What are some of the new features and enhancements in Windows Server 2019?

2 Hyper-converged infrastructure

Another major enhancement in Windows Server 2019 is the support for hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), which is a way of combining compute, storage, and network resources into a single cluster of servers. HCI can simplify your server deployment and management, reduce hardware costs, and improve performance and reliability. Windows Server 2019 introduces several new features and tools for HCI, such as Storage Spaces Direct, Storage Replica, Storage Migration Service, System Insights, and Windows Admin Center. These features and tools enable you to create, configure, monitor, and migrate your HCI clusters, as well as gain insights and recommendations based on your workload patterns and performance data.

3 Security enhancements

Security is always a top priority for system administrators, and Windows Server 2019 comes with several security enhancements to help protect servers from various threats and vulnerabilities. These features and improvements include Shielded virtual machines, which are encrypted and isolated from the host and other virtual machines, preventing unauthorized access and tampering. Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is a service that detects and responds to advanced attacks on your servers, using behavioral analysis, machine learning, and cloud-based intelligence. Windows Server containers are lightweight and isolated environments that can run applications without affecting the host or other containers. Windows Server 2019 also improves the security and performance of Windows Server containers by supporting smaller container images, faster startup times, and group managed service accounts.

4 Application platform improvements

Windows Server 2019 introduces application platform improvements to help develop and run modern applications. These features and enhancements include Kubernetes support, allowing you to deploy and manage Windows Server containers alongside Linux containers on the same cluster. Additionally, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is an optional feature that enables you to run Linux binaries natively on Windows. Finally, .NET Core 3.0 is supported, the latest version of .NET Core which adds support for Windows desktop applications, such as Windows Forms and WPF. With these improvements, Windows Server 2019 can provide a powerful platform for running modern applications.

5 Administration and management tools

Windows Server 2019 offers some new and improved administration and management tools to simplify and automate server tasks. These include Windows Admin Center, a web-based console with a unified and modern interface for managing servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure, and Windows 10 devices. It also integrates with various Windows Server features and Azure services. PowerShell Core 6 is a cross-platform version of PowerShell that runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. It supports modules and cmdlets to interact with different systems and services. System Insights is a feature that uses machine learning and predictive analytics to provide insights and recommendations for your servers. It can help you optimize resources, plan for future capacity needs, and troubleshoot issues. Custom capabilities can be created using PowerShell or REST APIs.