Deployment Guide

Overview

Key Features Of Microsoft Windows Server 2012

NOTE: The terminology used in this guide is referenced from Microsoft Windows Server 2012. See

microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server/default.aspx and blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/

2012/06/04/free-ebook-introducing-windows-server-2012.aspx, for more information.

Windows Server 2012 supports the following new features as compared to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2:

• Beyond Virtualization — Provides the infrastructure to build a private secure cloud. Provides the flexibility to

build and deploy applications in a cloud using an open set of tools or framework.

• Improved live migration of virtual machines — Increases the speed of live migration allowing simultaneous

migration of many virtual machines in a cluster. It also supports live migration outside a clustered environment.

• Hyper-V Replica — Replicates Hyper-V virtual machine from one Hyper-V host at a primary site to another

Hyper-V host at a replica site.

• Hyper-V host scale-up workload support — Allows Hyper-V to support workload:

– On host machines with up to 160 logical processors and 2 TB of memory.

– On virtual machines with up to 32 virtual processors and 1 TB of memory. Non-Uniform Memory Access

(NUMA) is also used to improve performance on virtual machines.

• Virtual Fiber Channel for Hyper-V — Allows virtual machines to connect directly to Fiber Channel-based storage,

thereby increasing storage capacity.

• Hyper-V support for 4-KB disk sectors — Supports native 4 KB disks and 512 byte emulation disks (512e disks)

for both host and virtual machines.

NOTE: Dell storage controllers (PERC 8 and below) currently support only 512 byte emulation disks (512e

disks) and not 4 KB disks.

• Windows NIC Teaming — Prevents connectivity loss by NIC Teaming and enables multiple network interfaces

to work together as a team. NIC Teaming is an operating system built-in feature.

• Rapid and efficient data movement using intelligent storage arrays — Promotes rapid and efficient data

movement using intelligent storage arrays using Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX).

• Move virtual machine storage with no downtime — Supports moving of virtual machine's storage to the new

physical storage while the virtual machine continues to run.

• Diskless network startup with iSCSI Target — Provides diskless network startup with iSCSI Target without the

need for special hardware or additional software.

• Continuous availability of block storage with iSCSI Target — Provides continuous availability of block storage

with iSCSI Target. You can install and configure the iSCSI Target on two or more physical machines or virtual

machines and then create a failover cluster. The combination of the iSCSI Target functionality and failover

clustering ensures continuous availability.

• Failover clustering — Increases the availability of application and services through failover clustering.

• Windows PowerShell 3.0 — Provides several improvements including:

– New SMB modules to manage network shares.

– Cmdlets to manage the new NIC Teaming feature from the command line.

– More than 140 built-in Hyper-V cmdlets.

• Data deduplication — Increases the usage of storage capacity through data deduplication.

Storage Spaces — It is not recommended to configure Storage Spaces on your Dell hardware as it is currently not

supported.