Windows client servicing model, but we expect it to have some differences. While we share the same goal of delivering new and valuable technology to our customers rapidly, we understand that a server operating environment has unique requirements.

For example, while it will be necessary to stay current with new versions as they come out, the new versions will not auto-update a server. Instead, a manual installation will be performed by the admin when they choose. Because Nano Server will be updated on a more frequent basis, customers can be no more than two Nano Server CBB releases behind. Only two CBB releases will be serviced at any given time, therefore when the third Nano Server release comes out, you will need to move off of #1 as it will no longer be serviced. When #4 comes out, you will need to move off of #2, and so on.

Windows Server 2016 meets businesses and organizations where they are today, and introduces the innovation needed for the transition to cloud computing when ready. This release puts the power of choice in the hands of our customers, making Windows Server 2016 the perfect stepping stone to the cloud. We hope you join us for the launch at Ignite, and as always, we look forward to your feedback and suggestions as we continue to innovate in Windows Server.

The post Windows Server 2016 new Current Branch for Business servicing option appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

There has been a lot of press on Nano Server and Containers as new technologies coming in Windows Server 2016. In this blog post we’ll discuss how these two technologies are core pieces of the Windows Server 2016 developer/DevOps solution, discuss the full inbox stack, and provide links to additional resources to get you started. In addition to this post, at Build 2016, Taylor Brown and I presented a session with demos on this topic. The recording is available on Channel9.

Windows Server development projects generally follow a common set of tenants with a corresponding set of artifacts for the resulting app or service. These are develop, package, configure, deploy, run, test and secure. For each of these there are a common set of best practices:

• Develop: Minimize your dependencies so you can run on the smallest OS configuration possible.
• Package: Know your dependencies so that at deployment time ops can easily deploy on the smallest OS configuration possible. If ops has to guess at the configuration needed, the default will likely be the largest configuration so they don’t have to worry about hitting a missing dependency in production.
• Configure: Use intent based configuration to avoid the need for special configuration, scripts, tools, etc., in order to get the OS and app or service properly configured.
• Deploy: Use modular, componentized deployments expressing your dependencies rather than rolling them into a large monolithic install that deploys outdated components.
• Run: Use physical hosts, guest VMs, or containers to run your app or service.
• Test: Use unit tests to ensure quality.
• Secure: Don’t let security be an afterthought or add-on, ensure security is part of your app or service from the beginning.

The challenge has been that in previous releases of Windows Server, there was no clear choice, guidelines, or even opinion on how to accomplish these and what artifacts you should produce.

For example, for packaging you could use an MSI, xcopy deployment, WebPI, etc. and for configuration you could use a config file (in a variety of formats), registry entries, a custom database or binary file like the IIS metabase in IIS 6 and earlier and so on.

With Windows Server 2016 we have a clear point of view for developers and operators, using two models:

• Traditional ops model
• Emerging model with Containers

With these, Windows Server 2016 resolves the interface between devs and ops.

Let’s look at the Traditional model first, where for the first time Windows Server 2016 provides inbox solutions across each area:

• Develop apps using the SDK targeting Nano Server or your favorite Framework supported on Nano Server to enable deploying on the smallest installation option of Windows Server 2016.
• Package apps using Windows Server App (WSA) installer so that you have a declarative, intent based installer.
• Configure apps using Desired State Configuration (DSC).
• Deploy apps and dependencies using Package Management (aka OneGet).
• Run apps on physical machines, in guest VMs or containers (both Windows Server Containers and/or Hyper-V Containers).
• Test your PowerShell cmdlets using Pester.
• Secure apps using Just enough Administration (JEA).

In addition to developing your app or service code, you need to produce the artifacts necessary to use the above solutions so that ops can take advantage of the benefits these provide as well as have consistency across apps and services.

As noted above under Run, these concepts apply to containers as well if you plan to run them using traditional ops models. For example, if you plan to make your app or service available for your customers to deploy and run either physical, guest, or container then WSA is the correct packaging solution to use.

However, for apps or services that are fully container based, there is a container only model that can be used as well:

• Develop apps using your favorite Framework supported on Nano Server so you can use Nano Server as the base of your container.
• Package apps as Container Images pushed to repositories.
• Configure apps using Container Images.
• Deploy container images from repositories.
• Run containers though orchestrators.
• Test apps using your test frameworks.
• Secure apps using multiple containers and JEA.

With the container model you can leverage the capabilities of the container infrastructure and integrate the artifacts you need for your app or service directly into your containers.

Windows Server 2016 resolves the interface between devs and ops by providing both a traditional and container model with prescribed solutions and artifacts for you to achieve the best practices for your app or service. As mentioned above, the traditional model can be applied across physical, guest, or containers, providing the flexibility for you or your customers to run your app or service in any configuration. If your app or service will only be delivered as a container and it will be managed fully using the container model, then you can use only container artifacts. Which set of artifacts you deliver with your app or service will depend on which model you and your customers prefer.

The post The Windows Server 2016 Application Platform – Nano Server, Containers and DevOps appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

Earlier today, Mike Neil announced the availability of Technical Preview 5 for Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016. This is an exciting moment, and it coincides with our final installment of the video series, “Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016.” In today’s video, I talk about Nano Server and what the future of server computing looks like in a cloud-first world.

Looking back, the history of Windows Server has had four distinct eras:

• Server for the masses: A world-class kernel combined with the desktop GUI experience and the economies of high volume hardware transformed the world by empowering everyone to buy, deploy, and operate their own servers. This produced so many servers and desktop machines that it brought about the next era.
• Enterprise servers: Active Directory, Group Policy, and Remote Desktop Services enabled customers to connect, manage, and transform large sets of servers and desktops into a coherent enterprise. The introduction of .NET brought about the LOB application revolution where companies’ own developers were able to create and deliver mission critical applications. This created so many new servers that it brought about the next era.
• Datacenter servers: Architectural improvements to scale up/scale out servers and improve storage and networking, combined with server virtualization and PowerShell, made it possible for customers to run every possible workload and to create large and highly cost-efficient datacenters. This enabled the Azure public cloud which brought us to our current era.
• Cloud servers: Cloud-inspired, software-defined networking, storage, and compute along with Nano Server, advancements in PowerShell and DSC, and improved Linux support enable customers to develop, deploy, and operate fabrics, applications, and services with cloud scale, elasticity, performance, and resiliency.

Windows Server 2016 improves the experience of all customers, not just those moving to the cloud model. For example, a small business that wants to have a single server with a local keyboard, monitor, and mouse will love the rich Windows 10 client experience that the Server with a desktop experience deployment option delivers. The substantial innovations to Active Directory, .NET, virtualization, RDS, security, automation, and remote management make Windows Server 2016 a great release for customers using it as an Enterprise Server or Datacenter Server as well.

Nano Server is a great example of the innovation customers need in a cloud-era operating system. It is a new deployment option for Windows Server 2016, where you start by loading a very small image that is 25x smaller than a full image with Window Server with desktop experience. Then, you add only the roles you need – this is the “just enough OS” model. As a result, boot time is crazy fast and it is simpler to operate when you only support the roles you need. To gain the efficiency and agility of cloud, IT managers can use PowerShell V5 and Desired State Configuration for powerful remote management and automation. We also offer a remote GUI, the new web-based server management tools.

In this first release, the Nano Server deployment is focused on two scenarios:

1. As the host for compute and/or storage clusters
2. As a lightweight OS in a VM or container for “born in the cloud” applications. (See Age of Ascent example using Nano Server, ASPNET, and Service Fabric.)

I believe that the shift to the cloud era is the most revolutionary change our industry has ever seen. Changes like this provide great opportunities for people that spend the effort to keep up with the technology and invest in their skills. I strongly encourage you to watch my recent talk on this topic called Thriving through the Transition.

After watching that talk, you’ll understand why it is so important for you to download Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 and give Nano Server a try. Check out our Getting Started guide and follow us on the Nano Server blog.

Finally, make sure to visit our new Windows Server channel on Channel 9 where you can find videos for all Ten Reasons You’ll Love Windows Server 2016. If you’d like regular updates, follow me on Twitter @jsnover.

In his “Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016” video series, technical evangelist Matt McSpirit introduces you to some of the experts behind the most exciting new features in Windows Server 2016.

Get more updates on Windows Server 2016 by following the Windows Server team @WindowsServer and Matt @mattmcspirit on Twitter.

Check out the previous posts in this series:

• Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016 #1: PowerShell and DSC
• Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016 #2: Active Directory and Identity
• Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016 #3: Server Management Tools
• Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016 #4: Remote Desktop Services
• Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016 #5: Software-defined Storage
• Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016 #6: Software-defined Compute
• Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016 #7: Software-defined Networking
• Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016 #8: Security
• Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016 #9: Containers

The post Ten reasons you’ll love Windows Server 2016 #10: Nano Server appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

Nano Server is the new headless deployment option for Windows Server 2016. As a deeply refactored version of Windows Server, it’s designed to give you the lightest and fastest server OS configuration with fewer patch and update events, faster restarts, better resource utilization and tighter security.

To explain further, today’s show enumerates the key differences between our various server instantiations: notably, the server with desktop experience, Server Core and Nano Server, which sans 32-bit support (WOW64), the graphic stack, Remote Desktop and local logon is at least 25 times smaller.

While offering a deliberately small initial footprint, Jeffrey demonstrates for the first time how easy it is to customize Nano Server, by sourcing packages from repositories either on a local path or from the cloud.

The future of the datacenter

In response to increased needs for higher density and more efficient OS resource utilization, Nano Server is foundational to the modern datacenter and is useful in two core scenarios: As a private cloud infrastructure it’s particularly useful for clustered Hyper-V, clustered storage and core networking services scenarios; or as an application platform it’s highly optimized for modern distributed and cloud-based apps which leverage containers and micro service architectures. Ultimately, Nano Server is designed to ensure that more resources are freed up to run apps and services.

The advantages of Nano Server, as evidenced by the latest build stats shared on the show, include significantly lower resource consumption, greater agility and speed with exceptionally fast set-up times (40 seconds versus 19 minutes for server with a desktop experience).

All management is performed remotely via PowerShell and WMI, with remote management options via existing tools and a new web-based remote management tool. Further, offline management can be achieved via the new Nano Server Recovery Console, which gives you a local interface with a simplified UI, all of which you can see for yourself in Jeffrey’s final demo.

We hope that you enjoy today’s demo-rich overview. Also be sure to check out Nano Server running a Hyper-V container as demonstrated recently by Mark Russinovich on Microsoft Mechanics.

The post Exploring Nano Server for Windows Server 2016 appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

In November we released Technical Preview 4 of Windows Server 2016, including updates for Nano Server, the new headless deployment option.  Nano Server loads only the base OS roles, resulting in a footprint up to 20x smaller than Windows Server with Desktop Experience.  For IT Pros, this translates into a smaller attack surface, fewer updates and reboots, and increased server density…all great for running and managing an efficient, secure datacenter.

Today let’s focus on why Nano Server is great for developers. Nano Server makes a particularly good application platform for “born in the cloud” applications which leverage containers and micro services architectures.  These new development models work best with an OS that delivers speed, agility and lower resource consumption.  Nano Server delivers the super-fast boot and setup times that developers expect. Nano Server’s small 410MB footprint results in setup time of 40 seconds and boot time on a non-SSD desktop machine of 15 seconds and even faster on faster hardware or in a VM.

Give Nano Server a try with our new VHD

To make it easy for developers to start working with Nano Server, we recently posted a VHD of Technical Preview 4 with just Nano Server deployed. The VHD and details on how to get started are posted in the Nano Server blog: “Download just Nano Server in a VHD (Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4)”.

Maybe you’ve seen our blogs and videos about how to write apps that run on Nano Server, use Nano Server in a container, create Nano Server images, and deploy Nano Server on-premises or in a VM in the cloud. Now we’ve posted a video that puts it all together: A Nano Server IaaS VM in Azure, running a Nano Server container that is in turn running IIS, CoreCLR, ASP.NET 5 and an ASP.NET app. Check it out, and then give it a try for yourself.

Check out more improvements for developers

To make it easier for developers to write agents, tools, or apps that run on Nano Server we have made three important improvements:

1. Updated the Nano Server developer experience and posted a video of how to configure your dev environment: “Nano Server Developer Experience – Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 and above”
2. Released NanoServerAPIScan.exe so that you can scan managed code to see what, if any, changes are required to run on Nano Server: “Native Binary Scanning Tool (NanoServerApiScan.exe) for Nano Server”
3. Released the documentation on Windows Server Application (WSA) installer:

• • “Installing Windows Server Apps on Nano Server”
  • “Hands-on Packaging and Installing your first Windows Server Apps on Nano Server”
  • A demo of using the Wix toolset to create a WSA in addition to an MSI: “Create your WSA using FireGiant APPX Extension on top of Wix Toolset”

As you explore the possibilities of Nano Server in Windows Server 2016, please let us know how we can continue to improve the development experience.  We look forward to your suggestions on Windows Server User Voice. And follow us on the Nano Server blog and The Nano Server Channel for continued posts of new tools and documentation.

The post Developers: Check out the Nano Server installation option in Windows Server 2016 appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

Windows Server 2016 contains multiple features designed for application innovation, and specifically for modern or “born-in-the-cloud” applications. In this blog we’ll discuss how you can port your applications to Nano Server, whether it is a server app or a management tool or agent, everything discussed in this blog applies to any code that needs to run locally on Nano Server.

Nano Server is available as the OS for:

• Physical machines
• Virtual machines
• Hyper-V Containers
• Windows Server Containers

When used in any of these configuration Nano Server has the same API surface available for running applications. The Nano Server API surface is a subset of what is available in Server Core and Server with a Desktop Experience. As a subset, any application, tool, or agent that is written to run on Nano Server will run without modification on Server Core or Server with a Desktop Experience.

The design pattern for Nano Server is for headless server apps running locally and separation of any and all GUI, which will be run remotely from the code that runs on Nano Server. Rich GUIs should be written following the standard Windows UI design guidelines but written to be fully remoteable. For Nano Server apps, the GUI must run remotely on a Windows client or Windows Server with a Desktop Experience installation and perform all necessary actions over the network.

Developer Experience

With Nano Server this is the first time Windows Server has its own developer experience. Unlike Server Core which is just a list of APIs on MSDN, Nano Server has integration with the Windows SDK and Visual Studio, we did also provide a Nano Server API list on MSDN.

For Nano Server there is a Visual Studio project template. When you create a new project you can select Nano Server as your target and you will get full IntelliSense and error squiggle support so you know if an API you are using is available in Nano Server or not.

With Visual Studio you also get full remote debugging experience. The template and scripts to help setup remote debugging are posted on the Nano Server blog.

Nano Server also includes .NET Core, the Open Source modular subset of the .NET Framework. In addition to allowing PowerShell Core to run on Nano Server, .NET Core on Nano Server provides the ability to run ASP .NET 5 and any managed code applications written to .NET Core. More details on .NET Core and documentation on what is supported in .NET Core is available on GitHub

Reverse Forwarders

The Win32 API has grown and evolved over the last 20+ years. There are multiple APIs and different layers of Win32 that provide the same or very similar functionality, for example to access the Registry or the local file system. Which API used has often been a matter of which the developer was most familiar with or came up first in a search. In Nano Server these APIs are still functional but have been moved to a lower level DLL. This allows code that uses these APIs to still work on Nano Server but because the API has moved to a new DLL you’ll have to change your linking and recompile. Reverse Forwarders provide shims for the original DLL that forward the API call to the new DLL allowing your code to run as is.

Reverse Forwarders are an optional package on Nano Server and not installed by default – see the Nano Server deployment guide for steps to include this package. Included in the Reverse Forwarder package are shims for

•  advapi32.dll
•  comctl32.dll
•  comdlg32.dll
•  gdi32.dll
•  kernel32.dll
•  ole32.dll
•  psapi.dll
•  shell32.dll
•  shlwapi.dll
•  user32.dll
•  version.dll
•  winmm.dll

It is important to note that not all APIs these DLLs expose are shimmed, only those that are functional in Nano Server. Any APIs your code may call, for example a GUI API, that doesn’t exist in Nano Server will return an error not implemented exception.

Reverse Forwarders do not eliminate the need to port your code to the subset of the APIs available in Nano Server. What they do provide is the ability to get your existing version of your app running on Nano Server and allow you to do the porting work as part of your next version.

Application Frameworks

Using Reverse Forwarders, many of the Open Source Application Frameworks run on Nano Server today. These include:

• PHP
• Python 3.5
• Node.js
• GO
• Redis
• OpenSSL
• Java (OpenJDK)
• Ruby (2.1.5)

As well as various applications, such as Chef, Nginx, and MySQL.

Porting Apps to Nano Server

If you have an existing application that you want to make work on Nano Server, you can use the following steps that we have used to get various apps and tools running on Nano Server.

Porting Win32

To port a Win32 app to Nano Server:

1. Install a Nano Server image with the Reverse Forwarder package installed using the deployment guide.
2. Run and test your app on Nano Server
3. If the app successful runs, then install a Nano Server image without the Reverse Forwarders
4. Run and test your app on Nano Server

If your app successfully runs in step 4, your code is only using APIs in Nano Server and is good to go.

If your app runs in step 2 but fails in step 4 your code is using an API that exists in Nano Server but has been moved. The next version of your app should be relinked to the new DLL.

If your app doesn’t run at all you can use one of the following mechanisms:

• Use the debugger while running your app to see what API calls are failing
• Use Visual Studio, create a new Nano Server project, load your code into the project, review your code for the red error squiggles to identify any APIs you may be using outside of Nano Server.
• Use our native code scanning tool to analyze your app to see what APIs you are using outside of Nano Server. In ~60% of cases it will suggest alternate APIs that you can use. This will be posted on the Nano Server blog in the next few weeks.

Porting Managed Code to .NET Core

As mentioned earlier, there are a lot of .NET Core resources and documentation available on MSDN and GitHub that can help you to port. The most important of these is the API Portability Analyzer that will tell you which of the .NET APIs you are using are not available in .NET Core.

Installing Apps on Nano Server

Nano Server does not include MSI as an installation technology due to dependencies and the open ended nature of MSI custom actions. Instead, Nano Server has a new declarative Appx-based installer called Windows Server App (WSA) Installer. In the next technical preview, WSA is only available in Nano Server but will be available in Nano Server, Server Core, and Server with a Desktop Experience for Windows Server 2016 so you can use the same installer for your server app on any installation option.

WSA extends the AppX schema to add Windows Server specific extensions required to install many server apps, such as supporting NT Service installation. As a set of extensions to the AppX installer, WSA does not support custom actions, so will not have the reliability and uninstall issues of MSI.

WSA as a set of extensions to AppX, provides support for everything available in AppX, such as file and registry values, as well as using the same AppX PowerShell cmdlets to install and uninstall. The server specific extensions that will be supported in the upcoming technical preview are NT Servers, COM Object registration, and WMI. We will be adding extensions to WSA for Performance Counters and ETW Events.

More detailed information on WSA will be posted to the Nano Server blog in the coming weeks.

The post Moving to Nano Server, the new deployment option in Windows Server 2016 appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

Get a first look at Nano Server (including why it’s designed the way it is) in the fast and fun Ignite session you can watch here: Nano Server: The Future of Windows Server Starts Now—complete with demos, some (preliminary) results, and improvements. You’ll even get some action items to put on your to-do list. Presented by Jeffrey Snover, Distinguished Engineer, and Andrew Mason, Principal Program Manager.

Keep in mind that many other 2015 Microsoft Ignite conference sessions with details and demos are available online for you to view on your schedule right here.

The post What makes Nano Server so great? appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

With Windows Server 2016 there are three core areas we are focusing on in the world of cloud and virtualization:

• Providing a platform for next-gen cloud applications
• Ensuring you can protect your datacenter assets from emerging threats
• Continuing to deliver a cloud platform that is perfect for your mission critical workloads

Let’s dig into each of these areas for a moment

Providing a platform for next-gen cloud applications

Virtualization has been amazing technology for the datacenter, enabling efficiencies and cost savings through increased density and decoupling workloads from physical server hardware.   However, we believe that we have only just started on the journey of unlocking the capabilities of cloud computing.  Once you start running applications that were “designed for the cloud” on a fabric that was “designed for the cloud” you start to enable entirely new levels of efficiency and functionality.

Two big investments that we have made in this area are:

Hyper-V on Nano Server

Running Hyper-V on Nano Server, a highly focused and small footprint version of Windows Server, brings many benefits to your cloud environment.  Physical servers are quicker and easier to deploy, they need less patching and carry less configuration state.  This makes it incredibly easy to build true scalable cloud deployments.

Windows Server Containers

Containers are an exciting new technology for building, testing and deploying applications.  Applications are fueling the innovation in today’s cloud-mobile world, and developers hold the keys to the power of those applications. The more streamlined and efficient the process for developers to build and deliver their applications, the faster that more powerful applications can reach the business. This however, has to work across both the developers, and IT who hold the keys when it comes to the infrastructure that the applications will run on.

For the developers, containers unlock huge gains in productivity, and freedom – the ability to build an application, package within a container, and deploy, knowing that wherever you deploy that container, it will run without modification, whether that is on-premises, in a service provider’s datacenter, or in the public cloud, using services such as Microsoft Azure.  These containers don’t have to be deployed independently – developers can model complex multi-tier applications, with each tier packaged within a container, and these can be distributed across IaaS and PaaS models, again, increasing the overall surface area that the developer can aim for when releasing their application. This powerful abstraction of microservices provides developers with incredible potential to deliver applications more rapidly than ever before.  They can’t however, do it without the Operations’ team support.

On the Operations side, they benefit considerably by being able to gain ever higher levels of consolidation for applications and workloads than even virtualization could provide, and in addition, they can put in place a platform that can rapidly scale up and down to meet the changing needs of the business. This standardized platform is easier to manage, yet provides the developers with a consistent environment into which they can simple provide their app, and hit ‘run’.

Ensuring you can protect your datacenter assets from emerging threats

When it comes to datacenter security, one of the key design pillars of Hyper-v is to make virtual machine security on par with the physical machine security. If a physical machine is completely locked down and a hacker cannot gain access through a vulnerability, short of walking in to the datacenter and removing that physical server, it’s safe to assume that particular physical server is secure.

However, any seized or infected host that has been compromised by an attack, now puts the virtual machines at significant risk, as VMs can be copied from storage, over the network.

The flexibility of virtualization also poses a challenge in itself. For instance, without any form of hardware-based verification, which is rare in today’s x86 physical server space, there’s no way to identify legitimate hosts, which have or haven’t been compromised. This means a VM can, in essence, run anywhere.

So what is Microsoft’s approach to protecting virtual machines?

First, by utilizing the power of hardware-rooted technologies, we enable a new Virtual Secure Mode. This protects access to the processes and memory of the virtual machine, from the host itself, completely separating the guest OS, from host administrators. Host administrators cannot access guest VM secrets and can’t run arbitrary kernel mode code.

By implementing a new Windows Server role, the Host Guardian Service, it enables administrators to identify legitimate hosts, and certifies them to run protected virtual machines, known as Shielded VMs.

Finally, by integrating with the underlying hardware, we enable a new virtualized trusted platform module, or vTPM, that, when exposed inside the virtual machine, enables the guest operating system to take advantage of native encryption features such as BitLocker, protecting the valuable information within that shielded virtual machine. Features such as Live Migration still continue to work, and, the traffic is also encrypted, ensuring that even when moving virtual workloads around the environment, the data remains secure and encrypted.

Continuing to deliver a cloud platform that is perfect for your mission critical workloads

Third, and in many ways, most importantly we have been investing in continuing to improve the capabilities of Hyper-V as a great platform for your mission critical applications.  There are a number of capacities that we have focused on

Workload Availability

Across the entirety of Hyper-V we have looked for opportunities to reduce and remove times when virtualized workloads are offline, both planned and unplanned.  Here is a sample of some of the features and capabilities that increase your workload availability:

• Rolling Cluster UpgradeWith Windows Server 2016, we’re building on Cross Version Live Migration from Windows Server 2012 R2 and taking it to the next level.  You can now upgrade a Windows Server 2012 R2 cluster to Windows Server 2016 with zero downtime, zero extra hardware requirements, and guaranteed availability throughout the process.  You can read more about this technology here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn850430.aspx
• Online resize of virtual machine memoryBuilding on our great feature of Dynamic Memory, you can now resize memory for virtual machines even when they are configured to use static memory.
• Hot add / remove of virtual network adaptersIt is now possible to add and remove network adapters from Generation 2 virtual machines without needing to turn them off first.
• Online resize support for Shared VHDX filesNeed to add more storage capacity to a virtualized cluster?  This is now easy to do while your critical virtualized application continues to run.
• And more…

Guaranteed Performance

In Windows Server 2012 R2, we introduced Storage Quality of Service which provided the ability to set hard caps on a per virtual disk basis per host. It’s a good solution for noisy neighbors on the same host and is dynamically configurable. This was a necessary and important step to what we’re delivering in Windows Server 2016, namely, cluster-wide Storage QoS with comprehensive monitoring and flexible and customizable policies. You can set policies at a granular level based on your business needs such as: per VM, per virtual disk, per service or per tenant. At a high level, it looks like this:

Manageable

We have also been working hard on ensuring that Hyper-V and Hyper-V virtual machines are easy to manage and troubleshoot.  Two big investments in this area are:

• Full support for alternate credentials in Hyper-V Manager and Hyper-V PowerShell.To help people manage Hyper-V in secure environments – you can now provide alternate credentials when connecting to remote servers.  This avoids the situation where administrators and needlessly using powerful credentials for non-essential tasks.
• PowerShell Direct to virtual machineYou can now run PowerShell commands directly in virtual machines from the host environment, provided you have the credentials for the guest operating system, with no need for extra configuration – or even network connectivity.  This allows for very powerful automation and orchestration of virtual machines.

As you can see, we’ve been busy and we look forward to your feedback with the Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2 and again, our sincere thanks.

The post Enterprise-grade virtualization and next-gen app platform appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

Today we announced new container technologies as well as Nano Server, a purpose-built operating system designed to run born-in-the-cloud applications and containers. As customers adopt modern applications and next-generation cloud technologies, they need an OS that delivers speed, agility and lower resource consumption.

Nano Server is a deeply refactored version of Windows Server with a small footprint and remotely managed installation, optimized for the cloud and a DevOps workflow.  It is designed for fewer patch and update events, faster restarts, better resource utilization and tighter security. Informed directly by our learnings from building and managing some of the world’s largest hyperscale cloud environments, and available in the next version of Windows Server, Nano Server focuses on two scenarios:

1. Born-in-the-cloud applications – support for multiple programming languages and runtimes. (e.g. C#, Java, Node.js, Python, etc.) running in containers, virtual machines, or on physical servers.
2. Microsoft Cloud Platform infrastructure – support for compute clusters running Hyper-V and storage clusters running Scale-out File Server.

Nano Server will allow customers to install just the components they require and nothing more. The initial results are promising.  Based on the current builds, compared to Server, Nano Server has:

• 93 percent lower VHD size
• 92 percent fewer critical bulletins
• 80 percent fewer reboots

To achieve these benefits, we removed the GUI stack, 32 bit support (WOW64), MSI and a number of default Server Core components. There is no local logon or Remote Desktop support. All management is performed remotely via WMI and PowerShell. We are also adding Windows Server Roles and Features using Features on Demand and DISM. We are improving remote manageability via PowerShell with Desired State Configuration as well as remote file transfer, remote script authoring and remote debugging.  We are working on a set of new Web-based management tools to replace local inbox management tools.

Because Nano Server is a refactored version of Windows Server it will be API-compatible with other versions of Windows Server within the subset of components it includes. Visual Studio is fully supported with Nano Server, including remote debugging functionality and notifications when APIs reference unsupported Nano Server components.

We are working with Microsoft Visual Studio and System Center as well as partners like Chef to ensure that Nano Server works seamlessly in a DevOps continuous deployment and management workflow. In fact, we are thrilled to see that partners like Chef are already excited about Nano Server.  According to James Casey, VP of Engineering, Chef, “The collaboration between Chef and Microsoft engineering brings best-in-class automation for the container-optimized Nano Server. The Nano Server, provisioned and managed with Chef, provides a perfect platform for high velocity IT and a DevOps workflow.”

We will have much more to share on the future of our datacenter offerings in the coming weeks. To hear more about Nano Server, come to our sessions at BUILD and Ignite or watch them on Channel 9 after the show.

The post Microsoft Announces Nano Server for Modern Apps and Cloud appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.