If you thought -as I admittedly did- that on-prem Windows Server was being left for dead on the side of the Azure road, then boy were we wrong.
Not sure where to start here, but some incredible announcements from Microsoft in Barcelona, most of which I got from Windows Server MVP reporter Aidan Finn
Among them:
- VXLAN, NVGRE & Network Controller, courtesy of Azure: This is something I’ve hoped for in the next version of Windows Server: a more compelling SDN story, something more than Network Function Virtualization & NVGRE encapsulation. If bringing the some of the best -and widely supported- bits of the VMware ecosystem to on-prem Hyper-V & System Center isn’t a virtualization engineer’s wet dream, I don’t know what is.
- VMware meet Azure Site Recovery: Coming soon to a datacenter near you, failover your VMware infrastructure via Azure Site Recovery, the same way Hyper-V shops can
Not sure what to do with this yet, but gimme! - In-place/rolling upgrades for Hyper-V Clusters: This feature was announced with the release of Windows Server Technical Preview (of course, I only read about it after I wiped out my lab 2012 R2 cluster) but there’s a lot more detail on it from TechEd via Finn: rebuild physical nodes without evicting them first.You keep the same Cluster Name Object, simply live migrating your VMs off your targeted hosts. Killer.
- Single cluster node failure: In the old days, I used to lose sleep over clusres.dll, or clussvc.exe, two important pieces in Microsoft Clustering technology. Sure, your VMs will failover & restart on a new host, but that’s no fun. Ben Armstrong demonstrated how vNext handles node failure by killing the cluster service live during his presentation. Finn says the VMs didn’t failover,but the host was isolated by the other nodes and the cluster simply paused and waited for the node to recovery (up to 4 minutes). Awesome!
- Azure Witness: Also for clustering fans who are torn (as I am) between selecting file or disk witness for clusters: you will soon be able to add mighty Azure as a witness to your on-prem cluster. Split brain fears no more!
- More enhancements for Storage QoS: Ensure that your tenant doesn’t rob IOPS from everyone else.
- The Windows SAN, for real: Yes, we can soon do offsite block-level replication from our on-prem Tiered Storage Spaces servers.
- New System Center coming next year: So much to unpack here, but I’ll keep it brief. You may love System Center, you may hate it, but it’s not dead. I’m a fan of the big two: VMM, and ConfigMan. OpsMan I’ve had a love/hate relationship with. Well the news out of TechEd Europe is that System Center is still alive, but more integration with Azure + a substantial new release will debut next summer. So the VMM Technical Preview I’m running in the Daisetta Lab (which installs to C:Program FilesVMM 2012 R2 btw) is not the VMM I was looking for.
Other incredible announcements:
- Docker, CoreOS & Azure: Integration of the market-leading container technology with Azure is apparently further along than I believed. A demo was shown that hurts my brain to think about: Azure + Docker + CoreOS, the linux OS that has two OS partitions and is fault-tolerant. Wow
- Enhancements to Rights Management Service: Stop users from CTRL-Cing/CTRL-Ving your company’s data to Twitter
- Audiocodes announces an on-prem device that appears to bring us one step closer to the dream: Lync for voice, O365 for the PBX, all switched out to the PSTN. I said one step closer!
- Azure Operational Insights: I’m a fan of the Splunk model (point your firehose of data/logs/events at a server, and let it make sense of it) and it appears Azure Operational Insights is a product that will jump into that space. Screen cap from Finn
This is really exciting stuff.
Commentary
Looking back on the last few years in Microsoft’s history, one thing stands out: the painful change from the old Server 2008R2 model to the new 2012 model was worth it. All of the things I’ve raved about on this blog in Hyper-V (converged network, storage spaces etc) were just teasers -but also important architectural elements- that made the things we see announced today possible.
The overhaul* of Windows Server is paying huge dividends for Microsoft and for IT pros who can adapt & master it. Exciting times.
* unlike the Windows mobile > Windows Phone transition, which was not worth it
Wilson.tech 
