Microsoft just announced the release of Server 2016 and System Center 2016 in September during their Ignite Event (Sep 26-30) . Yai 🙂
System Center 2016
System Center will support the new Server 2016 Wave and its technologies.
Highlight would be
- Nano Server management and deployment
- Storage Space direct
- shielded VMs
- All performance and usability improvement including all update rollups since 2012 R2
- improved UNIX and Linux monitoring
- SCOM management pack tuning
- Native integration into OMS
Server 2016
Windows Server will be available in 3 different flavors Datacenter, Standard and Essentials. They will be available fo purchase in October.
For Datacenter and Standard there will be 3 different deployments.
- Server with GUI
- Server Core
- Nano Server
Server with GUI and Server Core will the inherite the current model of updates and servicing. Meaning 5 years of mainstream support and 5 years of extended support. So good so boring 😉 (Long Term Servicing Branch – LTSB)
Nano Server on the other Hand will get the new and exiting Current Branch Model (CBB) which is used by Windows 10 and Config Manager :).  Microsoft will release two to three new releases over the year. They want you to keep current with only two releases behind. If the 3rd release comes around the corner you need to move of #1, if the 4th release comes you need to move of of #4 and so on. It will be exiting to see how customers will approach this in their data centers.
TP5 will be the last release before MS will release the final Version, it is feature complete. So download System Center 2016 TP5 and Server 2016 TP5 and start playing around.
Until next time
Cheers Philipp