Key features of Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016

Microsoft today announced the availability of Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 in Vietnam. Since October 1, 2016, Microsoft started offering their new version to all customers with a desire to help organisations transform their business in a more effective way. Vietnam Investment Review talks with Sonia Blouin, Data Center Lead, Microsoft APAC about the issue.

What are some of the key features of Windows Server 2016?

Windows Server 2016 is the ‘cloud-ready’ operating system (OS) that has the power to prevent attacks and detect suspicious activity with new features to control privileged access, protect virtual machines and harden the platform against emerging threats. These include minimizing attack surface and requiring fewer security patches/reboots by deploying “just enough” OS with the new Nano Server option as well as preventing risk associated with compromised administrative credentials using new privileged account management features to limit access to “just enough” and “just in time” administration.

Besides, Shielded Virtual Machines provide protection from malicious administrators and compromised hosts by using Bitlocker to encrypt your virtual machines. It also helps protect every Windows Server 2016 deployment, regardless of what’s cloud it’s running with features such as Code Integrity, Defender, and Control Flow Guard, etc.

What’s about System Center 2016?

System Center 2016 enables IT Management to gain control of their hybrid cloud.

Microsoft has delivered a new set of capabilities built for the challenges of cloud.

As the speed of innovation increases, IT operations are faced with an expanding array of specialised tools built for specific new capabilities.

The difficulty of working across multiple tools is the new equivalent of walking from desk to desk with PC updates on disk. You can’t scale that way.

To meet the demands of the complex cloud reality, Microsoft offers a comprehensive approach to management of on-premises and cloud environments with System Center and the Microsoft Operations Management Suite.

Here are a few of the advances in System Center 2016. First, it provides advanced software-defined datacenter support, including managing the lifecycle of Nano Server hosts and virtual machines, simplified deployment of the new Windows Server 2016 software-defined networking components, and support for Storage Spaces Direct and replicated storage volumes.

Second, it can expand the surface area of monitoring and reduces friction for IT operations with data-driven alert management that reduces noise and enables faster troubleshooting, scheduling of maintenance windows, increased scale in monitoring of UNIX and Linux servers, and streamlined access to management packs.

The third advance relates to the capacity to manage corporate-connected PCs, Macs and Unix/Linux servers along with mobile devices running Windows, Windows Phone, iOS, Mac OS X, and Android. These all are consistently managed from a single console.

Fourth, it expands visibility into multi-cloud workloads including Azure, AWS or any 3rd party cloud.

With Operations Management Suite as an extension, customers can extend their System Center deployments through cloud services for analytics to ease troubleshooting, backup and disaster recovery, to protect their datacenter, automation for minimising repetitive task and rapid response to security threats

How should IT leaders transform their operations to meet the needs of a digital business?

From Microsoft’s point of view, IT leaders need to leverage a hybrid cloud strategy to drive digital transformation for their operations.

By doing so, IT leaders can provide better security to accelerate digital transformation, simplify management to focus on business, integrate and manage hybrid cloud for the best and expand in the public cloud to innovate.

Our goal is to help accelerate the transition of the IT teams to adopt Modern Cloud Management via Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 and bring new capabilities to support IT leaders to achieve their goals in the new digital era.

Source : http://www.vir.com.vn/