Windows Server 2016 Datacenter

Description

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
What’s new in Hyper-V on Windows Server 2016. This topic explains the new and changed functionality of the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2016, Client Hyper-V running on Windows 10, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016.

Windows Containers: Windows Server 2016 container support adds performance improvements, simplified network management, and support for Windows containers on Windows 10. For some additional information on containers, see Containers: Docker, Windows and Trends.

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 as well as support for different Windows Server editions.

There are also improvements to the Recovery Console, including separation of inbound and outbound firewall rules as well as 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