In this post we will be installing Windows Server 2019 and looking and any new features since Windows 2016.
The initial installation dialog has not changed from the Windows 2016 installer
Upon completing the installation there is a new prompt by Server Manager about the Windows Admin Center
Click the Get more info link and it will take you to the below page. Click the Get it here link to download the msi file
Run the .msi file, accept the terms and click Next
Choose whether to use Microsoft Update or not with Admin Center
Click Next again and again
Choose your port and SSL settings and then click install
You will then be given the login URL
You should now able to login to Admin Center to manager the server
At the time of writing this there is a bug when using it with Chrome which means it wont accept your credentials but if you click on a server using Edge it will work
You are now logged into the Admin Center to manage your server. As an example of something you can do in here, click PowerShell. This will give you an Azure esque Cloud Shell type interface where you are instantly connected to a machines PowerShell instance. See the example below:
You can also manage a server’s registry, users, storage, firewall and much more.
Another great feature in Windows Server 2019 is System Insights. When logged in to Admin Center click System insights and then click install
This will install System Insights on the server
Windows now has some in-built tools to assist with capacity planning using a machine-learning model . System Insights will forecast your machines resource usage
You can now run the Linux subsystem on Windows Server. Run the below command to enable the feature in Windows Server 2019:
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
Download a Linux distro of your choice from here. Rename the distro package from .appx to .zip and extract it to a folder. Then just run the .exe
Add a UNIX username and password:
Once completed run the below PowerShell to add the environment variable
$userenv = [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "User") [System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("PATH", $userenv + "C:\Users\admin\Ubuntu", "User")
You can now launch your distro from any path by typing ubuntu.exe
Other great features with this release are Storage Migration services which essentially make the migration process to newer versions of Windows server easier. It provides a GUI that inventories data on servers, transfers the data and configuration to another servers without apps or users having to change anything.
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) and Windows Server Software-Defined Datacenter (WSSD) consolidates software-defined compute, storage, and networking into one cluster to provide high-performance, cost-effective, and easily scalable virtualization.
