wp ms 12 features of server 2012

8/12/2019 WP MS 12 Features of Server 2012

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1-800-COURSES www.globalknowledge.com

Expert Reference Series of White Papers

Twelve Fantastic

Features You Need toKnow about Windows

Server 2012


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Copyright 2012 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. 2

Twelve Fantastic Features You Need to

Know about Windows Server 2012

Randy Muller, MCT, MCTS, MCSE, CEH, Global Knowledge Instructor

IntroductionThe latest, and perhaps the most significant version of Windows Server was released in September 2012. Whatmakes this release so significant is not just the new interface and default installation, but the enhanced Win-dows PowerShell, support for new hardware (which means increased performance, reliability, scalability, security,and storage options). The new virtualization enhancements have greatly increased not only the scalability ofHyper-V but performance and enterprise adoptability as well. In short, Windows Server 2012 helps you trans-form your IT operations to reduce costs and deliver a whole new level of business value has hundreds of newfeatures and enhancements spanning networking, storage, user experience, cloud computing, and more.

1. PowerShell 3.0PowerShell is a command-line scripting language used for administration and management of Windows Server2012 (as well as other products such as Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, SQL, and System Center). PowerShell en-ables IT professionals to control, automate, and perform bulk administration of Windows operating system andapplications that run on Windows. Windows PowerShell 3.0 is backwards-compatible with PowerShell 2.0 andits associated cmdlets. Some of the new windows features in PowerShell include:

Disconnected Sessions. These are user-managed, persistent sessions (PSSessions) that are created by usingthe New-PSSession cmdlet. The PSSessions are saved on the remote computer and are no long dependent on thesession in which they were created.

Module Auto-Loading. All functions and modules that are installed on the computer will be loaded even ifthe module is not imported into the current session.

PowerShell ISE.Features include auto-save, block copy, brace-matching, Intellisense, recent items list, Show-command window, support for writing Windows PowerShell script workflows, and a unified Console Pane.

Updatable Help System. You can use the Update-Help cmdlet to identify, download, unpack ad validate newhelp files from the internet.

Windows PowerShell Workflow. Windows PowerShell workflows are sequences of administrative or man-agement actions that can be applied against multiple computers. These actions can be frequent, long-running,repeatable and uninterruptible. Users and administrators can write workflows in XAML.


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Windows PowerShell Web Access. Administrators and users can run PowerShell commands and scripts in aweb-based console.

2. Hyper-V Scalability

Hyper-V (or Hypervisor) enables you to create a virtualized server computing environment. Virtualization withHyper-V enables you to improve the efficiency of your computing resources by utilizing more of your hardwareresources. Hyper-V was first released with Server 2008 and has seen substantial improvements ever since.Windows Server 2012 introduces several new and greatly enhanced features that puts in on par with the besthypervisors available.

Resource Hyper-V on WindowsServer 2012

Hyper-V on WindowsServer 2008 R2

Active Virtual Guests per host 1024 384

Logical Processors per host 320 64

Memory per guest session 1 TB 64 GB

Physical Memory (per host) 4 TB 1 TB

Virtual CPUs per virtual guest session 64 4

Maximum number of nodes in a cluster 64 16

Table 1. Scalability in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V

3. Hyper-V ReplicasHyper-V Replica provides asynchronous replication of virtual machines (VMs) from a Hyper-V host or cluster toa remote Hyper-V host or cluster to provide business continuity and fail-over recovery. This new, built-in feature

tracks write operations on the source Host or cluster and replicates them to the destination host or clusterso that both VMs are in constant lockstep. If the local VM fails (or if an administrator manually fails-over) theremote replica assumes its place. All of this happens without having any specialized storage or networkinghardware requirements.


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Figure 1. Hyper-V Replica

Courtesy of Microsoft, Server Virtualization Windows Server 2012White Paper

VHDX Disk. The VHDX disk format is new to Hyper-V 3 and adds new capabilities and enhancements overprevious versions:

A VHDX virtual hard disk can be as large as 64 TB.

Support for larger block sizes in VHDX virtual disks. This provides support for dynamic and differentialdisks, which in turn, allows for lets these disks attune to the needs of the workload.

A 4-KB logical sector virtual disk for applications and workloads that support 4KB sectors.

Conversion from a VHD to VHDX and back.

4. Live MigrationLive Migration is now built into Windows Server 2012 (whereas before, you only had this capability when youused System Center Virtual Machine Manager with Quick Storage Migration). Live Migration in Windows Server2012 enables an administrator to migrate live VMs between stand-alone Hyper-V 3 hosts without requiring theuse of any shared storage. The benefit of this is that the VMs can be moved while keeping the VMs online andavailable to clients, thus ensuring no downtime. You can perform a live migration through a GUI interface orthrough a PowerShell cmdlet.


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Figure 2. Live Migration GUI

Figure 3a. PowerShell cmdlet Emable VMMigration

Figure 3b. PowerShell cmdlet Emable Network Migration


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As part of the live migration process, you can move different VM components to new locations on the destina-tion host. This gives you a great deal of flexibility when performing a live migration

5. Windows Server Message Block (SMB) 3.0

New to Server 2012 is the Server Message Block (SMB) 3.0 protocol. The SMB 3.0 protocol provides access tofiles, printers, and serial ports, as well as handling the transfer of files between different systems. SMB is notbackwards-compatible the best performance obtained is between Windows Server 2012 servers or with Win-dows 8. One great feature of SMB is when using it with clustering and replication. Clustering in Widows Server2012 can now be done with SMB which means you no longer have to use a Storage-area Network (SAN).

SMB Direct. SMB Direct (SMB over Remote Direct Memory Access [RDMA]) is a new transport pro-tocol for SMB in Windows Server 2012. It enables direct memory-to-memory data transfers betweenservers with low latency. Only clients and servers that support SMB 3.0 can use SMB Direct.

SMB Directory Leasing. SMB Directory Leasing reduces the response time seen by branch office us-ers accessing files over high-latency WAN networks.

SMB Encryption. Only clients and servers that support SMB 3.0 can use SMB encryption, which pro-tects data in-flight from eavesdropping and tampering attacks by providing end-to-end encryption.

SMB Multichannel. Aggregates available bandwidth, allowing server applications to take full advan-tage of all available network capacity and can provide for a more resilient network

SMB PowerShell. SMB now has its own PowerShell cmdlets.

SMB Scale Out. When using Clustered Share Volumes the Continuously Available property is set andyou can create file shares that provide simultaneous access to data files. Only clients and servers thatsupport SMB 3.0 can use SMB Scale Out.

SMB Transparent Failover. You can perform maintenance (hardware or software) on nodes in acluster file server without causing interruptions on server applications.

VSS for SMB file shares. This is an easy feature to implement as it leverages any existing VSS soft-ware or applications.

6. Dynamic Access Control (DAC)Dynamic Access Control is new to Windows Server 2012 and is used to further augment file system security,which has been a challenging part of file system security since the Windows NT days. Prior to the release ofDAC, administrators would use the NTFS file system and Access Control Lists (ACLs) to grant or limit accessto resources on the network. Permissions were determined based on user accounts and group memberships,whereas now we can also specify a conditional access (you would still need to meet normal NTFS user/grouppermissions and meet a specific attribute setting as well).

Using Dynamic Access Control, you can set conditional access to a resource. Administrators can set centralizedaccess policies for file-servers throughout the entire organization. Access control can be enabled or disabledbased on users or groups. You can classify and tag data either manually or by doing a keyword assessment and


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Figure 4. DAC Control

Courtesy of Introduction to Windows Server 2012 Dynamic Access Control

7. Windows Server 2012 Remote AccessNew in Windows Server 2012 is the Unified Remote Access (URA) role. In Windows Server 2008 R2, DirectAccessand Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) were two separate roles. In fact, they could not be collocated onthe same server. In Windows Server 2012, DirectAccess and RRAS can be collocated, allowing for what is nowlegacy remote access VPN client connectivity (L2TP/IPsec, PPTP, and SSTP). This means that the Unified RemoteAccess provides DirectAccess, Remote access VPN and site-to-site VPN, and can now serve as your completeremote access solution.

Some of the new features in Windows Remote Access include: Support for Server Core.From a security perspective, it makes a lot of sense to run DirectAccess on

Server Core

Simplified management and infrastructure. You no longer need a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI),nor do you need to have Forefront UAG to support IPv6 (Windows Server 2012 has built-in support forNAT64 and DNS64).

NAT support. Prior to Windows Server 2012, DirectAccess could not be deployed behind a NAT andrequired two public IPv4 addresses. Now it can be deployed behind a NAT and can even be used with asingle network adapter.

PowerShell. You can use PowerShell to fully automate and manage your DirectAccess deployment.

User Monitoring. Administrators now have the capability for increased user and server health moni-toring. The Monitoring Dashboard allows the administrator to view resource usage, server loads, useractivity, and DirectAccess clients and connections.

Network Access Protection (NAP) Integration.Prior to Windows Server 2012, administratorshad to manually configure each Group Policy. Now NAP health check policies can be created directlythrough the setup user interface and the whole process is automated.



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Figure 5a. Remote Access Monitoring Dashboard

Figure 5b. Remote Access Management Console


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8. New Windows Server 2012 Default Installation: Core

ServerThe Server core installation option is not a new feature to Windows Server 2012, as it was introduced in Server2008 and 2008 R2. What is new, though, are the greatly enhanced features and capabilities introduced in Server

Core. Server core is a minimal installation option; management tasks on Server Core can be performed locallyfrom the command line (and PowerShell) or from another computer. Some of the new features for WindowsServer Core includes: A straight forward method for switching between Server Core and a GUI interface, a GUIwith a minimal interface, support for a much broader array of roles than was available in previous versions andsupport for SQL 2012

One interesting thing to note about Server Core is that it is the default installation for Windows Server 2012though you can change it at a later time. In Windows Server 2008 there was no method to upgrade to a GUIversion. Now, you can install a GUI in Windows Server Core, in fact, there are three available levels of GUI inServer 2012.

Full GUI

Minimal Server Instance (MinShell)

Server Core installation (no GUI)

Upgrading to a GUI version is straight forward and as easy as using a single command and a reboot. How you ini-tially installed Windows Server will determine what method you must use to change the interface for Server Core.

9. Windows Server 2012 Core Server: New RolesWindows Server Core 2012 can now host numerous roles, including Branch Cache, Telnet Server and ActiveDirectory Rights Management Server (ADRMS) which was unavailable in previous versions. SQL Server 2012 can

now be installed on Windows Server Core. You can add/remove supported roles using Ocsetupin the command-line or using PowerShell (once the source files are available) Add-WindowsFeature Server-GUI-Shell.

Active Directory Certicate Services,

Active Directory Domain Services

Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)

Active Directory Rights Management Server

DHCP Server

DNS Server

File and Storage Services (including File Server Resources Manager).

Hyper-V IIS and Web Server

Print and Document Services

Remote Access Server

Windows Server Update Services


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SCONFIG.CMDis a utility that can be used to configure Windows Server Core.. The SCONFIG.CMDcommand-line menu can be used to perform most common administrative server tasks.

Add a Local Administrator

Computer name, Network Settings

Congure Domain and Workgroup information

Congure Remote Management

Windows Activation

Windows Updates

You can use Windows PowerShell and sconfig.cmd(as well as remote GUI shells) to fully administer a Win-dows Server 2012 Core installation.

Figure 6. Screen shot of Sconfig

10. Server Manager and Server GroupsThe Server Manager in Windows Server 2012 has been redesigned, received a new interface, and has new andincreased functionality. With Server Manager, you can easily manage multiple remote servers. Using WindowsServer 2012 Server Manager, you can remotely provision roles and features quickly on a server from a centralcomputer. You can use the new Server Manager dashboard to view, install, and remove server roles and servergroups (or you can use PowerShell Install-WindowsFeatureor Remove-WindowsFeature. Prior to this


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you had to either use a Remote Desktop Connection or physically access the computer to provision new roles.You can also install the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 8 and use a Windows 8 com-puter to manage Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and even WindowsServer 2003.

Another new feature in Windows Server 2012 is Server Groups. A Server Group is a collection of user-definedservers as opposed to a grouping of servers that may share a specific role or purpose. With Server Groups, youcan perform role-based administrative tasks against a group of servers with common attributes. For example, aserver group containing all machines running DNS or DHCP could be managed.

Figure 7. Server Manager Dashboard

11. Resilient File System (ReFS)Windows Server 2012 heralds in the new Resilient File System (ReFS), which is the replacement to the venerableNTFS, first introduced in 1993 with NT 3.1. The Resilient File Systems has a high degree of compatibility withNTFS and inherits many of its features. It also has new resiliency and scalability features that go beyond whatNTFS could provide, including data verification and auto correction, as well as support for larger file and direc-tory sizes (really large files up to 2^64-1 bytes), disk scrubbing, data striping for improved performance, and

enhanced virtualization support.

Other key features of ReFS include [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831724.aspx]:

Integrity. ReFS stores data in a way that protects it from many of the common errors that can normally causedata loss. When ReFS is used in conjunction with a mirrored Storage Space, detected corruption both metada-


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ta and user data, when integrity streams are enabled can be automatically repaired using the alternate copyprovided by Storage Spaces. In the event of a system error, ReFS quickly recovers from the error with no loss ofuser data.

Availability.ReFS prioritizes the availability of data. Historically, file systems were often susceptible to data

corruption, which would require the system to be taken offline for repair. With ReFS, if corruption occurs, therepair process is both localized to the area of corruption and performed online, requiring no volume down-time.Although rare, if a volume does become corrupted, or you choose not to use mirrored Storage Spaces, ReFSimplements salvage, a feature that removes the corrupt data from the namespace on a live volume and gooddata is not adversely affected by non-repairable corrupt data. In addition, there is no chkdsk with ReFS.

Scalability. ReFS is designed to work well with extremely large data sets, petabytes and larger, without per-formance impact. While practical concerns surrounding system configurations (such as the amount of memory),limits set by various system components and the time taken to populate data sets or backup times may definepractical limitations.

Proactive Error Identification. The integrity capabilities of ReFS are leveraged by a data integrity scanner,which is known as a scrubber. A scrubber periodically scans the volume, attempting to identify latent corruption,and then proactively triggering a repair of that corrupt data.

12. Storage SpacesStorage Spaces is one of the unique storage features of Windows Server 2012. By taking advantage of low-costcommodity storage hardware (in this case, think of a JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks). Using Storage Spaces, youcreate a virtual storage pool. You combine these disks into storage pools by combining unallocated space onphysical disks. These storage pools can then be divided into spaces and used just as you would a regular disk.You can add or remove disks to a storage pool, thereby provisioning storage as needed. Storage Spaces are

designed to work with the new Resilient File System (ReFS).


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Figure 8. Server Manager Storage Spaces

Learn MoreTo learn more about how you can improve productivity, enhance efficiency, and sharpen your competitive edge,

Global Knowledge suggests the following courses:

MCSA: Windows Server 2012 Boot Camp

Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 (M20410)

Administering Windows Server 2012 (M20411)

Configuring Advanced Windows Server 2012 Services (M20412)

Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA Windows Server 2012 (M20417)

Visit www.globalknowledge.com or call 1-800-COURSES (1-800-268-7737)to speak with a GlobalKnowledge training advisor.

About the AuthorRandy Muller (MCT, MCTS, MCSE, CEH) is an instructor with Global Knowledge, specializes in teaching MicrosoftLync, Exchange, SCCM as well as Windows Server.
http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/course.asp?pageid=9&courseid=17990&country=United+Stateshttp://www.globalknowledge.com/training/course.asp?pageid=9&courseid=17528&country=United+Stateshttp://www.globalknowledge.com/training/course.asp?pageid=9&courseid=17530&country=United+Stateshttp://www.globalknowledge.com/training/course.asp?pageid=9&courseid=17532&country=United+Stateshttp://www.globalknowledge.com/training/course.asp?pageid=9&courseid=17612&country=United+Stateshttp://www.globalknowledge.com/http://www.globalknowledge.com/http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/course.asp?pageid=9&courseid=17612&country=United+Stateshttp://www.globalknowledge.com/training/course.asp?pageid=9&courseid=17532&country=United+Stateshttp://www.globalknowledge.com/training/course.asp?pageid=9&courseid=17530&country=United+Stateshttp://www.globalknowledge.com/training/course.asp?pageid=9&courseid=17528&country=United+Stateshttp://www.globalknowledge.com/training/course.asp?pageid=9&courseid=17990&country=United+States

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