(electronic music)
- Coming up, we look at the upcoming Windows Server 2019,
from major advances in managing
hyper-converged infrastructure,
support for storage class memory,
as well as deduplication coming to ReFS,
new hybrid integration between Windows Server
data center and Azure with the Windows Admin Center.
The security enhancements including
support for Linux, shielded VMs, and more.
(electronic music)
I'm joined again today by Jeff Woolsey, welcome.
- It's great to be back.
- So each time we have you on the show,
things always seem to get better
and we've seen some important Windows Server milestones
from the work done in Windows Server 2016
followed by the semi-annual channel releases,
version 1709 and 1803.
It's optimized containers on Windows Server
with Nano Server and Server Core.
The new Windows subsystem for Linux
and of course, Project Honolulu,
now officially named the Windows Admin Center
for Local Cloud Remote Server Management.
But how do things evolve further in Windows Server 2019?
- Well with Windows Server 2019
we're continuing our commitment to hybrid integration
based on your feedback.
We know that many of you are focused on integrating
your on-premises data centers with the cloud
so whether you're running Windows Server in Azure
or on-premises in Azure Stack,
or using a Windows Server software defined solution
on-premises, we wanna give you consistency throughout.
- Now recently we've talked about
the long-term servicing channel releases
and semi-annual channel release,
but what category does Windows Server 2019 fall into?
- Windows Server 2019 is our next big release
that uses the long-term servicing channel or LTSC.
Remember, the LTSC is great for traditional apps
like SQL Server, Exchange, Sharepoint, and SAP.
It's also great for hyper converged infrastructure
and comes with five years mainstream support
and five years of extended support.
Windows Server 2019 includes all the innovation
we delivered in the semi-annual channel releases
which occurred after Windows Server 2016
and brings it to the LTSC.
This means Windows Server 2019 is a great release
for both application innovation and traditional deployments.
And, of course, we're focused on hyper converged
with hybrid integration where we're simplifying management
with Windows Admin Center
and enabling easy integration with Azure.
- Now that sounds awesome,
lots of improvements across a number of areas there,
especially when it comes to hyper converged.
Which I know, managing this type of configuration
has been a pain point for a lot of people,
so what are we doing there?
- Well, hyper converged is a big area of focus for us.
If you look back five years or more,
you'd start with building a rack
and that would start with servers.
Then you'd buy a storage solution and configure iSCSI
or fiber channel storage fabric,
which also meant purchasing fiber channel switches.
Next, you'd probably buy some network appliances
like gateways, firewalls, load balancers,
VPNs, and add a top of rack switch.
With hyper converged infrastructure,
we create an elegant solution using mainstream servers,
ethernet switches, and software.
Here you can see servers populated with local,
fast storage attached via standard ethernet
coupled with the magic of software defined compute
storage and networking which provides
those same capabilities in a smaller footprint,
at a lower cost and delivered as a certified,
validated Windows Server software defined solution.
- So, do we have to wait for Windows Server 2019
to take advantage of this?
- Oh, definitely not.
WSSD solutions are popular
and they're available today, right now.
And if you're interested, you can check out the WSSD page
and choose a hyper converged solution
from the dozens of options available
for Windows Server 2016.
And of course, our partners are already working with us
on Windows Server 2019 solutions
and the new features we're introducing there.
- Nice, so what are some of those new features we've added?
- Well, let's start with storage.
Windows Server has included granular,
block-based deduplications in Server 2012.
With block based deduplication,
a file is divided into smaller blocks
and checksummed into chunks.
And identical chunks with the same checksum
are stored only once.
Because block based deduplication goes sub-file,
it's very efficient as opposed to file based deduplication,
which generally just looks at the file name, date, and size.
Now previously, Windows Server deduplication
has been limited to NTFS formatted volumes.
Well, no more.
Windows Server 2019 brings deduplication
to ReFS formatted volumes.
So, let me give you a quick demo here
with Windows Admin Center.
- Sounds good.
- Here, we have a setup, a cluster shared volume,
c:\ClusterStorage.
And you can see there are two folders,
one here with deduplication enabled and one without.
Let's start by taking a look inside the folder
with deduplication.
Here you can see, it's filled with a variety of data types.
Now we know from deep interactions with our customers
that these are all very common
and there's a very good chance
your storage looks pretty similar.
Here we have SQL databases, websites,
and about 20 virtual hard disks.
Hyper-V VMs varying in size from seven
to 20 gigabytes each.
Now, let's also compare this with the other folder.
Let's go to the one without deduplication.
Again, here we have SQL databases, websites,
and again, 20 virtual hard disk for VMs
varying in size from seven to 20 gigabytes each.
You can see, it's an exact copy.
Now, let's switch from the single view of server manager
to the hyper converged cluster manager
where we get a view of everything in this cluster.
Now here we can see in the volume view,
let's take a look at the inventory view.
And notice immediately, the red alert by the volume
not using dedup while the one using dedup is just fine.
You'll notice that both volumes are formatted with ReFS,
both using three-way mirror resiliency,
and both volumes are the same size.
If you look at the storage usage
you can see that the volume not using dedup is 92% full
and the reason for the red alert.
Let's click on the volume and get further details.
Here you see, if I click to view details,
there's further information
and a suggestion to resize the volume,
delete unwanted files, or move files to another volume.
Now, let's close this and let's take a detailed look
at the dedup volume.
So again, this volume is exactly the same as the other one
except this one is using Windows Server's awesome
block-based deduplication.
You can see all here is good.
Here's the path and in fact you can see
that only 5% of storage is used.
Look at all of that free space.
Of course for the folks that wanna take a look
at PowerShell for our PowerShell fans,
you can type Get-DedupVolume and see the 94% savings rate.
Just like that.
- Awesome stuff, Jeff.
There's some incredible savings there.
And what I'm seeing is that Windows Server 2019
really does provide the best of all worlds:
efficiency, resiliency, performance,
and deduplication all built in.
Which is impressive in itself
but is there more with storage?
- Oh yes, a lot more.
Over the past few years we've seen
the growth of Flash storage everywhere.
In addition, Flash has gotten faster
and to do that, the industry has had to change the way
Flash connects to your computer.
First, Flash was connected via USB.
Then USB got too slow so Flash was connected via SATA
and SaaS and those interfaces got too slow.
Next, PCI was used and then a whole new connection
was created called NVMe.
- And NVMe stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express,
which is currently the fastest
Flash-based storage available.
- That's right.
That's the current fastest Flash-based available.
Each time we change the connection, though,
and we're moving the Flash closer and closer
to the processor, we're doing this to reduce latency
and increase performance.
Now, we have memory that plugs into a a memory socket,
a DIM socket sitting right next to the processor
called storage class memory.
Storage class memory can be configured to look like memory,
it can be treated like an insanely fast storage device,
or it can even be segmented to do both
based on the use case.
For hyper-converged infrastructure,
storage class memory can be used as an intelligent cache
for storage spaces direct to reduce latency
and drive up performance to new heights.
- So using storage class memory to reduce latency,
drive up storage performance all sounds great
but doesn't that add extra stress
to the networking layer to keep up?
- You're absolutely right.
In a hyper converged environment,
when a write to storage happens,
one storage write occurs locally
and two writes occur remotely
to two other nodes synchronously.
This means that the CPU has to perform these writes
which can easily consume two cores on a 10 gigabit network
or eight cores on a 40 gigabit network.
That's why we prepared for this six years ago
by investing in Remote Direct Memory Access or RDMA.
RDMA allows us to perform this operation
using RDMA enabled network adapters,
thus freeing up CPU cores for doing actual work.
With Flash spreading everywhere and now to the DIM socket,
you need to have RDMA to keep up.
Windows Server RDMA leads the industry supporting
10, 40, 50, and 100 gigabit ethernet today.
And we're already testing, get this Matt,
400 gigabit ethernet
and we're working with the industry to enable
a 1000 gigabit ethernet or one terabit with RDMA.
- Wow, one terabit networking sounds amazing.
Now, let's switch gears though to management.
How easy is it to manage a hyper-converged cluster?
- I've got three words for you, Windows Admin Center.
Windows Admin Center, formally Project Honolulu,
is the future of Windows Server management
and we're investing heavily here.
Let's take a look at Windows Admin Center in action.
Let's start by taking a look at
the hyper-converged cluster manager dashboard.
Here you can see an overall view
of the HCI cluster we've deployed.
I see alerts and the overall cluster storage.
So you can see here the cluster performance
in terms of iOPS, in terms of latency, and throughput.
And again, keep in mind this is for the entire cluster.
Here you can see 670,000 iOPS,
51 microseconds latency,
throughput of 2.6 gigabytes per second.
Also, notice that we maintain historical data
so I can click on day to see the last 24 hours
and look for any interesting peaks and valleys.
You can also specify the past week, month,
even up to a year.
Next, if I wanna see the overall resource utilization
for the HCI cluster and see CPU usage,
I can see that, I can see memory usage,
and storage capacity again for the entire cluster.
Notice how you can quickly ascertain
your resource usage at a glance.
Next I can see the server health for all three nodes
in this HCI cluster and that they are healthy,
including all 18 drives in this HCI cluster,
six drives per node, a total of 17 virtual machines,
14 of them are running.
And of course I have two volumes here,
one of them is critical,
one of them is warning with a total of 12.
So you can see all of this very quickly at a glance
with the hyper-converged cluster manager.
- That's cool stuff.
And what you just showed was an overall view of the cluster
but can we see an overall view of virtual machine
and host resources?
- Yes, in fact, let me show you that as well.
So here, let's switch to the Hyper-V VM summary view
running on this hyper-converged infrastructure.
If we click on virtual machines and zoom in
you can see there are in fact 26 total VMs,
21 are running, two of them are paused,
then three are off.
If you want to take a look at the resource usage
you can see a breakdown of CPU resource usage
by host and guest.
We also do the same thing for memory.
So you can click on over here to memory
and we can get the breakdown by host
and guest memory as well.
And of course we can look below and we see the overall
performance metrics for iOPS and throughput again
for all of the virtual machines below.
- What I like there is it's so easy to see
which VMs are consuming the most resources
but what about a detailed virtual machine view
and operations like live migration?
How can it do those kind of things?
- So let's take a look at the Hyper-V inventory view
along with live migration running on this
hyper-converged infrastructure.
Here, you can see we clicked on the inventory
and we have a complete list of all the virtual machines
running across the entire hyper-converged infrastructure.
Again, this isn't a single server view,
this is a view of VMs running across the entire cluster.
You can see the current state of the VM,
if it's running, paused, or stopped.
You can see the name of the host server.
You can see if the VM is clustered for high availability.
You can see memory usage and more.
You can perform actions like starting, stopping, pausing.
If you wanna take a checkpoint of a VM,
go to the more items and you can take a checkpoint.
If you want to live migrate or move a VM,
select the target and click move.
It's just that easy.
And just like that, I'm live migrating a VM
from node 24 to node 27.
You can see this informational message
that the process for moving has begun
and if we take a look at this notification above,
you can see the move is happening
along with a progress bar for status.
And remember this VM is named WEB03,
was running on node 24.
And if we look over here and switch on over
you can see, in fact, that it's already,
notice that it's been submitted to move to 27
and if we look over here we can see, in fact,
it is now running on node 27.
So in two clicks we just moved a VM
from node 24 to node 27
all using the hyper-converged cluster manager
in Windows Admin Center.
- So that was easy management
of hyper-converge infrastructure,
virtual machines and live migration
via the Windows Admin Center,
all from a browser which is really cool.
What do we doing for enabling hybrid scenarios.
- Again, Windows Admin Center is the future
of Windows Server management
and is also key to our hybrid integration.
We've had virtual machine replication for many releases
so you can replicate between your sites.
However, many of you don't have a secondary site
or would prefer to retire the costly second site
that you currently have and use Azure as your DR target.
With Windows Admin Center,
we've made business continuity easier than ever.
Let me show you.
Here I am in Windows Admin Center
in the virtual machines tool with the list of VMs.
I want to replicate this first VM named Hono17093 to Azure.
The first thing I do is select the VM
and go to the more option and select set up VM protection.
Since this is the first time
I'm configuring Azure replication,
I need to associate this VM with Azure site recovery.
So I'm prompted to sign into Azure.
After logging in, I set up ASR in a couple of steps.
I choose my subscription and the Azure location.
Next, I choose an existing storage account
or create a new one like I'm doing here and that's it.
You'll notice in the upper right hand corner
there's a notification letting me know
registration is happening and when it's successfully set up.
If I go back to the VM and select more,
you'll notice there's now an option to protect the VM
which I'm gonna select and I get a chance
to double check the location and the storage account
and click protect VM.
Once again, you see the notification window appearing
telling me it's enabling protection for this VM
and now it's replicating.
It's really that easy.
- Right, so now you've started that migration,
what does it look like in Azure?
- That's a great question.
Let's actually log into Azure.
Let's go to the recovery services vault and take a look.
Here, we can choose the subscription and in fact
here you can see, there is the VM replicating
up into Azure, just like that.
- Wow, cool stuff Jeff.
And the combination of Windows Admin Center and Azure
really does provide a very powerful hybrid solution
but are there any limitations around the guest?
Does it need to be Windows?
Can it be Linux?
- There aren't any limitations on the guest,
Windows, Linux, it doesn't matter.
VM replication is transparent to the guest.
- Great stuff.
Now, let's switch gears and talk about security.
Windows Server 2016 represented a huge investment
in security but how are things improving
in Windows Server 2019 for security?
- You're right, Matt.
Windows Server 2016 introduced
a number of security technologies such as
virtualization-based security, credential guard,
remote credential guard, control flow guard, device guard,
just in time administration, just enough administration,
and that's just to name a few of the security features.
However, one big feature and very popular one
is shielded VMs.
Shielded VMs literally turns a virtual machine
into a black box to protect against rogue admins
and to protect VMs that accidentally
get into the wild from being compromised.
In Windows Server 2019, we are now adding
shielded VM support for Linux guests.
- Cool, can we take a look?
- Absolutely.
So if you've seen shielded VMs before,
this should look familiar.
Here I've got a few VMs including the SQL server
and in fact, you can see its thumbnail below.
By double-clicking on the thumbnail,
an admin can bring up a console window
to connect directly to it.
Notice I also have a Linux VM as well
but this one is shielded.
You can see when I click on it,
no thumbnail appears and when I double-click on it,
it requires me to use an authenticated connection.
Just like that.
If I try to access the virtual hard disk directly,
I can't even mount it even though I'm a full admin
on this server.
This Linux VM is protected because it's a shielded VM,
thus it's a black box to everyone
but the guest who administrator.
And in fact you can see,
this drive is blocked by bit locker drive encryption,
to open this you need to unlock it first.
- So are there any other security investments
we should mention?
- Yes, in Windows Server 2016 we included Defender
for the first time.
The feedback from adding Defender
has been so overwhelmingly positive
that we're doing even more here in Windows Server 2019,
which now includes Windows Defender
Advanced Threat Protection and Defender Exploit Guard
to prevent against ransomware attacks and more.
- So great overview of the latest updates
to Windows Server 2019,
thank you so much for joining us, Jeff.
Where can folks learn more?
- Please join the Windows Insider Server program.
Download the Windows Server 2019 preview
and also check out the free Windows Admin Center
for your Windows Server management at the link shown.
- And of course, keep checking back on Microsoft Mechanics
for the latest in tech updates.
Thanks for watching.
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