First look at Windows Server 2016: 'Cloud for the masses'? We'll be the judge of that Microsoft has released Windows Server 2016, complete with container support and a brand new Nano Server edition. What is the essence of Windows Server 2016? First, a quick look at the context. Server 2016 follows the same pattern as previous releases, in that it follows a new release of the Windows desktop operating system, in …
Cloud is a great idea in principle but if you hold sensitive information or have a poor internet connection (read: BT) on premise files are still king.
Plus its a much more reliable way to secure your data. Cloud storage is always on the internet. A swift phishing / malware attack and you're compromised.
You can lock down access to your files from the internet more easily as well. Deny access entirely inbound and allow access outbound only to signed and trusted update repos.
Its pretty trivial to man in the middle a transfer from the cloud as well in some cases. If nothing leaves your network nothing can be intercepted.
Now cloud for backup, thats another story. Encrypt your files and sync them to cloud for sure for a solid backup. As long as you encrypt before you sync you're golden.
I suspect that the SBS products were deliberately killed off. The big MS integrators hated them - Not enough ways to gouge unnecessary profit from SMBs - Why sell a simple reliable system with a single server to 10-40 seats when you could spec a separate domain controller, SQL server, Exchange server, file server, and back-up server? I have personal experience of an integrator supplying all of that equipment to a 15 seat not-for-profit, that I volunteered with, while I was on extended leave. Needless to say the system never worked properly because they had spent much of the budget on licences, so the hardware supplied was totally inadequate...
Now MS really want all their SMBs to use their cloud products, so don't expect any significant SBS products in the future.
The article failed to link to where you can download the 4.5GB eval ISO:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2016
I slapped it on VirtualBox and selected the "Desktop Experience" version (did I read somewhere that you can't convert from non-DE to DE later on?). It's a 180-day trial and I didn't seem to need a license key for it. Overall impression is that for typical small business use, it's only a small upgrade from 2012 and the nastier licensing terms for 2016 might make SME's hold back on the upgrade.
It's nowhere near as big an upgrade as, say, RHEL/CentOS 6 to 7 was (systemd is still doing my head in!).
For most SMEs the licensing will be the same: this assumes that you have up to 8cores per CPU. Certainly for us the price is the same (3 node cluster, each node has 2x 6 core CPUs) each 2016 std licence is sold in a pack of 8+8 core (previously each std was a 2 CPU license) so we need the same overall numbers. We have 6 windows hyper-v VMs so we need 3x 8+8 per node, 9 in total for the cluster - same as before.
I suppose the real losers on this will be those who moved to 2x 12 cores as they will need 2x16 lic, they will be shafted by this.
At the same time, if that VM on your Linux box is a Windows OS, it still needs to be licensed. I don't imagine Microsoft give much of a crap about the small hypervisor deployments, so long as they get their Windows license in there too.
(Run fully licensed Windows server nodes on bare metal, VMware, Xen, KVM, QEMU and Hyper-V - I've covered this one many times!)
"I guess you have to count the cores for the VM?"
Not a server guy, but from what I've always read it is the hardware, not virtual hardware or any form of emulation. This really hurts you if by some chance you don't need all the CPU's and cores, but just 1 (and somehow need Server...not sure, but there has to be an example somewhere).
Again, not a server guy, but haven't all of you server people already figured all this shit out one way or another? Is the upgrade for convenience or are you all trapped (still)? I've always wondered being no matter how new the tech. is, you will undoubtedly have it all figured out and have had it finger rolled before Microsoft adds it into their products. I missing the whole world of the latest server tech., but the Microsoft version of that world always seems more mysterious than the others.
Linux hypervisor and Windows guests is licensed per running instance of Windows.
Licensing is not my job so I may be inaccurate, but this'll be close enough to get you within reach:
Yes, the license is attached to the hardware. A Windows Server Standard license permits (from memory) the bare metal plus 2 VMs to be run (it may be simply 2 instances including the bare metal). If the bare-metal OS is not Windows, you get 2 VMs. The VMs are limited by the number of CPUs and cores as per the Windows Edition specs.
Windows Server Datacenter permits as many instances of Windows Server as you can cram into the hardware. Again, they don't care about the hypervisor. Since it's unlimited instances, many people just install Windows Server and enable Hyper-V. I think that's a little foolish because you can run a free hypervisor in a mixed Windows/Linux environment and keep some hardware Linux-only (and not pay for a license).
Service provider licensing is changing for Windows Server 2016 to a per-core model, where the license is prices that 8 cores is the same cost as one socket on 2012R2.
Again, licensing is not my bread and butter. Speak to a reseller and they'll keep you straight. In fact, speak to Microsoft - I've always found their licensing people to be very helpful and friendly (presumably because I'm actively engaging with them and trying to make sure we're always compliant).
Guess mostly the features will never get backported like container support and such is a incentive of upgrading if you are with static software then no not likely why there is still alot of 2008 servers hanging around here. But getting onto 2012 R2 now won't be pushing for 2016 on everything for a fair few years.
Hyper-V can support 512 Logical CPUs. Where exactly do you buy a server that has 512 logical processors and how many £millions does it cost.
We have some 2 cpu socket blade servers with 20- cores that would take it to 40 logical cores (quad core scoket might take it to 80) but thats a long way from the 512 figure. vSphere can only do 480.
These type of figures are just pointless.
There are server vendors who produce servers which have a lot more than 4 CPU sockets. But that's not the main reason the support is there for such a high number of logical cores. The main reason is that Server2016 will likely be around for a good number of years (5-7yrs?), and in that time CPUs will advance quite considerably, like they have in the last 5yrs or so.
From my admittedly rather poor memory, 5yrs ago we were dealing with CPUs which typically had 4,6 or 8 cores, now we're up to 24. In another 5yrs that could quite feasibly be up to ~96. But even if they only progress as far as 48 cores in that time, in a 4-socket box this still means you have 192 physical cores, or 384 logical. All of a sudden that 512 maximum doesn't seem so ludicrous.
FYI - SuperMicro do an 8-way box which I'm told isn't stupidly expensive considering what you can do with it. Loaded up with the top CPU, it gives you 384 logical cores, today.
Always thought it was better to scale out rather than scale up
Better having 2 small servers than 1 huge server from a service point of view.
True in 10 years from now, CPUs may have 100+ cores but unless big redesign in the architecture, dissipating the heat may be a real problem.
I would much prefer to see current real world example rather than these theoretical limits but IT vendors do like to play the top trumps game.
we still have a server 2008x64 (not R2) with exchange 2010 on it. There are no plans to migrate away as there is no point (it is virtualised). Extended support is 2020 so we will probably migrate to new exchange in a couple of years time.
Having a clustered node was the best move we ever made and was completely painless (6 servers). I might roll our a 2016 cluster when I hardware refresh (2012R2 atm)
our VAR sent us an email about Server2016 licensing last week, and as I understand it, if you are going to run Server2016 in a VM, you have to license every physical core in the server, you can't license per-CPU anymore. So even if you only want to give the VM 2 vCPUs with 2 cores each, you still have to license all of the other cores as if you're running Windows on them. If you've got an older box with dual 4-core Xeons, you aren't going to be $$hurting$$ as bad as with a new box with dual 8-core Xeons.
(although, apparently, we Educational volume licensees CAN still license per CPU, with a minimum CPU count still at 2. I think...)
Glad I'm in education, in the office we were just discussing that point, our educational software provider gets a fantastic deal from M$.
It looks like MS is trying to separate the wheat from the chaff here... If you got the money to play with the big boys, great, if not, you'll be seeking alternatives.
@pirate dave, our licensing bod (Pugh) said that 2016 comes in two flavours for us (EES) either a pack of "8core and 8core" or pack of 16core (standard). That means for us with dual six core servers our pricing wont change.
VM licensing is the same as before. Each "pack" (regardless if it is an 8+8 or 1x16) gives you 2x windows server VMs (regardless of the distribution of the cores to the VMs)
"If you've got an older box with dual 4-core Xeons, you aren't going to be $$hurting$$ as bad as with a new box with dual 8-core Xeons."
You could be$$ hemorrhaging$$ if you have 2 16 core AMD Opteron 6300's & Zen will have up to 32 cores per proc, now that's not going to be a windows server processor.
It used to be fun to download the eval's on TechNet and have a play and see whats changed, but now its just "meh".
Servers based on Windows 10 UI, <marvin>That sounds awful</marvin>
The rest seems to be very Microsoft - copy, copy, copy.
I don't get the benefit of local cloud. We used to call that "our data centre". If "real cloud" is a lot more resilient, then it should be more than a half rack of server tin, or its not a real comparison, even if you dress it up with glitter and lipstick. Where's the resilience in all the layers ?? I'd expect around 6 racks - 2 compute, 2 network, 2 storage as a minimum.
If its using the same reference design, it makes you wonder what the cloudy hosted ones look like, or is it more smoke and mirrors ?
"VXLAN - copying the networking concept from VMWare and Cisco"
So supporting an open standard is bad? Perhaps they should have invented their own standard.
If we're going there, they also copied the TCP/IP concept for 3.11, and LDAP and DNS for NT, bad Microsoft!
While Windows will now run quite happily without a GUI, a lot of Windows programs don't.
One of our customers had Server Core installation (it was an old machine, no need to burden it with a GUI), but they decided that they were required to run anti-virus on it. Sophos requires a GUI to install, so they had to go about hacking the GUI back in, just so they could install AV.
Really not trying to troll or start a flamewar here. The article points out that Cortana is missing, but what about other "controversial" aspects of the Windows 10 desktop version?
i.e., does Server 2016 have the enforced Windows Update cadence, or the telemetry/diagnostics stuff?
Good review, thanks. I am downloading the ISO from MSDN now to give it a whirl.
Microsoft employees are on the influence of some really heavy drugs, indeed... the statement: "Just as in Windows NT we took a scenario that only the princes and high priests of technology could do" ... well it is just beyond crazy.
Windows Server 2016 is going to be a huge mess overall. Just like Server 2012 wasn't messed up already. Since the whole Metro/ModernUI nonsense began anything good that was done with Windows7 and Server2008/2008 R2 was lost. Then Windows8.2=10 happened and now The Server2016 aka Windows10 Camouflaged For The Enterprise is going to be even worse.
>Microsoft employees are on the influence of some really heavy drugs, indeed... the statement: "Just >as in Windows NT we took a scenario that only the princes and high priests of technology could do" >... well it is just beyond crazy.
lol They dont half come out with some crap Hype department fail
For an SMB, Samba4 provides "Active Directory Like" services to Windows clients and you can set up windows shares without too much fuss. If you're not sunk in the SQL Server/Exchange/Sharepoint bucket then Windows Server is pretty expensive. Licensing for new versions of the above + Software Assurance for those other products will come out pretty close to a prototype of alternative systems.
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