Windows Server 2016 Key Features and License Prospects

If you are planning to move to Windows 2016 and looking for benefits, I have listed down below :

Why Windows Server 2016?

• ·         Microsoft Windows Server 2016, previously referred to as Windows Server vNext, is a server operating system (OS). The server operating system is specifically developed to serve as a platform for running networked applications.

• ·         End of life, Extended Support – 11^th Jan, 2027
• ·         Key features includes two native containers : Windows Server Containers &  Hyper-V containers
• ·         It has been in support for Dockers used to manage containers
• ·         It has support for virtual TPM (Trusted Platform Module) which can be used in disk encryption using Bitlocker.
• ·         It comes with Nano server which is very light weight, can be used as Container or cloud based OS.
• ·         IIS 10 which has a lots of improvements. [IIS in Containers, IIS on Nano Server, HTTP/2 etc.]
• ·         Network Controller, a new server role that provides a centralized, programmable point of automation to configure, manage, monitor, and troubleshoot virtual and physical network devices and services.

• ·         Hot add and remove virtual memory and virtual network adapters while the VM is running.

What specific benefits/features/advantages from SA perspective

• ·         All licenses for Microsoft Windows Server 2016 is now core based, earlier for Windows Server 2012 was Processor based.
• ·         Default license which we need to buy for Windows Server 2016 is 16 core license for each physical server.
• ·         If we have existing licenses of Windows Server 2012 with Software Assurance, at a minimum, Microsoft is going to grant you 16 core licenses of Windows Server 2016 for each license of Windows Server 2012 that is covered by SA.
• ·         So if we have physical server of 20 cores with Windows Server 2012 license with SA, then Microsoft will grant you 20 core licenses for Windows Server 2016. But Microsoft needs to be provided with sufficient documentation for extra licenses.

Security enhancements covered:

·

•           The current AD version 2008 does not support FIDO 2 complaint authentication solutions, Hence we are facing challenges in proposing and testing 2 factor authentication solution for employees.
• ·         The current AD version 2008 does not support enhanced security features that we need to configure. Like control over protected groups, LSASS protection, credential guard, etc.
•        · Microsoft Defender suite having ASR, exploit guard, CFG, etc. are available in 2016 version.