What's new in Windows Server 2016

This article describes some of the new features in Windows Server 2016 that are the ones most likely to have the greatest impact as you work with this release.

Compute

The Virtualization area includes virtualization products and features for the IT professional to design, deploy, and maintain Windows Server.

General

Physical and virtual machines benefit from greater time accuracy due to improvements in the Win32 Time and Hyper-V Time Synchronization Services. Windows Server can now host services that are compliant with upcoming regulations that require a 1ms accuracy with regard to UTC.

Hyper-V

Nano Server

What's New in Nano Server. Nano Server now has an updated module for building Nano Server images, including more separation of physical host and guest virtual machine functionality and support for different Windows Server editions.

There are also improvements to the Recovery Console, including separation of inbound and outbound firewall rules and the ability to repair the configuration of WinRM.

Shielded Virtual Machines

Windows Server 2016 provides a new Hyper-V-based Shielded Virtual Machine to protect any Generation 2 virtual machine from a compromised fabric. Among the features introduced in Windows Server 2016 are the following:

  • A new Encryption Supported mode that offers more protections than for an ordinary virtual machine, but less than Shielded mode, while still supporting vTPM, disk encryption, Live Migration traffic encryption, and other features, including direct fabric administration conveniences such as virtual machine console connections and PowerShell Direct.

  • Full support for converting existing non-shielded Generation 2 virtual machines to shielded virtual machines, including automated disk encryption.

  • Hyper-V Virtual Machine Manager can now view the fabrics upon which a shielded virtual is authorized to run, providing a way for the fabric administrator to open a shielded virtual machine's key protector (KP) and view the fabrics it is permitted to run on.

  • You can switch Attestation modes on a running Host Guardian Service. Now you can switch on the fly between the less secure but simpler Active Directory-based attestation and TPM-based attestation.

  • End-to-end diagnostics tooling based on Windows PowerShell that is able to detect misconfigurations or errors in both guarded Hyper-V hosts and the Host Guardian Service.

  • A recovery environment that offers a means to securely troubleshoot and repair shielded virtual machines within the fabric in which they normally run while offering the same level of protection as the shielded virtual machine itself.

  • Host Guardian Service support for existing safe Active Directory – you can direct the Host Guardian Service to use an existing Active Directory forest as its Active Directory instead of creating its own Active Directory instance

For more details and instructions for working with shielded virtual machines, see Guarded Fabric and Shielded VMs.

Identity and Access

New features in Identity improve the ability for organizations to secure Active Directory environments and help them migrate to cloud-only deployments and hybrid deployments, where some applications and services are hosted in the cloud and others are hosted on premises.

Active Directory Certificate Services

Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) in Windows Server 2016 increases support for TPM key attestation: You can now use Smart Card KSP for key attestation, and devices that are not joined to the domain can now use NDES enrollment to get certificates that can be attested for keys being in a TPM.

Active Directory Domain Services

Active Directory Domain Services includes improvements to help organizations secure Active Directory environments and provide better identity management experiences for both corporate and personal devices. For more information, see What's new in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) in Windows Server 2016.

Active Directory Federation Services

Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) in Windows Server 2016 includes new features that enable you to configure AD FS to authenticate users stored in Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directories. For more information, see What's New in AD FS for Windows Server 2016.

Web Application Proxy

The latest version of Web Application Proxy focuses on new features that enable publishing and pre-authentication for more applications and improved user experience. Check out the full list of new features that includes pre-authentication for rich client apps such as Exchange ActiveSync and wildcard domains for easier publishing of SharePoint apps. For more information, see Web Application Proxy in Windows Server 2016.

Administration

The Management and Automation area focuses on tool and reference information for IT pros who want to run and manage Windows Server 2016, including Windows PowerShell.

Windows PowerShell 5.1 includes significant new features, including support for developing with classes and new security features that extend its use, improve its usability, and allow you to control and manage Windows-based environments more easily and comprehensively. See New Scenarios and Features in WMF 5.1 for details.

New additions for Windows Server 2016 include: the ability to run PowerShell.exe locally on Nano Server (no longer remote only), new Local Users & Groups cmdlets to replace the GUI, added PowerShell debugging support, and added support in Nano Server for security logging & transcription and JEA.

Here are some other new administration features:

PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) in Windows Management Framework (WMF) 5

Windows Management Framework 5 includes updates to Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC), Windows Remote Management (WinRM), and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).

For more info about testing the DSC features of Windows Management Framework 5, see the series of blog posts discussed in Validate features of PowerShell DSC. To download, see Windows Management Framework 5.1.

PackageManagement unified package management for software discovery, installation, and inventory

Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 includes a new PackageManagement feature (formerly called OneGet) that enables IT Professionals or DevOps to automate software discovery, installation, and inventory (SDII), locally or remotely, no matter what the installer technology is and where the software is located.

For more info, see https://github.com/OneGet/oneget/wiki.

PowerShell enhancements to assist digital forensics and help reduce security breaches

To help the team responsible for investigating compromised systems - sometimes known as the "blue team" - we've added additional PowerShell logging and other digital forensics functionality, and we've added functionality to help reduce vulnerabilities in scripts, such as constrained PowerShell, and secure CodeGeneration APIs.

For more info, see the PowerShell ♥ the Blue Team blog post.

Networking

The Networking area addresses networking products and features for the IT professional to design, deploy, and maintain Windows Server 2016.

Software-Defined Networking

You can now both mirror and route traffic to new or existing virtual appliances. Together with a distributed firewall and Network security groups, this enables you to dynamically segment and secure workloads in a manner similar to Azure. Second, you can deploy and manage the entire Software-defined networking (SDN) stack using System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Finally, you can use Docker to manage Windows Server container networking, and associate SDN policies not only with virtual machines but containers as well. For more information, see Plan a Software Defined Network Infrastructure.

TCP performance improvements

The default Initial Congestion Window (ICW) has been increased from 4 to 10 and TCP Fast Open (TFO) has been implemented. TFO reduces the amount of time required to establish a TCP connection and the increased ICW allows larger objects to be transferred in the initial burst. This combination can significantly reduce the time required to transfer an Internet object between the client and the cloud.

In order to improve TCP behavior when recovering from packet loss we have implemented TCP Tail Loss Probe (TLP) and Recent Acknowledgment (RACK). TLP helps convert Retransmit TimeOuts (RTOs) to Fast Recoveries and RACK reduces the time required for Fast Recovery to retransmit a lost packet.

Security and Assurance

The Security and Assurance area Includes security solutions and features for the IT professional to deploy in your data center and cloud environment. For information about security in Windows Server 2016 generally, see Security and Assurance.

Just Enough Administration

Just Enough Administration in Windows Server 2016 is security technology that enables delegated administration for anything that can be managed with Windows PowerShell. Capabilities include support for running under a network identity, connecting over PowerShell Direct, securely copying files to or from JEA endpoints, and configuring the PowerShell console to launch in a JEA context by default. For more details, see JEA on GitHub.

Credential Guard

Credential Guard uses virtualization-based security to isolate secrets so that only privileged system software can access them. See Protect derived domain credentials with Credential Guard.

Remote Credential Guard

Credential Guard includes support for RDP sessions so that the user credentials remain on the client side and are not exposed on the server side. This also provides Single Sign On for Remote Desktop. See Protect derived domain credentials with Windows Defender Credential Guard.

Device Guard (Code Integrity)

Device Guard provides kernel mode code integrity (KMCI) and user mode code integrity (UMCI) by creating policies that specify what code can run on the server. See Introduction to Windows Defender Device Guard: virtualization-based security and code integrity policies.

Windows Defender

Windows Defender Overview for Windows Server 2016. Windows Server Antimalware is installed and enabled by default in Windows Server 2016, but the user interface for Windows Server Antimalware is not installed. However, Windows Server Antimalware will update antimalware definitions and protect the computer without the user interface. If you need the user interface for Windows Server Antimalware, you can install it after the operating system installation by using the Add Roles and Features Wizard.

Control Flow Guard

Control Flow Guard (CFG) is a platform security feature that was created to combat memory corruption vulnerabilities. See Control Flow Guard for more information.

Storage

Storage in Windows Server 2016 includes new features and enhancements for software-defined storage, and for traditional file servers. Below are a few of the new features, for more enhancements and further details, see What's New in Storage in Windows Server 2016.

Storage Spaces Direct

Storage Spaces Direct enables building highly available and scalable storage using servers with local storage. It simplifies the deployment and management of software-defined storage systems and unlocks use of new classes of disk devices, such as SATA SSD and NVMe disk devices, that were previously not possible with clustered Storage Spaces with shared disks.

For more info, see Storage Spaces Direct.

Storage Replica

Storage Replica enables storage-agnostic, block-level, synchronous replication between servers or clusters for disaster recovery, and stretching of a failover cluster between sites. Synchronous replication enables mirroring of data in physical sites with crash-consistent volumes to ensure zero data loss at the file-system level. Asynchronous replication allows site extension beyond metropolitan ranges with the possibility of data loss.

For more info, see Storage Replica.

Storage Quality of Service (QoS)

You can now use storage quality of service (QoS) to centrally monitor end-to-end storage performance and create management policies using Hyper-V and CSV clusters in Windows Server 2016.

For more info, see Storage Quality of Service.

Failover Clustering

Windows Server 2016 includes many new features and enhancements for multiple servers that are grouped together into a single fault-tolerant cluster using the Failover Clustering feature. Some of the additions are listed below; for a more complete listing, see What's New in Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2016.

Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade

Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade enables an administrator to upgrade the operating system of the cluster nodes from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016 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.

For more info, see Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade.

Cloud Witness

Cloud Witness is a new type of Failover Cluster quorum witness in Windows Server 2016 that leverages Microsoft Azure as the arbitration point. The Cloud Witness, like any other quorum witness, gets a vote and can participate in the quorum calculations. You can configure cloud witness as a quorum witness using the Configure a Cluster Quorum Wizard.

For more info, see Deploy Cloud Witness.

Health Service

The Health Service improves the day-to-day monitoring, operations, and maintenance experience of cluster resources on a Storage Spaces Direct cluster.

For more info, see Health Service.

Application development

Internet Information Services (IIS) 10.0

New features provided by the IIS 10.0 web server in Windows Server 2016 include:

  • Support for the HTTP/2 protocol in the Networking stack and integrated with IIS 10.0, allowing IIS 10.0 websites to automatically serve HTTP/2 requests for supported configurations. This allows numerous enhancements over HTTP/1.1 such as more efficient reuse of connections and decreased latency, improving load times for web pages.
  • Ability to run and manage IIS 10.0 in Nano Server. See IIS on Nano Server.
  • Support for Wildcard Host Headers, enabling administrators to set up a web server for a domain and then have the web server serve requests for any subdomain.
  • A new PowerShell module (IISAdministration) for managing IIS.

For more details, see IIS.

Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC)

Three new features are added in Microsoft Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016:

DNS Server

Windows Server 2016 contains the following updates for Domain Name System (DNS) Server.

DNS policies

You can configure DNS policies to specify how a DNS server responds to DNS queries. You can configure DNS responses based on client IP address, time of day, and several other parameters. DNS policies can enable location-aware DNS, traffic management, load balancing, split-brain DNS, and other scenarios. For more information, see the DNS Policy Scenario Guide.

RRL

You can enable Response Rate Limiting (RRL) on your DNS servers to prevent malicious systems from using your DNS servers to initiate a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on a DNS client. RRL prevents your DNS server from responding to too many requests at once, which protects it during scenarios when a botnet sends multiple requests at once to try to disrupt server operations.

DANE support

You can use DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) support (RFC 6394 and RFC 6698) to specify which certificate authority your DNS clients should expect certificates from for domain names hosted in your DNS server. This prevents a form of man-in-the-middle attack where a malicious actor corrupts a DNS cache and points a DNS name to their own IP address.

Unknown record support

You can add records that the DNS server doesn't explicitly support by using the unknown record functionality. A record is unknown when the DNS server doesn't recognize its RDATA format. Windows Server 2016 supports unknown record types (RFC 3597), so you can add unknown records to Windows DNS server zones in binary on-wire format. The windows caching resolver can already process unknown record types. Windows DNS server doesn't perform record-specific processing for unknown records, but can send them in response to queries it receives.

IPv6 root hints

Windows DNS server now includes IPv6 root hints published by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Support for IPv6 root hints lets you make internet queries that use the IPv6 root servers to perform name resolutions.

Windows PowerShell support

Windows Server 2016 includes new commands you can use to configure DNS in PowerShell. For more information, see Windows Server 2016 DnsServer module and Windows Server 2016 DnsClient module.