Windows Server 2012

System functionality

Among the main features of Windows Server 2012, representatives Microsoft emphasize storage pools and significantly expanded capabilities of the proprietary hypervisor [Hyper-V] for servicing virtual machines. In particular, the operation of Hyper-V virus servers on 32 virtual processors and 120 GB of RAM was shown. Hyper-V Windows Server 2012 can now support up to 1 TB of memory per virtual machine with the same license price for any virtual machine - a significant step forward from a licensing scheme VMware that relies on the number of processors used and supports no more than 12 cores per license. In addition, Hyper-V will be able to support virtual disks up to 64 TB in size.

Also, Microsoft representatives pay attention to the capabilities of network virtualization in Windows Server 2012, which allow you to serve several virtual networks on one set of equipment. These virtual networks can use the same IP addresses while maintaining complete isolation from each other. It also showed the migration of a running virtual machine from one machine to another over an Ethernet network without shared drives or network resources using the built-in Server Manager utility from Windows Server 2012.

The new release of Windows Server does not have Enterprise and Small Business Server options, but there are four new versions that will soon ship in the RTM release.

According to official information from Microsoft dated July 5, Windows Server 2012 will be presented in four versions, two of which will be licensed to customers by the number of processors.

The four product SKUs include Foundation versions (for OEMs only), Essentials, Standard, and Datacenter. The Essentials version is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses with a limit of 25 users. At the top of the line are the Standard and Datacenter versions. Previously shipped Windows Server Enterprise is excluded from the offered options.

Cloud Ecosystem Poster: Microsoft Azure, Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2

• Public services of Microsoft Azure Services: categories of services, provision of computing power for rent (Compute Services), storage services (Data Services) and application services (App Services).
• Services for building private virtualization infrastructures based on System Center 2012 R2 products, including components such as App Controller, Virtual Machine Manager, Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Service Manager, Orchestrator, Data Protection Manager and Azure Pack.
• Windows Server 2012 R2 platform services, including the following technologies and components: Storage Spaces, Data Deduplication, Resilient File System, SMB Transparent Failover, Storage Quality of Service, Generation 2 Virtual Machines, Online VHDX Resize, Enhanced Session Mode, Live Migration, Failover Clustering, Cluster Shared Volumes, Scale-Out File Server, Shared Virtual Hard Disks, Hyper-V Extensible Switch, Remote Desktop Services, SMB Direct, SMB Multi-channel и NICTeaming.

* Client licenses (CALs) are required for each user or device that directly or indirectly uses server access. See Product Use Rights for details

* * Open No Level (NL) estimated retail price. Please contact your Microsoft resellers for specific information

Windows Server 2012 R2

Microsoft announced the preliminary version of Windows Server 2012 R2 at the annual TechEd Europe conference, June 26, 2013. Together with Windows Azure, this product, as well as System Center 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014, are key elements of the concept and comprehensive platform for Microsoft Cloud OS applications.

Additions, Changes

The new Microsoft server operating system allows you to quickly and easily switch to using the "cloud" model in your local infrastructure, combine it with the public Windows Azure cloud or the service provider cloud, and at the same time keep the investments already made in IT development. In addition to additional and improved technologies and functions proposed in Windows Server 2012, it includes:

• Today's virtualization platform: A dynamic, shared-architecture platform allows you to move beyond traditional virtualization and maximizes service flexibility:

• • Scalability with support for up to 320 virtual processors, 4 TB of memory per virtual machine; 1024 active virtual machines per host, up to 8000 virtual machines per cluster, 64 TB virtual disks with dynamic capacity change.

• • Virtual machine mobility, including the ability to compress VHD/VHDX files during real-time migration and perform this migration using RDMA technology, which significantly increases the speed of virtual machine movement. The new Windows Server 2012 R2 also enhances shared, multi-migration, virtual machine storage migration, public cloud migration, network virtualization (SDN), and network isolation technologies.

• • Dynamic Memory technology, which is used to automatically redistribute memory between VMs, now fully supports guest environments on the Linux platform.

• Simple management and cost-effectiveness: The new Windows Server 2012 R2 enhances technologies that help reduce storage costs, such as the ability to create cost-effective, high-availability file storage for server applications and critical services such as SQL and Hyper-V based on conventional storage systems. The new Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager enhances Hyper-V-Replica and ensures application continuity. The new set of APIs and interfaces allows you to centrally manage a variety of storage systems from one panel.

• Any application on any platform: Windows Server 2012 R2 provides the flexibility, scalability and compatibility of applications in both the local infrastructure and the Windows Azure public cloud, and provides the necessary tools to ensure the interaction of these applications. As a web platform, the new server OS increases site density and enables efficient creation, monitoring, and management of multi-user environments. This ensures compatibility, supports open standards such as HTML 5, and open source applications.

• The modern way of working: Windows Server 2012 R2 provides the necessary flexibility to give users access to corporate data and applications from anywhere and from any device. He proposes a new concept for registering devices (Workplace join): a certificate is installed on the user's device, which allows you to register it in Active Directory without entering it into the domain and thereby provide the necessary access to corporate information in accordance with user rights. Another new feature of Windows Server 2012 R2 simplifies access from a personal device to the corporate network using an automatic VPN connection.

"Windows Server 2012 is a modern and highly sought-after operating system for building IT infrastructure in the data center. Windows Server 2012 is as easy to use as possible by the customer's IT service. Four editions, each of which is focused on a certain size of the organization, and a wide range of functionality allow you to quickly activate the necessary services and build a scalable reliable core for the functioning of business applications. From the new version - Windows Server 2012 R2 - we expect even greater reliability and functionality, "said Igor Malyshev, director of system solutions at CROC.

Windows Server 2012 Essentials

Microsoft launched in July 2012 open beta testing of its new server product Windows Server 2012 Essentials, the most affordable and stripped-down version of the Windows Server 2012 platform. As the developers themselves say, this is the ideal first server for a small company. In addition, Windows Server 2012 Essentials can be used as a master server on a small network, where several more servers will work.

According to the developers, the Essentials edition is a renamed configuration of Windows Small Business Server Essentials - under this name Microsoft sold the most basic set of server tools for small organizations. Many consumers may disagree with the developers - the fact is that Windows Server 2012 Essentials is too stripped down in functions even for the smallest organization. As a result, considering Microsoft's refusal to release popular editions of Small Business Server and Windows Home Server, many customers from the small and medium-sized business segment will simply be forced to switch to the noticeably more expensive edition of Standard.

To begin with, the 2012 Essentials edition offers support for no more than 25 users and up to 50 devices. As soon as the network size grows beyond this, the customer will have to switch to Windows Server 2012 Standard. In addition, unlike the full-fledged Small Business Server, the Essentials version does not contain Exchange Server and SharePoint Server components. If the customer needs mail services and corporate web applications, they will either have to be implemented independently (on a separate server), or use the services of an external service provider, or subscribe to Microsoft Office 365 cloud services.

Actually, it is the absence of Exchange and SharePoint that causes the greatest irritation to potential buyers who previously used Small Business Server. As it turns out, many small organizations, due to tradition and other considerations, still need a local mail server, but now the cost of such a solution is becoming overwhelming.

On the other hand, Essentials 2012 also has positive aspects. In particular, it offers a number of powerful and long-awaited technologies, including the Storage Spaces storage virtualization subsystem, which combines physical devices into large-capacity pools, as well as a system for continuously backing up user File History files from the Windows 8 client system. In Essentials 2012, these technologies are made more convenient to use at the expense of additional masters.

In terms of cloud, all Windows Server 2012 series products, including Essentials, now support the proprietary Microsoft Online Backup Service cloud backup system to transfer backups to online storage using Windows Azure technology. For administration by a small organization server, Microsoft promises to introduce an improved Remote Web Access web console, an administrative Metro application for Windows 8, and an updated access client for Windows Phone smartphones.

As you already know, Microsoft is going to release the Windows Server 2012 product line a month before the release of Windows 8. Thus, the RTM version of the products will reach the manufacturers in a month, and there is no need to wait for significant changes in the capabilities and configuration of the product compared to the beta versions.

Customers who are not ready to tolerate the strict limitations of Essentials 2012 on the number of users served can, in theory, remain on the current version of Windows Small Business Server. At the same time, they will have to hurry up, since official deliveries of this edition will last only until December 31, 2013 and only through OEM channels.

Windows Server 2012 starts in Russia

On September 26, 2012, Microsoft announced the availability of a new version of the Windows Server 2012 server operating system in Russia. According to Svetlana Likhareva,' head of Microsoft's server products department in Russia, the Windows Server operating system is the most popular in Russia among similar server products.

According to the report of the analytical agency IDC, in Russia in the first two quarters of 2012, the share of Windows Server was 77%. In addition, the share of virtualization on the Hyper-V platform among all virtualized servers of the standard architecture delivered in Russia in the second quarter of 2012 amounted to 39% in unit terms. "Thus, Microsoft Hyper-V technology first took the lead," Likhareva concluded.

Over 100 models of servers, storage, and networking equipment are currently available to customers and are certified for use with the new Windows Server 2012. These include solutions from Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, HP and IBM, as well as Russian partners, including Depo Computers, Aquarius and others.

According to Svetlana Likhareva, from the moment of announcement until the launch in the Russian segment, 16 thousand pre-downloads of Server 2012 were recorded. "This is at least 3 times more than we see in other products when announcing new products," she said. "At the same time, in the first five days after the official start, there were about 5 thousand downloads."

Thus, according to Likhareva, Microsoft sees excellent prospects for the development of this product in the Russian market. "We hope that Server 2012 will allow us to accelerate growth and gain more market share than we have now," she continued.

Advantages

Windows Server and Infrastructure Management Products CEO Mark Schutz told reporters that he sees a number of advantages of the new server platform over counterparts and previous versions. One of the main advantages, according to Schutz, is the unity of the platform for many applications and tasks. "Server 2012 transforms data centers into a single space, supports multiple applications and allows you to work with data of any nature," he said. "The platform opens up new opportunities for personification of information technologies. This is a single platform, both for the data center and for the service provider. "

Among the unique capabilities of the platform, Schutz noted the flexibility of development for various environments, a single development and management tool, integrated virtualization and the integrity of the data platform.

Clients

Svetlana Likhareva said that already now the new server platform is used by such companies as: Sberbank, Svyaznoy, Leroy Merlin, Sitronics, Kaspersky Lab, MAI and others.

Immediate plans

Over the next year, Microsoft plans to conduct training and certification of its partners to work with Windows Server 2012. "We have about 3.5 thousand partners in the channel, of which now we have the opportunity to work with a new platform of about 250 companies that have the status and experience of working with Microsoft infrastructure solutions," Svetlana Likhareva continued. "now specialists from companies such as iTeco, LANIT and others are undergoing training. We predict that the transition to Sever 2012 will be faster than to the previous version. "

Windows Server 2012 for Embedded Systems Datacenter

Microsoft has announced that a new edition of Windows Server 2012 for Embedded Systems Datacenter will go on sale on January 1, 2013. This OS is designed to provide the highest level of virtualization, scalability and reliability in the system. It supports large-scale virtualization, critical database creation, enterprise resource planning and management, real-time transaction processing, and server consolidation.

Two versions of licenses will be available: for 2 and 4 processors with an unlimited number of virtual machines. Including all the enhancements and new features of Windows Server 2012, Datacenter allows you to create the largest data centers, making enterprise systems more stable, flexible and manageable.

Windows Embedded Server

Windows Embedded Server functionally repeats the classic version of Windows Server and has no differences at the binary level. Windows Server 2012 for Embedded Systems is a proven, functional, affordable, and reliable OEM operating system that can be used in embedded applications on server devices in any industry where long-term fault tolerance is important.

Licensing of Windows Server 2012 for Embedded Systems has been simplified - the number of versions has decreased, and failover clustering and all the advantages that were previously included only in later versions have become available in Standard Edition.

Server Core mode to increase system resiliency

Back in Windows Server 2008 for Embedded Systems, a new installation mode for Windows Server Core was introduced, which installs only the components necessary to support a specific server role. Thus, fewer components are attacked from the network, and as a result, Server Core is installed on servers in a safer mode, since the components are less susceptible to viruses, data theft and other threats. Server Core mode is also available in Windows Server 2012 for Embedded Systems and supports Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for Embedded Systems. This reduces costs. These systems are more secure and provide higher fault tolerance than devices running Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for Embedded Systems databases in the full Windows Server package.

Enhanced Virtualization

Improve hardware efficiency, optimize business infrastructure, and improve server resiliency and efficiency with powerful Hyper-V virtualization technology.

OEMs can use Windows Embedded 2012 for Embedded Systems to build a wide range of server solutions in areas such as:

• medicine;
• safety and surveillance system;
• industrial automation;
• Telecommunications (PBX server).

2013: Windows Server 2012 R2 с Hyper-V R3

On August 27, 2013, Microsoft announced the transition of the Windows Server 2012 R2 server OS with the new Hyper-V R3 to the RTM (Release To Manufacturing) stage.

New virtualization

New features of Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V are available only in conjunction with Virtual Machine Manager:

• The second generation of virtual machines (Generation 2) - these machines are based on emulated devices, have improved performance and support Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2 and 64-bit versions of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 as guest operating systems.
• Support for 320 logical host processors, 4 TB of RAM and 1024 virtual machines per host. Hyper-V supports 64-node clusters with up to 8,000 VM. Each machine can have a virtual disk of up to 64 TB.
• Storage QoS capabilities allow you to control and balance the load on virtual machine storage (VMware has a similar feature called Storage IO Control). Restrictions are set by IOPS. Updated the resource metering mechanism that collects statistics by VM or group.
• Storage tiering - the ability to store rarely used virtual machine data on slow drives, and the most demanded data on SSDs.
• Enhanced host-level virtual machine replication mechanism (Hyper-V Replica) - Multiple nodes are now supported for replication.
• Live migration compression - Compresses virtual disks when transmitted between hosts during a hot VM migration.
• Live migration with RDMA - Support for remote direct memory access (RDMA) technology and data transfer during hot migration at speeds up to 56 GB/s.
• Allows VHDX virtual disk files to be hot-expanded without stopping virtual machines (including OS disk).
• Ability to create shared VHDXs. This allows you to flexibly create clusters from guest operating systems without having to share a disk on a CSV volume or a dedicated LUN. Now you can use just a VHDX file for these purposes.
• Full support for dynamic memory capabilities for Linux guest operating systems, including Minimum memory setting, Hyper-V smart paging, Memory ballooning, and Runtime configuration.
• Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager is a disaster management tool from Microsoft that combines the capabilities of Windows Azure, System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Hyper-V Replica to recover virtual machines from failures in a multi-datacenter configuration.
• Remote connection via VMBus (Remote Desktop over VMBus), VM may not be connected to the network.
• Automatic activation of guest operating systems - if the host server is Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter, and the guest OS is any edition of Windows Server 2012 R2, then the guest OS is activated automatically (only if the host OS is already activated). At the same time, no network connection is required to activate the guest OS.
• Export a running virtual machine - now you can unload the running machine, actually creating its clone, and you can also export the desired snapshot.
• Improved replication mechanism - Now the replication interval of 5 minutes supported in Windows Server 2012 can be set to 30 seconds and 15 minutes.
• The built-in Target Server iSCSI component now fully supports the VHDX format, which is the default format for iSCSI.
• Several new features for Linux guest operating systems are full support for Dynamic Memory, Online backup, VHDX hot expansion and an updated video driver.

Windows Server 2012 R2 for end users is expected to be available on October 18, 2013 (for MSDN subscribers earlier). Then System Center 2012 R2 will be available.

2014: Microsoft develops ARM version of Windows Server

On October 28, 2014, it became known that Microsoft was testing a version of the Windows Server operating system for servers running ARM processors. This information came to the disposal of the Bloomberg news agency from its sources familiar with the plans of the American corporation.^[1]

According to the publication, Microsoft has not yet decided on the commercial launch of the product. There are no other details regarding the development of an ARM chip-compatible Windows server platform. Microsoft declined to comment.

Current versions of Windows Server are designed for the x86 architecture promoted by Intel. The latter dominates the server chip market with a 98% share. ARM processors are more popular in smartphones and tablets, but the British chipmaker ARM Holdings, which sells ARM licenses to other manufacturers, has repeatedly talked about the big prospects for ARM architecture in the server industry.

Support for ARM chips may appear in Microsoft server operating systems

In the spring of 2014, ARM Holdings Deputy Director of Investor Relations Ian Thornton said that by 2017, servers based on energy-efficient ARM chips will be able to take a 10 percent market share, and ARM Holdings revenue from the sale of licenses for such processors will be about $10 million.

DigiTimes Research analysts call support for the ARM architecture by the Windows Server operating system a key catalyst for the growth of the ARM server segment. According to experts, depending on the number of compatible applications, sales of such servers may grow by 150-180% per year and exceed 1 million units by 2017.

According to ZDNet observers, by adding ARM support to Windows Server, Microsoft will make its operating system an alternative for those who now prefer Linux. ARM has a developed ecosystem that, if included in it, Windows Server can increase Microsoft's client base, including among users of the Azure cloud platform, journalists are sure.^[2]

Many IT giants are interested in developing ARM-based servers, including Google, Facebook, Dell and HP. However, only the latter, by October 2014, offers similar systems with a standard configuration, available to order to any customer.

2022: Updates caused domain controller failures

The latest Windows Server KB5019966 updates released on November Patch Tuesday cause LSASS memory leaks that could cause the domain controller to freeze and restart. This became known on November 28, 2022. Read more here.

Notes