Microsoft Reveals New Features Coming In The Next Version Of Windows Server And System Center

Yesterday, Windows client team announced the technical preview release of Windows 10. Following that, Cloud + Enterprise team has also announced the availability of “Technical Preview” for the next version of Windows Server and System Center on October 1. Usually, Microsoft releases early builds only to a small number of customers, but this time they are releasing it for broad access for those that want to start the journey early. Microsoft highlighted the following new features included in the upcoming Windows Server and System center release.

Infrastructure upgrades: Rolling upgrades for Hyper-V clusters to the next version of Windows Server without downtime for your applications and workloads. This includes support for mixed versions as you transition your infrastructure.

Networking:  New components for our software-defined networking stack that enable greater flexibility and control, including a network controller role to manage virtual and physical networks.

Storage: New synchronous storage replication that enhances availability for key applications and workloads plus storage Quality of Service to deliver minimum and maximum IOPS in environments with workloads with diverse storage requirements.

Remote Desktop: Enhanced application compatibility with OpenGL and OpenCL support.

Identity and Access Management: New scenarios to reduce the risk profile of administrators with elevated rights, including time-based access with fine-grained privileges, and new application publishing capabilities.

If you want to download the bits or try them on Azure, then by all means go for it. But do know that this is an early release, and many of the features and scenarios are still in development. As such this build is not intended for production environments, labs, nor full evaluations.

Read more at Microsoft.