User Manual

Scenario Feature Description Windows
Server
2008 R2
Windows
Server
2012 R2
Windows
Server
2016
Software-
dened
compute
Cluster OS Rolling Upgrade: Enables you to upgrade your server
clusters from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016
while continuing to provide service to your users.
Linux and FreeBSD Workloads: Enables most of the Windows
Server software-dened datacenter features for Linux and
FreeBSD guests running on Hyper-V for increased functionality,
performance, and manageability.
Hot add and remove for disk, memory and network: Add or
remove a network adapter and adjust the amount of memory
assigned while the VM is running, without any interruption.
The memory adjustment capability works even when you have
Dynamic Memory turned on for a Hyper-V host.
Mixed OS Mode cluster: Provides ability for Windows Server
2012 R2 cluster nodes to operate with Windows Server 2016
nodes.
Software-
dened storage
Storage Spaces Direct: Enables industry standard servers with
local storage to build highly available and scalable software
dened storage.
Storage Replica: Provides storage agnostic, block-level,
synchronous replication between servers for disaster recovery,
and allows stretching of a failover cluster for high availability.
Site-Aware Failover Clusters: Enables nodes in stretched clusters
to be grouped based on physical location, enhancing key cluster-
lifecycle operations, such as failover behavior, placement policies,
heartbeating between nodes, and quorum behavior.
Storage Quality of Service (QoS): Uses policies to dene and
monitor storage I/O minimums and maximums for virtual
machines to enable consistent performance across VMs.
Data deduplication: Provides volume savings of up to 90% by
storing duplicate les on a volume once using logical pointers.
Virtual machine storage resiliency: Provides intelligent means to
retain virtual-machine session states to minimize the impact
of minor storage disruptions.
Azure Consistent Storage: Delivers three critical Azure-consistent
storage services for Azure Stack customers: blob, table and
account management.
Azure Witness for cluster: Enables Azure blob storage as a
witness in a quorum for a stretched cluster.
Not Supported Limited Support Fully Supported
Datacenter operations seem to earn more scrutiny than budget these
days. New applications stretch the operational fabric and create infrastructure backlogs
that can slow business. IT organizations are expected to do more with less, but an
aging infrastructure with little automation becomes a hindrance to moving forward. As
organizations look beyond server virtualization for more efciency, they can use Windows
Server 2016 capabilities to meet operational and security challenges, freeing up IT
resources to plan and innovate on future solutions that drive business success.