Getting Started with Windows Server 2019

Many years ago, Microsoft adjusted its operating system release ideology so that the latest Windows Server operating system is always structured very similarly to the latest Windows client operating system. This has been the trend for some time now, with Server 2008 R2 closely reflecting Windows 7, Server 2012 feeling a lot like Windows 8, and many of the same usability features that came with the Windows 8.1 update are also included with Server 2012 R2. This, of course, carried over to Server 2016 as well—giving it the same look and feel as if you were logged into a Windows 10 workstation.

Now that we are all familiar and comfortable with the Windows 10 interface, we typically have no problems jumping right into the Server 2016 interface and giving it a test drive. Windows Server 2019 is once again no exception to this rule, except that the release of client-side operating systems has shifted a little bit. Now, instead of releasing...

The purpose of Windows Server

Is asking what is the purpose of Windows Server a silly question? I don't think so. It's a good question to ponder, especially now that the definition for servers and server workloads is changing on a regular basis. The answer to this question for Windows clients is simpler. A Windows client machine is a requester, consumer, and contributor of data.

From where is this data being pushed and pulled? What enables the mechanisms and applications running on the client operating systems to interface with this data? What secures these users and their data? The answers to these questions reveal the purpose of servers in general. They house, protect, and serve up data to be consumed by clients.

Everything revolves around data in business today. Our email, documents, databases, customer lists—everything that we need to do business well is data. That data is critical to us. Servers are what we use to build the fabric upon which we trust...

It's getting cloudy out there

There's this new term out there, you may have even heard of it...the cloud. I say this tongue in cheek of course, and if smiley faces were appropriate within published works, I would insert one here. While the word "cloud" has certainly turned into a buzzword that is often misused and spoken of inappropriately, the idea of cloud infrastructure is an incredibly powerful one.

A cloud fabric is one that revolves around virtual resources—virtual machines, virtual disks, and even virtual networks. Being plugged into the cloud typically enables things like the ability to spin up new servers on a whim, or even the ability for particular services themselves to increase or decrease their needed resources automatically, based on utilization.

Think of a simple e-commerce website where a consumer can go to order goods. Perhaps 75% of the year, they can operate this website on a single web server with limited resources, resulting...

Windows Server versions and licensing

Anyone who has worked with the design or installation of a Windows Server in recent years is probably wondering which direction we are taking in this book. You see, there are different capability editions, different technical versions, plus different licensing models of Windows Server. Let's take a few minutes to cover those differences so that you can have a well-rounded knowledge of the different options, and so that we can define which portions we plan to discuss over the course of this book.

Standard versus Datacenter

When installing the Windows Server 2019 operating system onto a piece of hardware, as you will experience in Chapter 2, Installing and Managing Windows Server 2019, you will have two different choices of server capability. The first is Server 2019 Standard, which is the default option and one that includes most of your traditional Windows Server roles. While I cannot give you details on pricing because that could...

Overview of new and updated features

The newest version of the Windows Server operating system is always an evolution of its predecessor. There are certainly pieces of technology contained inside that are brand new, but there are even more places where existing technologies have been updated to include new features and functionality. Let's spend a few minutes providing an overview of some of the new capabilities that exist in Windows Server 2019.

The Windows 10 experience continued

Historically, a new release of any Microsoft operating system has meant learning a slightly new and changed user interface, or sometimes a drastically new and changed interface like that of Windows 8. Server 2019 is an exception to this rule, and subsequent versions will likely follow suit. The ongoing Windows 10 releases give us first looks into the same graphical platform that will reside on our newest LTSC release of Windows Server. This idea started when Windows Server 2016 was first released...

Windows Server 2019 interface

Unfortunately, Microsoft turned a lot of people off with the introduction of Windows 8 and Server 2012, not because functionality or reliability was lacking, but because the interface was so vastly different than it had been before. It was almost like running two separate operating systems at the same time. You had the normal desktop experience, in which all of us spent 99.9% of our time, but then there were also those few moments where you found yourself needing to visit the full-page Start menu. More likely, you stumbled into it without wanting to. However, you ended up there, inside that fullscreen tablet-like interface, for the remaining 0.01% of your Server 2012 experience, you were left confused, disturbed, and wishing you were back in the traditional desktop. I am, of course, speaking purely from experience here. There may be variations in your personal percentages of time spent, but, based on the conversations I have been involved with, I am not...

Using the newer Settings screen

If you work in IT and have been using Windows 10 on a client machine for any period of time, it's a sure bet that you have stumbled across the new Settings interface—perhaps accidentally, as was the case for me the first time I saw it. I have watched a number of people now bump into the Settings interface for the first time when trying to view or configure Windows Updates. You see, Settings in Windows Server 2019 is just what the name implies, an interface from which you configure various settings within the operating system. What's so hard or confusing about that? Well, we already have a landing platform for all of the settings contained inside Windows that has been around for a zillion years. It's called Control Panel.

The Settings menu inside Windows isn't a brand new idea but looks and feels quite new when compared to Control Panel. Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 had a quasi-presence of settings that as far as I know...

Two ways to do the same thing

Potentially confusing as well, until you get used to navigating around in here, is that you can sometimes accomplish the same task in either Control Panel or the Settings menu, but the process that you take in each interface can have a vastly different look and feel. Let's take a look at that firsthand by trying to create a new user account on our server, once via Control Panel, and again via Settings.

Creating a new user through Control Panel

You are probably pretty familiar with this. Open Control Panel and click on User Accounts. Then, click on the User Accounts heading. Now, click on the link to Manage another account. Inside this screen is your option to Add a user account. Click on that and you get the dialog box where you enter a username and password for your new user:

Figure 1.13: Adding a user account via Control Panel

Creating a new user through the Settings menu

Let's take this newer Settings interface for...

Task Manager

Task Manager is a tool that has existed in all Windows operating systems since the first days of the graphical interface, but it has evolved quite a bit over the years. One of the goals for Windows Server 2019 is to be even more useful and reliable than any previous version of Windows Server has been. So, it only makes sense that we finally remove Task Manager altogether, since it simply won't be needed anymore, right?

I'm kidding, of course! While Server 2019 will hopefully prove itself to indeed be the most stable and least needy operating system we have ever seen from Microsoft, Task Manager still exists and will still be needed by server administrators everywhere. If you haven't taken a close look at Task Manager in a while, it has changed significantly over the past few releases.

Task Manager is still typically invoked by either a Ctrl + Alt + Del on your keyboard then clicking on Task Manager, or by right-clicking on the taskbar and then choosing...

Task View

Task View is a new feature as of Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, which carries over to Server 2019. It is a similar idea as that of holding down the Alt key and then pressing Tab in order to cycle through the applications that you currently have running. For anyone who has never tried that, go ahead and hold down those two keys on your keyboard right now. Depending on what version of Windows you are running, your screen might look slightly different than this, but, in effect, it's the same information. You can see all of the programs you currently have open, and you can cycle through them from left to right using additional presses of the Tab button. Alternatively, use Alt + Shift + Tab in order to cycle through them in reverse order. When you have many windows open, it is perhaps easier to simply use the mouse to jump to any specific window:

Figure 1.19: Viewing all open windows

Task View is quite a bit more powerful than this, because it adds the...

Summary

This first chapter on Windows Server 2019 was all about getting familiar and comfortable with navigating around in the interface. There are various ways to interact with Server 2019 and we will discuss many of them throughout this book, but the majority of server administrators will be interfacing with this new operating system through the full graphical interface, using both the mouse and keyboard to perform their tasks. If you have worked with previous versions of the Windows Server operating system, then a lot of the tools that you will use to drive this new platform will be the same, or at least similar, to the ones that you have used in the past. New operating systems should always be an evolution of their predecessors, and never all new. I think this was a lesson learned with the release of Windows 8 and Server 2012.

With Server 2019, we find a great compromise between the traditional familiarity of the prior versions of Windows and the new benefits that come with...

Questions

1. In Windows Server 2019, how can you launch an elevated PowerShell prompt with two mouse clicks?
2. What is the keyboard combination to open the Quick Admin Tasks menu?
3. What is the name of Microsoft's cloud service offering?
4. What are the two licensing versions of Windows Server 2019?
5. How many virtual machines can run on top of a Windows Server 2019 Standard host?
6. What installation option for Windows Server 2019 does not have a graphical user interface?
7. Which is the correct verbiage for the latest release of Windows Server 2019, Long-Term Servicing Branch (LTSB) or Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC)?
8. What is the correct tool from which to change configurations on Windows Server 2019, Windows Settings or Control Panel?