Windows Server 2019 will be delivered by USPS on a DVD disk, FPP version. Windows Server 2019 StandardfromMicrosoftis the operating system that bridges on-premises environments with Azure, adding additional layers of security while helping you modernize your applications and infrastructure. Windows Server 2019 improves on its predecessor, Windows Server 2016, by bringing innovations and improvements on four key themes: Hybrid Cloud, Security, Application Platform, and Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI).
Please note that a Client Access License (CAL) is required and sold separately.
General
Windows Admin Center
Windows Admin Center is a locally deployed, browser-based app for managing servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure, and Windows 10 PCs. It comes at no additional cost beyond Windows and is ready to use in production.
Desktop Experience
Because Windows Server 2019 is a Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) release, it includes the Desktop Experience. (Semi-Annual Channel (SAC) releases don't include the Desktop Experience by design; they are strictly Server Core and Nano Server container image releases.) As with Windows Server 2016, during setup of the operating system, you can choose between Server Core installations or Server with Desktop Experience installations.
System Insights
System Insights bring local predictive analytics capabilities natively to Windows Server. These predictive capabilities, each backed by a machine-learning model, locally analyze Windows Server system data, such as performance counters and events, providing insight into the functioning of your servers and helping you reduce the operational expenses associated with reactively managing issues in your Windows Server deployments.
Hybrid Cloud
Server Core App
The Server Core App Compatibility feature on demand (FOD) significantly improves the app compatibility of the Windows Server Core installation option by including a subset of binaries and components from Windows Server with the Desktop Experience, without adding the Windows Server Desktop Experience graphical environment itself. This is done to increase the functionality and compatibility of Server Core while keeping it as lean as possible.
Security
Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
ATP's deep platform sensors and response actions expose memory and kernel-level attacks and respond by suppressing malicious files and terminating malicious processes. Windows Defender ATP Exploit Guard is a set of host intrusion prevention capabilities. The four components of Windows Defender Exploit Guard include Attack Surface Reduction (ASR), network protection, controlled folder access, and exploit protection. These components are designed to lock down the device against a wide variety of attack vectors and block behaviors commonly used in malware attacks while enabling you to balance security risk and productivity requirements.
Security with Software Defined Networking (SDN)
Security with SDN delivers many features to increase customer confidence in running workloads, either on-premises or as a service provider in the cloud.
Shielded Virtual Machines Improvements
You can now run shielded virtual machines on machines with intermittent connectivity to the Host Guardian Service by leveraging the fallback HGS and offline mode features. Fallback HGS allows you to configure a second set of URLs for Hyper-V to try if it can't reach your primary HGS server.
HTTP/2 for a Faster and Safer Web
Improved coalescing of connections to deliver an uninterrupted and properly encrypted browsing experience
Upgraded HTTP/2's server-side cipher suite negotiation for automatic mitigation of connection failures and ease of deployment
Changed the default TCP congestion provider to Cubic to give you more throughput
Storage
Storage Migration Service
Storage Migration Service is a technology that makes it easier to migrate servers to a newer version of Windows Server. It provides a graphical tool that inventories data on servers, transfer the data and configuration to newer servers, and then optionally moves the identities of the old servers to the new servers so that apps and users don't have to change anything.
Storage Spaces Direct
Deduplication and compression for ReFS volumes
Native support for persistent memory
Nested resiliency for two-node hyper-converged infrastructure at the edge
Two-server clusters using a USB flash drive as a witness
Windows Admin Center support
Performance history
Scale up to 4 PB per cluster
Mirror-accelerated parity is 2X faster
Drive latency outlier detection
Manually delimit the allocation of volumes to increase fault tolerance
Storage Replica
Test failover is a new feature that allows mounting of destination storage to validate replication or backup data.
Storage Replica log performance improvements
Windows Admin Center support
Failover Clustering
Cluster sets
Azure-aware clusters
Cross-domain cluster migration
USB witness
Cluster infrastructure improvements
Cluster Aware Updating supports Storage Spaces Direct
File share witness enhancements
Cluster hardening
Failover Cluster no longer uses NTLM authentication
Application Platform
Linux Containers on Windows
It is now possible to run Windows and Linux-based containers on the same container host, using the same docker daemon. This enables you to have a heterogeneous container host environment while providing flexibility to application developers.
Built-in Support for Kubernetes
Windows Server 2019 continues the improvements to compute, networking and storage from the semi-annual channel releases needed to support Kubernetes on Windows.
Container Improvements
Improved integrated identity
Better application compatibility
Reduced size and higher performance
Management experience using Windows Admin Center (preview)
Encrypted Networks
Virtual network encryption allows encryption of virtual network traffic between virtual machines that communicate with each other within subnets marked as Encryption Enabled. It also utilizes Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) on the virtual subnet to encrypt packets. DTLS protects against eavesdropping, tampering, and forgery by anyone with access to the physical network.
Network Performance Improvements for Virtual Workloads
Receive Segment Coalescing in the vSwitch
Dynamic Virtual Machine Multi-Queue (d.VMMQ)
Low Extra Delay Background Transport
Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT) is a latency-optimized, network congestion control provider designed to automatically yield bandwidth to users and applications while consuming the entire bandwidth available when the network is not in use. This technology is intended for use in deploying large, critical updates across an IT environment without impacting customer-facing services and associated bandwidth.
Windows Time Service
The Windows Time Service includes true UTC-compliant leap second support, a new time protocol called Precision Time Protocol, and end-to-end traceability.
High-Performance SDN Gateways
High-performance SDN gateways in Windows Server 2019 greatly improve the performance for IPsec and GRE connections, providing ultra-high-performance throughput with much less CPU utilization.
New Deployment UI and Windows Admin Center extension for SDN
Now, with Windows Server 2019, it's easy to deploy and manage through a new deployment UI and Windows Admin Center extension that enables anyone to harness the power of SDN.
Persistent Memory support for Hyper-V VMs
To leverage the high throughput and low latency of persistent memory (a.k.a. storage class memory) in virtual machines, it can now be projected directly into VMs. This can help to drastically reduce database transaction latency or reduce recovery times for low latency in-memory databases on failure.
