In this blog, we’ll install, and configure Windows Server 2019 and many of its technologies. The new version of Windows Server has many new and enhanced features that can make the administrator’s job easier.
Contents
Modern Networking EnvironmentComparison of Standard and Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2019Locks and LimitsServer RolesFeaturesIn Conclusion, getting the knowledge of the existence of these roles and features help you as a server administrator furnish your knowledge of Windows Server OS. Stick to updates to see how these features are configured.
The best way to get started is to plan for installation of the operating system and perform some initial configurations.
In this post, we’ll plan, install, and configure Windows Server 2019.
Firstly, it is valuable for you as an administrator to know the capabilities of the Windows Server 2019. We shall look at the server roles, features, editions, and licensing.
This will help us build our windows server 2019 to the best possible use in our organization by making our network more efficient and our users more productive.
Modern Networking Environment
Today’s computer networking environments might consist of local servers and clients that also integrate with a public or private internet cloud.
Cloud computing consists of a local network that also connects to remote servers or services through the internet. Users connecting to the cloud services might use a desktop, laptop computers, or mobile devices like smartphones. Some users also use Web browsers to connect to cloud services.
The use of Cloud computing has rapidly increased. You might be at a point to a make a decision whether you need a local server or just stick to the cloud. Well, the answer is YES, for both reliability and performance. Accessing local server is typically faster than connecting to the cloud service. In addition, in an event whereby our organization loses its internet connection, employees can still complete their work using your network’s local servers. Therefore, local servers are vital to most networks today.
Furthermore, you can configure your local network to connect to a public or private cloud.
Comparison of Standard and Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2019
Locks and Limits
| Locks and Limits | Windows Server 2019 Standard | Windows Server 2019 Datacenter |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum number of users | Based on CALs | Based on CALs |
| Maximum SMB connections | 16,777,216 | 16,777,216 |
| Maximum RRAS connections | unlimited | unlimited |
| Maximum IAS connections | 2,147,483,647 | 2,147,483,647 |
| Maximum RDS connections | 65,535 | 65,535 |
| Maximum number of 64-bit sockets | 64 | 64 |
| Maximum number of cores | unlimited | unlimited |
| Maximum RAM | 24 TB | 24 TB |
| Can be used as a virtualization guest | Yes; 2 virtual machines, plus one Hyper-V host per license | Yes; unlimited virtual machines, plus one Hyper-V host per license |
| The server can join a domain | yes | yes |
| Edge network protection/firewall | no | no |
| DirectAccess | yes | yes |
| DLNA codecs and web media streaming | Yes, if installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, if installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
Server Roles
We have 23 server roles in Windows Server 2019
| Windows Server roles available | Role services | Windows Server 2019 Standard | Windows Server 2019 Datacenter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS): This role enables your Server to provide certificates to servers clients | Yes | Yes | |
| Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS): This role configures your server to host the Active Directory database, it uses the database to authenticate users to log on to the network and authorize their use of a resource. | Yes | Yes | |
| Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS): This role enables a server to use login information for a variety of servers and services so that a single login provides users with access to all resources | Yes | Yes | |
| AD Lightweight Directory Services (ADLDS): We can use this role to set up a small version of the Active Directory database for the purpose of authenticating users for Active Directory-integrated application like MS SQL | Yes | Yes | |
| AD Rights Management Services (ADRMS): This role enables Active Directory to exchange information with ADRMS-compatible software like MS Office, this enables an extra layer of security whereby content owners can use to protect their documents | Yes | Yes | |
| Device Health Attestation (DHA): This is a role service that allows the server to verify the health status of the Windows device. | Yes | Yes | |
| DHCP Server: This role enables Windows server to automatically lease IP addresses to different clients on the network such as computers, servers or printers without having to manually specify each device IP address | Yes | Yes | |
| DNS Server: This role configures the server to provide name resolution services. This is a process whereby the server finds a computer’s IP address based on the provided computer name. | Yes | Yes | |
| Fax Server: This role configures the server to send and receive faxes for multiple users. When it receive faxes, a fax server forwards those faxes to the relevant user’s mailbox. | Yes | Yes | |
| File and Storage Services: Windows Server uses the File and Storage Services to manage access to files on the server. The next column on the right are additional services that can be configured thought File and Storage Services | File Server | Yes | Yes |
| File and Storage Services | BranchCache for Network Files | Yes | Yes |
| File and Storage Services | Data Deduplication | Yes | Yes |
| File and Storage Services | DFS Namespaces | Yes | Yes |
| File and Storage Services | DFS Replication | Yes | Yes |
| File and Storage Services | File Server Resource Manager | Yes | Yes |
| File and Storage Services | File Server VSS Agent Service | Yes | Yes |
| File and Storage Services | iSCSI Target Server | Yes | Yes |
| File and Storage Services | iSCSI Target Storage Provider | Yes | Yes |
| File and Storage Services | Server for NFS | Yes | Yes |
| File and Storage Services | Work Folders | Yes | Yes |
| File and Storage Services | Storage Services | Yes | Yes |
| Host Guardian Service (HGS): This is a server role for configuring guarded hosts and running shielded virtual machines in Windows Server | Yes | Yes | |
| Hyper-V: You can install the Hyper-V service on the server to configure it to support implementation on Virtual Machines | Yes | Yes; including Shielded Virtual Machines | |
| MultiPoint Services: This role allows multiple users to have their own independent and familiar Windows experience whiles sharing one computer. There are several ways users can access their sessions. One way is by remote connection with any device. | Yes | Yes | |
| Network Controller: is a highly available and scalable server role, it provides one application programming interface (API) that allows Network Controller to communicate with the network, and a second API that allows you to communicate with Network Controller. | No | Yes | |
| Network Policy and Access Services: This role enables you to secure remote access to your organization’s network. For example, you might require that all remote users authenticate to the server running Network policy before they can gain access to the corporate network | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | |
| Print and Document Services: This role enables you to centrally manage printers and scanners, as well as print queues, on your network | Yes | Yes | |
| Remote Access: This role enables users to connect to your network remotely without requiring Virtual Private Network (VPN) | Yes | Yes | |
| Remote Desktop Services: This role enables your Server to provide access to virtual desktops, session-based desktops, and applications that include RemoteApp. Basically, allows remote connection in a network. | Yes | Yes | |
| Volume Activation Services: This role is used on the server to configure the server to automate the process of tracking volume license keys and their activation. You can also use this server to implement Key Management Service (KMS) host or Active Directory-based license activation for domain members. | Yes | Yes | |
| Web Services (IIS): This role enables you to set up your Windows Server as a Web Server | Yes | Yes | |
| Windows Deployment Services (WDS): This role is used to install and configure server or client operating systems across your network | Yes | Yes | |
| Windows Server Essentials Experience: When you install this role, you can take advantage of all the features that are available to you in Windows Server 2019 Essentials without the locks and limits enforced in it. | Yes | Yes | |
| Windows Server Update Services: This role enables you to automate the deployment of updates for Microsoft products such as Windows OS and Microsoft Office | Yes | Yes |
Features
We have 61 server features in Windows Server 2019
| Windows Server Features installable with Server Manager (or PowerShell) | Windows Server 2019 Standard | Windows Server 2019 Datacenter |
|---|---|---|
| .NET Framework 3.5: This feature enables or disables .NET Framework 3.5 on the server. It is a programming infrastructure created for building, deploying, and running applications and services that use .NET technologies, such as desktop applications and Web services. | Yes | Yes |
| .NET Framework 4.6: This feature enables or disables .NET Framework 4.6 | Yes | Yes |
| Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS): This feature which facilitates asynchronous, prioritized, and throttled transfer of files between machines using idle network bandwidth. | Yes | Yes |
| BitLocker Drive Encryption: This feature can be used to enable or disable encryption at the disk or volume level | Yes | Yes |
| BitLocker Network Unlock: The feature provides automatic unlock of operating system volumes at system reboot when connected to a wired corporate network. | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| BranchCache: This feature is a bandwidth optimization technology designed to optimize the traffic on a wide area network (WAN). BranchCache optimizes performance by caching content from a headquarters office and storing it locally on the BranchCache | Yes | Yes |
| Client for NFS: It is a feature that allows users to access files across a network and treat them as if they resided in a local file directory. | Yes | Yes |
| Containers: This feature provides operating system-level virtualization that allows for multiple isolated applications to be run on a single system. | Yes (Windows containers unlimited; Hyper-V containers up to 2) | Yes (all container types unlimited) |
| Data Center Bridging: This feature provides a set of enhancements to the Ethernet local area network communication protocol for use in data center environments, in particular for use with clustering and storage area networks. | Yes | Yes |
| Direct Play: This feature provides a way for applications to communicate with each other, regardless of the underlying online service or protocol. | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| Enhanced Storage: This feature enables the OS to support large disk workloads on virtual machines, | Yes | Yes |
| Failover Clustering: This feature enables you to set up a server cluster, which increases the reliability of your servers by providing backup servers | Yes | Yes |
| Group Policy Management: This is an administrative console that is used to implement group policy in your organization’s network | Yes | Yes |
| Host Guardian Hyper-V Support: This feature Configures guarded hosts and running shielded VMs (shielded virtual machines) in Windows Server and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. | No | Yes |
| I/O Quality of Service: This feature provides a way to centrally monitor and manage storage performance for virtual machines using Hyper-V and the Scale-Out File Server roles. | Yes | Yes |
| IIS Hostable Web Core (HWC): This feature enables you to write custom code that will host core IIS functionality in your own application. HWC enables your application to serve HTTP requests and use its own applicationHost.config and root web.config configuration files. The HWC application extension is contained in the hwebcore.dll file. | Yes | Yes |
| Internet Printing Client: This feature is used to configure support for users to connect and print to local printers or Internet printers using Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| IP Address Management (IPAM) Server: This feature enables you to manage both the DHCP and DNS servers. In addition, you can use this feature to discover, monitor, and audit DHCP and DNS | Yes | Yes |
| iSNS Server service: This server uses the Internet Storage Name Service protocol to maintain information about active iSCSI devices on the network, including their IP addresses, iSCSI node names, and portal groups. | Yes | Yes |
| LPR Port Monitor: Line Printer Remote protocol (LPR) is a network protocol for submitting print jobs to a remote printer. | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| Management OData IIS Extension: This feature is an infrastructure for creating an ASP.NET web service endpoint that exposes your management data, accessed through Windows PowerShell cmdlets and scripts, as OData Web service entities. It does that by processing OData requests and converting them into a Windows PowerShell invocation. | Yes | Yes |
| Media Foundation: This feature enables the development of applications and components for using digital media on Windows Vista and later. | Yes | Yes |
| Message Queuing: This feature provides a form of asynchronous service-to-service communication used in serverless and microservices architectures. Messages are stored on the queue until they are processed and deleted. Each message is processed only once, by a single consumer. | Yes | Yes |
| Multipath I/O: This feature provides a fault-tolerance and performance-enhancement technique that defines more than one physical path between the CPU in a computer system and its mass-storage devices through the buses, controllers, switches, and bridge devices connecting them. | Yes | Yes |
| MultiPoint Connector: This feature allows multiple users, each with their own independent and familiar Windows experience, to simultaneously share one computer. | Yes | Yes |
| Network Load Balancing (NLB): It is used to balance the user’s workload across multiple servers running a Stateless application. State applications respond to each client independently which makes it possible for multiple servers to balance their client requests | Yes | Yes |
| Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNRP): This feature enables a peer-to-peer protocol designed by Microsoft. PNRP enables dynamic name publication and resolution and requires IPv6. | Yes | Yes |
| Quality Windows Audio Video Experience (qWave): This is a feature that enables networking platform for Audio Video (AV) streaming applications on IP home networks. qWave enhances AV streaming performance and reliability by ensuring network quality-of-service (QoS) for AV applications. | Yes | Yes |
| RAS Connection Manager Administration Kit: This feature give you a wizard-based tool for creating custom connectivity solutions, and a component of Internet Connection Services for Microsoft Remote Access Service (RAS). | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| Remote Assistance: These features allow you to provide support to clients that send invitations. When you provide remote assistance, you can access the client’s desktop as if you are sited at the client’s computer | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| Remote Differential Compression (RDC): This feature enables a client-server synchronization algorithm that allows the contents of two files to be synchronized by communicating only the differences between them. | Yes | Yes |
| Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT): This tool enables you to remotely manage servers running Windows Server ranging from Server 2003 to Sever 2019 | Yes | Yes |
| RPC over HTTP Proxy: This feature establishes and maintains a connection to the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) server. It serves as a proxy, dispatching remote procedure calls to the RPC server and sending the server’s replies back across the Internet to the client application. | Yes | Yes |
| Setup and Boot Event Collection: This feature enables the collection and logging of setup and boot events from other computers on this network. | Yes | Yes |
| Simple TCP/IP Services: This feature when enabled provides a collection of command line utilities to manage the TCP/IP service on your network | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support: This is a network file sharing protocol meant for sharing files, printers, etc, between computers. | Installed | Installed |
| SMB Bandwidth Limit | Yes | Yes |
| Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Server: This feature helps to configure a server to send email messages | Yes | Yes |
| SNMP Service | Yes | Yes |
| Software Load Balancer | Yes | Yes |
| Storage Replica | No | Yes |
| Telnet Client: This is a service you can use to connect to telnet servers | Yes | Yes |
| TFTP Client | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| VM Shielding Tools for Fabric Management | Yes | Yes |
| WebDAV Redirector | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Biometric Framework | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| Windows Defender features: By default, Windows Defender AV is installed and functional on Windows Server | Installed | Installed |
| Windows Identity Foundation 3.5: This feature helps simplify user access for developers by externalizing user access from applications via claims | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| Windows Internal Database: is a relational data store designed to be used exclusively for use by Microsoft products | Yes | Yes |
| Windows PowerShell: This feature provides you with a command-line interface for running either commands or scripts to perform an administrative task | Installed | Installed |
| Windows Process Activation Service (WAS): This feature manages the activation and lifetime of the worker processes that contain applications that host Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services. | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Search Service (WSS): This feature organizes the extracted features of a collection of documents. The Windows Search Protocol enables a client to communicate with a server that is hosting a WSS, both to issue queries and to enable an administrator to manage the indexing server. | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| Windows Server Backup: You can use this service to back up your Windows servers and, if necessary, restore a backup after a server failure. | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Server Migration Tools (WSMT): This feature contains a set of migration tool and when enabled, allows you to carry out migration activities with other servers | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Standards-Based Storage Management: This feature, when enabled allows the server to provide the ability to discover, manage, and monitor storage devices using management interfaces that conform to the SMI-S standard | Yes | Yes |
| Windows TIFF IFilter: This feature enables you to search for Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) documents based on text content. Windows TIFF IFilter supports all TIFF documents that are compliant with Adobe TIFF Revision 6.0 specifications and includes the most frequent compressions, such as LZW, JPG, CCITT v4, CCITT v6, uncompressed, and so forth. | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
| WinRM IIS Extension: This feature is used to create Windows Remote Management (WinRM) enabled endpoints from within the IIS service. This module can be enabled at either the website or virtual directory level. | Yes | Yes |
| WINS Server: This feature enables the server to implement NetBIOS Name Service (NBNS), a name server and service for NetBIOS computer names. Effectively, WINS is to NetBIOS names while DNS is to domain names — a central mapping of host names to network addresses. | Yes | Yes |
| Wireless LAN Service: You can configure the Wireless LAN feature to enable a server to communicate using a wireless network adapter | Yes | Yes |
| WoW64 support: Windows Server 2019 64-bit use this feature to enable 32-bit applications to run | Installed | Installed |
| XPS Viewer: This feature enables the server to read XPS files that define the layout, appearance, and printing information for a document. XPS files are similar to .PDF files, but saved in Microsoft’s proprietary XPS format. XPS file opens in Microsoft XPS Viewer. | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience | Yes, when installed as Server with Desktop Experience |
Microsoft Windows comes in several versions ranging from the newest to the oldest.
| No. | Server OS | Year of Release | Editions | Microsoft Support Status |
| 1 | Windows Server 2019 | October 2, 2018 |
|
Extended support until October 10, 2028 |
| 2 | Windows Server 2016 | October 12, 2016 |
|
Support ends on January 12, 2027 |
| 3 | Windows Server 2012 R2 | October 17, 2013 |
|
Support ends on October 10, 20230 |
| 4 | Windows Server 2012 | September 4, 2012 |
|
Support ends on October 10, 2023 |
| 5 | Windows Server 2008 R2 | October 22, 2009 |
|
Support ends on January 14, 2020 |
| 6 | Windows Server 2008 | February 27, 2008 |
|
Support ends on January 14, 2020 |
| 7 | Windows Server 2003 R2 | December 6, 2005 |
|
Support ended on July 14, 2015 |
| 8 | Windows Server 2003 | April 24, 2003 |
|
Support ended on July 14, 2015 |
| 9 | Windows 2000 Server | February 17, 2000 |
|
Support ended in July 13, 2010 |
| 10 | Windows NT 4.0 | July 29, 1996 |
|
Support ended on December 31, 2004 |
In Conclusion, getting the knowledge of the existence of these roles and features help you as a server administrator furnish your knowledge of Windows Server OS. Stick to updates to see how these features are configured.
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