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New Windows Server preview ships with an AI crystal ball

Adds ‘System Insights’ to predict future capacity requirements, but Hyper-V 2019 remains mysterious

Microsoft’s popped out another preview of Windows Server 2019, Build 17692 to be precise.

The big new addition is “System Insights”, which Microsoftforeshadowed as offering “predictive analytics natively to Windows Server.”

The new tool uses machine learning to “locally analyze Windows Server system data, such as performance counters and events, providing insight into the functioning of your deployments and helping you reduce the operational expenses associated with monitoring your Windows Server instances.”

New Windows Servers are like buses: None for ages, then two at once!

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The result? Tools for “capacity forecasting, predicting future usage for compute, networking, and storage.”

And all without so much as a single mention of Azure, for those of you who like to keep things on-premises.

Microsoft says other goodies in the new release include improved app compatibility for Windows Server Core “by including a set of binaries and packages from Windows Server with Desktop, without adding any of the Windows Server Desktop GUI or Windows 10 GUI experiences.”

Also new is the debut of Hyper-V Server 2019. Microsoft has helpfully offered precisely zero detail on how (if?) it differs from Hyper-V Server 2016.

But we already know that Hyper-V Server 2019 will extend shielded VMs to Linux guests, encrypt traffic between VMs on software-defined networks, adds storage replication and migration tools and offers more flexible access to the VMconnect guest machine admin tool.

Microsoft has said that Hyper-V Server 2019 does the same stuff as the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2019, as is the case for its 2016 servers. So presumably Hyper-V Server 2019 gets the new virtualized bits of Windows Server 2019.

The test software’s available to download as VMs or ISOs here.

But wait, there's more!

Also new from Redmond today is a preview of Windows Admin Center.

Microsoft's proud of the following new bits:

  • View/copy the PowerShell scripts that Windows Admin Center is using under the hood. (Our top user request!)
  • Manage Windows Server 2008 R2 connections with a limited set of tools (another big customer request)
  • New tools to manage your Software Defined Network (SDN) in Hyper-Converged Cluster Manager
  • New Scheduled Tasks tool (in preview; see below for known issues)
  • Other new features include an update notification dialog, multiple extension feeds, and a new option to redirect web traffic from port 80. See below for details.
  • Improvements to some existing features: gateway settings page, notifications, connection tag editing experience, and extension management experience

These new features, and others detailed here, will likely appear in a new version late in 2018. ®

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