Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insider Build 17713 – Now Available

It’s only been one week since Microsoft released Windows Server 2019 Insider build 17709. The new version – Windows Server 2019 Insider build 17713 – is now available.

It is worth mentioning that Windows Server 2019 Build 17713 does not contain any new features. It was released to enhance application compatibility, allowing Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016 users to upgrade their system more smoothly.

If you’re interested in checking out the release, Windows Server 2019 build 17713 is available to download now from Microsoft. This build is set to expire on December 14, 2018. Therefore, it is not suitable for use in the production environment.

Overview of Windows Server 2019 Features

Despite that Windows Server 2019 Insider build 17713 brings no new features, Windows Server 2019 Preview does have some improvements that catch eyes. Next, we show you some interesting Windows Server 2019 features:

GUI for Windows Server 2019

Lacking of GUI was a great pity for many enterprise users who started to roll-out the Semi-Annual Channel versions of Windows Server 2016, which only supported ServerCore (and Nano) GUI-less configurations. Now with the LTSC release of Windows Server 2019 Insider Preview, IT Professionals is able to get their desktop GUI of Windows Server besides the GUI-less ServerCore and Nano releases.

Hyper-converged Infrastructure (HCI)

Along with the release of Windows Server 2019, Microsoft puts forward a 3-year update for its Hyper-converged Infrastructure (HCI) platform. The reason? By now Microsoft uses Semi-Annual Channel releases as the upgrade schedule, which is a kind of incremental upgrades. Then every a few years Microsoft will create a major release – the Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) version. In this version, the upgrades come from the preceding Semi-Annual Channel releases are included.

The LTSC Windows Server 2019 will be released this fall and is now available to Microsoft’s Insider program members.

“Customers looking for HCI solutions can use Windows Server 2016 and the Windows Server Software Defined program today. We partnered with industry-leading hardware vendors to provide an affordable and yet extremely robust HCI solution with validated design. In Windows Server 2019 we are building on this platform by adding scale, performance, and reliability. We are also adding the ability to manage HCI deployments in Project Honolulu, to simplify the management and day-to-day activities on HCI environments,” wrote Erin Chapple, director of program management for Windows Server.

Although in the Semi-Annual Channel releases, the fundamental components of HCI (computing, storage and networking) have been largely improved, for organizations building datacenters and high-scale software defined platforms, Windows Server 2019 is still significant for the software-defined datacenter.

In the latest release, HCI is supplied on top of a suit of components bundled in with the server license. That is to say, a backbone of servers running Hyper-V now support dynamic increase or decrease of capacity for workloads with no downtime.

Project Honolulu

Project Honolulu is a server management tool that makes it simpler and easier to connect existing deployments of Windows Server to Azure services. With Windows Server 2019 and Project Honolulu, IT pros will be able to manage GUI and GUI-less Windows 2019, 2016 and 2012R2 servers in their environments easily.

The Honolulu project includes a high-powered graphical interface for Storage Spaces Direct. Moreover, displays of performance history are also included.

Project Honolulu makes it simple for administrators to carry out the management of Windows Server, performance monitoring, server configuration and setting tasks on a mix of servers in their environment.

High Security

Security is the top priority in Windows Server. Windows Server 2019 Insider Preview brings more rigorous security by protecting, detecting and responding. Protection includes those 3 features:

1. VMs running Linux can be shielded.
2. With administrative credentials to the guest OS, you will be able to use VMConnect.
3. To protect inter-server traffic, you can designate Encrypted Networks in your software-defined networks.

As to detecting and responding, Windows Server 2019 provides preventative protection, detect attacks and zero-day exploits by Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). For instance, with the assistance of Windows Defender ATP, Windows Server users are able to take advantage of data storage, network transport, and security-integrity components so as to prevent compromises on Windows Server 2019 systems.

Smaller but More Efficient Containers

Organizations are using thinner and more efficient containers to minimize the footprint and overhead of their IT operations and eliminate more bloated servers. Without additional expenditure in hardware server systems or expansion of hardware capacity, Windows Insiders have achieved a higher computing density to improve overall application operations.

Windows Server 2019 Preview has a smaller, leaner ServerCore image that is able to cuts virtual machine overhead by 50% – 80%. When an organization can get the same or even more functionality in a significantly smaller image, the organization can lower the costs and improve the efficiencies in IT investments.

Windows Subsystem on Linux

In the past, Windows rarely opened the service for Linux. Now things have changed. Since Windows Server 2016, Windows has open support for Linux instances as virtual machines, and the new released Windows Server 2019 makes it possible for consumers to run Linux containers side-by-side with Windows containers on Windows Server.

Windows Server 2019 Preview notes say, “A feedback we constantly hear from developers is the complexity in navigating environments with Linux and Windows deployments. To address that, we previously extended Windows Subsystem on Linux (WSL) into insider builds for Windows Server, so that customers can run Linux containers side-by-side with Windows containers on a Windows Server. In Windows Server 2019, we are continuing on this journey to improve WSL, helping Linux users bring their scripts to Windows while using industry standards like OpenSSH, Curl & Tar.”

The Windows Subsystem for Linux extends basic virtual machine operation of Linux systems on Windows Server and offers a deeper layer of integration for networking, native file system storage, and security controls. The Windows Subsystem for Linux enables encrypted Linux virtual instances. That’s exactly how Microsoft provided Shielded VMs for Windows in Windows Server 2016, but now native Shielded VMs for Linux on Windows Server 2019.

Along with the ability to natively support Linux on Windows Server hosts, enterprises have found that the optimization of containers can reduce costs through eliminating the need for two or three infrastructure platform instead of running them on Windows Server 2019.

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MiniTool Keeps Windows Server 2019 Running Good

By now Windows Server 2019 is just a preview version. Preview means that it is not getting ready for the production. So do not use this operating system to hold important services. And, to keep your data safe, which is always the top consideration for Windows Server users, we highly recommend you to try MiniTool software.

MiniTool puts forward the best solutions to manage Server hard drives, as well as the most reliable way to keep data safe in Windows Server 2019. Different software of MiniTool caters to different user demands. For instance:

1. To better manage hard drive partitions, MiniTool Partition Wizard Server is the best server partition manager you need, for it not only helps to change cluster size, to extend server partition size but also is able to copy Windows Server OS disk to another hard drive.
2. To recover data from Windows Server 2019, MiniTool Partition Wizard Server (lifetime upgrade edition) & MiniTool Power Data Recovery Business are the best choice. It is qualified for data recovery by any situations like virus attack, wrong deletion, hard drive inaccessible, hard drive formatting, partition loss, OS corruption, and more.
3. To guarantee server disk data safety, MiniTool ShadowMaker Business is competent. It is capable of backing up your Windows Server 2019, including the OS, the hard disk drive and the most important files you appointed.

Final Thoughts

As we can see, most new features in Windows Server 2019 Insider Preview have been included in updates over the past couple years, hence, these features do not bring too much surprise. However, consumers should also be aware that those features have been tried, tested, updated and proven already, so that when Windows Server 2019 ships, organizations don’t have to wait long for a service pack of bug fixes.

Reading here, how do you think of Windows Server 2019 features? Will you upgrade Windows Server 2016 to this new release? We believe you have found the answer now.

If you have more information to share, you can leave it in the following comment section. If you are interested in using MiniTool software, you can contact us via [email protected].