Builds
A Milestone 3 build
(6.2.7959.0) was reportedly leaked to file-sharing sites. A new window
style, but little else, was present. Windows Server 2012's developer preview
was released on 9 September 2011 along with that of Windows 8, but unlike
Windows 8's developer preview, it was only made available to MSDN subscribers.
It was branded as the Windows Server "8" Developer Preview" The
Modern UI (formerly Metro) user interface is present, as well as the new Server
Manager, along with the other new features. On 16 February 2012, Microsoft
announced that the developer preview build, after installing a particular
update, will be set to expire on 15 January 2013, instead of the original 8
April 2012.
Screenshots of a build
suspected to be (but was not) the beta of Windows Server 2012, then referred to
as Windows Server "8", were reportedly leaked on 3 January 2012. A
new dashboard UI is present. Build 8180 was leaked on 13 January 2012, and
contains some revisions to the Server Manager interface and Storage Spaces.
The beta was released along
with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on 29 February 2012.
The Release Candidate of
Windows Server 2012 was released on 31 May 2012, along with the Windows 8
Release Preview.
Features
Windows Server 2012
includes a number of new features or feature changes.
User interface
Server Manager has been
redesigned with an emphasis on easing management of multiple servers. The
operating system, like Windows 8, uses the Metro UI unless installed in Server Core mode. Windows PowerShell in
this version has over 2300 commandlets, compared with around 200 in Windows
Server 2008 R2. There is also command auto-completion.
Task Manager
Windows 8 and Windows
Server 2012 include a new version of Windows Task Manager together
with the old version. In the new version the tabs are hidden by default showing
applications only. In the new Processes tab, the processes are displayed in
various shades of yellow, with darker shades representing heavier resource use.
It lists application names, application status, and overall utilization data
for CPU, memory, hard disk, and network resources, moving the process
information found in the older Task Manager to the new Details tab. The
Performance tab is split into CPU, memory (RAM), disk, ethernet, and, if
applicable, wireless network sections with graphs for each. The CPU tab no
longer displays individual graphs for every logical processor on the system by
default; instead, it can display data for each NUMA node.
When displaying data for each logical processor for machines with more than 64
logical processors, the CPU tab now displays simple utilization percentages on
heat-mapping tiles. The color used for these heat maps is blue, with darker
shades again indicating heavier utilization. Hovering the cursor over any
logical processor's data now shows the NUMA node of that processor and its ID,
if applicable. Additionally, a new Startup tab has been added that lists
startup applications. The new task manager recognizes when a WinRT application
has the "Suspended" status.
Installation options
Unlike its predecessor,
Windows Server 2012 can switch between Server Core and the GUI (full)
installation options without a full reinstallation. There is also a new third
installation option that allows MMC and
Server Manager to run, but without Windows Explorer or the other parts of the
normal GUI shell.
IP address management (IPAM)
Windows Server 2012 has an
IPAM role for discovering, monitoring, auditing, and managing the IP address
space used on a corporate network. IPAM provides for administration and
monitoring of servers running Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Domain
Name Service (DNS). IPAM includes components for:
§
Automatic IP address infrastructure
discovery: IPAM discovers domain controllers, DHCP servers, and DNS servers in
the domains you choose. You can enable or disable management of these servers
by IPAM.
§
Custom IP address space display, reporting,
and management: The display of IP addresses is highly customizable and detailed
tracking and utilization data is available. IPv4 and IPv6 address space is
organized into IP address blocks, IP address ranges, and individual IP
addresses. IP addresses are assigned built-in or user-defined fields that can
be used to further organize IP address space into hierarchical, logical groups.
§
Audit of server configuration changes and
tracking of IP address usage: Operational events are displayed for the IPAM
server and managed DHCP servers. IPAM also enables IP address tracking using
DHCP lease events and user logon events collected from Network Policy Server
(NPS), domain controllers, and DHCP servers. Tracking is available by IP
address, client ID, host name, or user name.
§
Monitoring and management of DHCP and DNS
services: IPAM enables automated service availability monitoring for Microsoft
DHCP and DNS servers across the forest. DNS zone health is displayed, and
detailed DHCP server and scope management is available using the IPAM console.
Active Directory
Windows Server 2012 has a
number of changes to Active Directory from the version shipped
with Windows Server 2008 R2. The Active Directory Domain Services installation
wizard has been replaced by a new section in Server Manager, and the Active
Directory Administrative Center has been enhanced. A GUI has been added to the
Active Directory Recycle Bin. Password policies can differ more easily within
the same domain. Active Directory in Windows Server 2012 is now aware of any
changes resulting from virtualization, and virtualized domain controllers can
be safely cloned. Upgrades of the domain functional level to Windows Server
2012 are simplified; it can be performed entirely in Server Manager. Active
Directory Federation Services is no longer required to be downloaded when
installed as a role, and claims which can be used by the Active Directory
Federation Services have been introduced into the Kerberos token. Windows
Powershell commands used by Active Directory Administrative Center can be
viewed in a "Powershell History Viewer".
Hyper-V
Windows Server 2012, along
with Windows 8, will include a new version of Hyper-V, as presented at the Microsoft
Build Event. Many new features have been added to Hyper-V, including
network virtualization, multi-tenancy, storage resource pools, cross-premise
connectivity, and cloud backup. Additionally, many of the former restrictions
on resource consumption have been greatly lifted. Each virtual machine in this
version of Hyper-V can access up to 32 virtual processors, up to 512 gigabytes
of random-access memory, and up to 16 terabytes of virtual disk space per
virtual hard disk (using a new .vhdx format). Up to 1024 virtual machines can
be active per host, and up to 4000 can be active per failover cluster. The
version of Hyper-V shipped with the client version of Windows 8 requires a
processor that supports SLAT and
for SLAT to be turned on, while the version in Windows Server 2012 only
requires it if the RemoteFX role is
installed.
ReFS
ReFS (Resilient File System,
originally codenamed “Protogon”) are a new file system in Windows Server 2012
initially intended for file servers that
improves on NTFS. Major new features of ReFS include:
Improved reliability for on-disk structures
ReFS uses B+ trees for all on-disk structures
including metadata and file data. The file size, total volume size, number of
files in a directory and number of directories in a volume are limited by
64-bit numbers, which translates to maximum file size of 16 Exabytes, maximum volume size of 1 Yottabyte (with 64 KB clusters), which allows large scalability with
no practical limits on file and directory size (hardware restrictions still
apply). Metadata and file data are organized into tables similar to relational database.
Free space is counted by a hierarchal allocator which includes three separate
tables for large, medium, and small chunks. File names and file paths are each
limited to a 32 KB Unicode text string.
Built-in
resilience
ReFS
employ an allocation-on-write update
strategy for metadata, which allocates new chunks for every update transaction
and uses large IO batches. All ReFS metadata has built-in 64-bit checksums
which are stored independently. The file data can have an optional checksum in
a separate "integrity stream", in which case the file update
strategy also implements allocation-on-write; this is controlled by a new
"integrity" attribute applicable to both files and directories. If
nevertheless file data or metadata becomes corrupt, the file can be deleted
without taking down the whole volume offline for maintenance, then restored
from the backup. As a result of built-in resiliency, administrators do not need
to periodically run error-checking tools such as CHKDSKwhen using ReFS.
Compatibility
with existing APIs and technologies
Some NTFS features are not
supported in ReFS, including named streams, object IDs, short names, file compression, file level
encryption (EFS), user data transactions, sparse files, hard links,extended attributes,
and disk quotas. ReFS does not itself offer data deduplication.
Dynamic disks with mirrored or striped volumes are replaced with mirrored or
striped storage pools provided by Storage Spaces. However, in Windows Server
2012, automated error-correction is only supported on mirrored spaces, and
booting from ReFS is not supported either.
ReFS was first shown in
screenshots from leaked build 6.2.7955, where it went by code name
"Protogon". Support for ReFS is absent in the developer preview
(build 8102). ReFS is not readable by Windows 7 or earlier.
IIS 8.0
Windows Server 2012 will
include version 8.0 of Internet
Information Services (IIS). The new version contains new
features such as CPU usage caps for particular websites.
Hardware
Microsoft has revealed the
following maximum supported hardware specifications for Windows Server 2012 at
the BUILD conference.
640 (was 256 in Windows Server 2008 R2)
|
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4 TB (was 2 TB in Windows Server 2008 R2)
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Failover cluster nodes
|
64 (was 16 in Windows Server 2008 R2)
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System
requirements
Microsoft has indicated
that Windows Server 2012 will not support 32-bit (IA-32)
or Itanium (IA-64) processors, but has not
officially released any other system requirements, except for the Release
Candidate. The following system requirements are for the Release Candidate, and
are subject to change in the final release.
Minimum system requirements for Windows Server 2012 Release
Candidate
|
|
Architecture
|
x64 (64-bit)
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1.4 GHz
|
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512 MB
|
|
HDD free
space
|
32 GB (more if there is 16 GB of RAM or more)
|
Upgrades from Windows
Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are supported, though upgrades from
prior releases will not be supported.
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