sqlskills-logo-2015-white.png

Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4

Microsoft recently (Nov 19, 2015) released Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4, which is the fourth pre-release version of Windows Server 2016. You can download it here. According to Mary Jo Foley, Windows Server 2016 is due for release in the second half of 2016. It looks like Windows Server 2016 will be moving to a per core licensing model (similar to what SQL Server has had since SQL Server 2012).

There are a lot of interesting new features and enhancements in Windows Server 2016, especially in Hyper-V and Storage. I think it makes sense to start paying some attention to Windows Server 2016 as it is getting closer to final release. Below, I have some links so you can read more about Windows Server 2016, and how it will be the best OS for SQL Server 2016.

Discover new storage technologies and new features for existing technologies in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview

What’s New in File and Storage Services in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview

 

Discover what’s new in clustering in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview

What’s New in Failover Clustering in Windows Server Technical Preview

 

Storage Spaces Direct is a new feature in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview that enables building highly available (HA) storage systems with local storage which is either disk devices that are internal to each storage node, or disk devices in JBODs where each JBOD is only connected to a single storage node.

Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview

I talked about Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) in this article.

 

Storage Replica is a new feature in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview that enables storage-agnostic, block-level, synchronous replication between clusters or servers for disaster recovery, as well as stretching of a failover cluster for high availability.

Storage Replica in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview

 

Storage Quality of Service (Storage QoS) is a new feature in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview that provides a way to centrally monitor and manage storage performance for virtual machines using Hyper-V and the Scale-Out File Server roles. The feature automatically improves storage resource fairness between multiple virtual machines using the same file server cluster and allows specific minimum and maximum performance goals to be configured in units of normalized IOPs.

Storage Quality of Service

 

Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade is a new feature in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview that enables an administrator to upgrade the operating system of the cluster nodes from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview without stopping the Hyper-V or the Scale-Out File Server workloads. Using this feature, the downtime penalties against Service Level Agreements (SLA) can be avoided.

Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Other articles

Imagine feeling confident enough to handle whatever your database throws at you.

With training and consulting from SQLskills, you’ll be able to solve big problems, elevate your team’s capacity, and take control of your data career.