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

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

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

What's New in 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,
as well as 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, as well as 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 a number of 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:

A new interface for Resource Manager Rejoin can be used by a resource manager to determine the
outcome of an in-doubt transaction after a database restarts due to an error. See
IResourceManagerRejoinable::Rejoin for details.

The DSN name limit is enlarged from 256 bytes to 3072 bytes. See IDtcToXaHelperFactory::Create,
IDtcToXaHelperSinglePipe::XARMCreate, or IDtcToXaMapper::RequestNewResourceManager for details.
Improved tracing allowing you to set a registry key to include an image file path in the trace log file name
so you can tell which trace log file to check. See How to enable diagnostic tracing for MS DTC on a
Windows-based computer for details on configuring tracing for MSDTC.