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On March 20th 2018, Microsoft announced that Windows Server 2019, which is built on the strong foundation of Windows Server 2016, are now released to Preview. You can get access to the preview build through Microsoft Insiders program.

Windows 2019 will be generally available (GA) in the second half of calendar year 2018.

Some tips:

• The Windows Server vNext Semi-Annual Preview – Build 17623 is Server Core ONLY

• If you downloaded the VHDX version, as the file is compressed, make you sure you remove the compress check in the properties of the file as per below image as it will fail to start the VM if you don’t:

• Download the Windows Server vNext LTSC Preview – Build 17623, if you are looking for the Full GUI version.

Use the following keys provided by Microsoft (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-Server-Insiders/Announcing-Windows-Server-2019-Preview-Build-17623/m-p/173715#M268)

Windows Server 2019 Build 17623  is available in ISO format in 18 languages. This build and all future pre-release builds will require use of activation keys during setup. The following keys allow for unlimited activations:

So, what features to look for in the new in Server 2019:

·        Cluster Sets, the new cloud scale-out technology, is a loosely-coupled grouping of multiple Failover Clusters: compute, storage or hyper-converged. Cluster Sets technology will enable virtual machine fluidity across member clusters within a Cluster Set and a unified storage namespace across the “set” in support of virtual machine fluidity.  

·        Failover Cluster without NTLM authentication, which allows failover clusters to be deployed in environments where NTLM has been disabled.

·        Shielded VM’s Offline mode, Alternate HGS and Shielded Linux support, which allows you to run HyperV shielded virtual machines on hosts that suffer intermittent connectivity to their Host Guardian Service (HGS).  The fallback HGS will allow you to configure a second set of URLs for Hyper-V to try if it can’t reach the primary HGS server.

·        Shielded VM’s Alternate HGS, which allows you to run HyperV shielded virtual machines on hosts that suffer intermittent connectivity to their Host Guardian Service (HGS).  The fallback HGS will allow you to configure a second set of URLs for Hyper-V to try if it can’t reach the primary HGS server. 

·        Shielded VM’s Offline mode, which takes the high availability promise for shielded VMs one step further and allows you to continue to start up a shielded VM even if the host’s primary and fallback HGSs can’t be reached.

·        Shielded VM’s Shielded Linux support, for customers that run mixed-OS environments, Microsoft now supports Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Shielded virtual machines.

·        Encrypted Network in SDN, which provides simple to configure DTLS-based encryption using the Network Controller to manage the end-to-end encryption and protect data as it travels through the wires and network devices between the hosts., enabling the VM to VM traffic within the VM subnet to be automatically encrypted as it leaves the host and prevents snooping and manipulation of traffic on the wire.  This is done without requiring any configuration changes in the VMs themselves.

· Performance history for Storage Spaces Direct, which allow Administrators of Storage Spaces Direct get easy access to historical performance and capacity data from their cluster.

·        Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, ,which provides deep platform sensors and response actions, providing visibility to memory and kernel level attacker activities and abilities to take actions on compromised machines in response to incidents such as remote collection of additional forensic data, remediating malicious files, terminating malicious processes etc.

·        Windows Defender ATP Exploit Guard ,which is new set of host intrusion prevention capabilities, designed to lock down the device against a wide variety of attack vectors and block behaviours commonly used in malware attacks:

To DOWNLOAD, Join the program to ensure you have access to the bits.

For more details on this preview build, check out the Release Notes. 

Source : https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2018/03/20/introducing-windows-server-2019-now-available-in-preview/