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Twelve Fantastic
Features You Need to
Know about Windows
Server 2012
1-800-COURSESwww.globalknowledge.com
Twelve Fantastic Features You Need to
Know about Windows Server 2012
Randy Muller, MCT, MCTS, MCSE, CEH, Global Knowledge Instructor
Introduction
The latest, and perhaps the most significant version of Windows Server was released in September 2012. What
makes 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 of
Hyper-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 new
features and enhancements spanning networking, storage, user experience, cloud computing, and more.
1. PowerShell 3.0
PowerShell is a command-line scripting language used for administration and management of Windows Server
2012 (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 and
applications that run on Windows. Windows PowerShell 3.0 is backwards-compatible with PowerShell 2.0 and
its associated cmdlets. Some of the new windows features in PowerShell include:
Disconnected Sessions. These are user-managed, persistent sessions (PSSessions) that are created by using
the New-PSSession cmdlet. The PSSessions are saved on the remote computer and are no long dependent on the
session in which they were created.
Module Auto-Loading. All functions and modules that are installed on the computer will be loaded even if
the 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 new
help 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.
2. Hyper-V Scalability
Hyper-V (or Hypervisor) enables you to create a virtualized server computing environment. Virtualization with
Hyper-V enables you to improve the efficiency of your computing resources by utilizing more of your hardware
resources. 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 best
hypervisors available.
3. Hyper-V Replicas
Hyper-V Replica provides asynchronous replication of virtual machines (VMs) from a Hyper-V host or cluster to
a 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 cluster
so that both VMs are in constant lockstep. If the local VM fails (or if an administrator manually fails-over) the
remote replica assumes its place. All of this happens without having any specialized storage or networking
hardware requirements.
VHDX Disk. The VHDX disk format is new to Hyper-V 3 and adds new capabilities and enhancements over
previous versions:
• A VHDX virtual hard disk can be as large as 64 TB.
• S upport for larger block sizes in VHDX virtual disks. This provides support for dynamic and differential
disks, 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 Migration
Live Migration is now built into Windows Server 2012 (whereas before, you only had this capability when you
used System Center Virtual Machine Manager with Quick Storage Migration). Live Migration in Windows Server
2012 enables an administrator to migrate live VMs between stand-alone Hyper-V 3 hosts without requiring the
use of any shared storage. The benefit of this is that the VMs can be moved while keeping the VMs online and
available to clients, thus ensuring no downtime. You can perform a live migration through a GUI interface or
through a PowerShell cmdlet.
• 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 between
servers with low latency. Only clients and servers that support SMB 3.0 can use SMB Direct.
• S
MB Directory Leasing. SMB Directory Leasing reduces the response time seen by branch office us-
ers accessing files over high-latency WAN networks.
• S
MB 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.
• S
MB 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.
• S
MB Scale Out. When using Clustered Share Volumes the Continuously Available property is set and
you can create file shares that provide simultaneous access to data files. Only clients and servers that
support SMB 3.0 can use SMB Scale Out.
• S
MB Transparent Failover. You can perform maintenance (hardware or software) on nodes in a
cluster file server without causing interruptions on server applications.
• V
SS for SMB file shares. This is an easy feature to implement as it leverages any existing VSS soft-
ware or applications.
Using Dynamic Access Control, you can set conditional access to a resource. Administrators can set centralized
access policies for file-servers throughout the entire organization. Access control can be enabled or disabled
based on users or groups. You can classify and tag data either manually or by doing a keyword assessment and
Access-denied assistance. This can be used in troubleshooting access to a resource. This can be accom-
plished through:
• Self-Assistance
• Assistance by the data owner
• Assistance by the file server administrator
Central Access Policies. An administrator can create and deploy centrally administered policies to meet
compliance and other requirements. Access policies contain conditional expressions that are used to determine
access based on users, groups, user claims and resource properties. Central Access Policies contain:
• Applicability. What data is this policy applicable
• Access Conditions. What ACEs (access control entries) are used to determine who can access resources
• Exceptions. Other ACE entries that may be used as an exception.
Central Audit Policies. Policies that are applied to ensure regulatory compliance, reporting and forensics
analysis. Central Audit policies are typically applied at one of four levels:
• Business policy
• Departmental Policy
• Information Security
• Organizational policy
Claim Type. A condition or property that must be met – such as membership in a specific group or a setting in
a user account such as country
Classification. Rules that are used to determine the classification properties of resources. The file classification
infrastructure is claims aware and the classification properties are assigned to the metadata this is associated
with the resources.
Resource Property. These are labels or properties that are downloaded by servers and used to classify files.
One interesting thing to note about Server Core is that it is the default installation for Windows Server 2012
though you can change it at a later time. In Windows Server 2008 there was no method to upgrade to a GUI
version. Now, you can install a GUI in Windows Server Core, in fact, there are three available levels of GUI in
Server 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.
You can use Windows PowerShell and sconfig.cmd (as well as remote GUI shells) to fully administer a Win-
dows Server 2012 Core installation.
Another new feature in Windows Server 2012 is Server Groups. A Server Group is a collection of user-defined
servers as opposed to a grouping of servers that may share a specific role or purpose. With Server Groups, you
can perform role-based administrative tasks against a group of servers with common attributes. For example, a
server group containing all machines running DNS or DHCP could be managed.
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, the
repair 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, ReFS
implements salvage, a feature that removes the corrupt data from the namespace on a live volume and good
data 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 define
practical 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.
Learn More
To 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)