This post is authored by Bernardo Caldas, Partner Director of Program Management, Windows Server.
Today, we’re announcing the general availability of Windows Admin Center, version 1910. Server admins already trust Windows Admin Center to manage more than 3 million servers, and with today's release, we're delivering new functionality to make it easier to remotely manage your server workloads and take advantage of cloud services for your hybrid server environments.
Windows Admin Center quickly became a favorite IT tool by consolidating traditional Windows Server admin tools into a modern, browser-based remote management app for Windows Server running anywhere physical, virtual, on-premises, in Azure, or in a hosted environment. It's great for remote management and troubleshooting a virtual machine (VM), a server, or a cluster of servers. Many customers also use it as their go-to graphical user interface when running the Server Core option of Windows Server.
Highlights of what's new today include:
New hybrid capabilities with Azure
Windows Admin Center includes streamlined integration to help you extend on-premises servers and networks seamlessly to Azure for hybrid capabilities. Here are just a few of the new features:
- Azure Arc enables you to easily connect your servers to Azure and use unified management and governance centrally from Azure. You can use Windows Admin Center to connect your on-premises servers to Azure Arc agents with just a few clicks.
- Integrate with Azure Security Center, for end-to-end threat monitoring across both on-premises and Azure for your server workloads. This Azure service gives you the benefit of 3,500 Microsoft security experts who track more than 6.5 trillion threats every day and build that knowledge into cloud offerings that help you protect your Windows Server workloads wherever they are.
- Azure Monitor is now even more powerful in Windows Admin Center. In just a few clicks, you can turn on a set of default alerts to notify you about server and cluster performance health via email, so you can more proactively manage your servers and address issues before they become problems.
- Azure Extended Networking makes it easier to extend on-premises server networks and IP subnets to Azure without breaking IP dependencies. This feature removes some of the complexities of connecting your on-premises network to the cloud.
- Create new Azure Virtual Machines from within Windows Admin Center and gain additional server capacity in the cloud with just a few clicks.
- Storage Migration Service helps migrate on-premises file servers to Azure, and upgrade to newer versions of Windows Server in the process. Using Windows Admin Center, you can create Azure Virtual Machines on the fly during migration, automatically size them, provision them with formatted storage, and join them to your domain while allowing you to migrate from legacy operating systems, Samba on Linux, and standalone servers to the latest versions of Windows Server and failover clusters.
- Integration with Azure File Sync now allows you to configure Storage Sync Services and set up Azure File Sync for your on-premises servers without ever leaving Windows Admin Center.
- Windows Admin Center now supports creating Azure Virtual Machines on the fly during setup of new asynchronous replication partnerships so you can use Azure as your secondary site for Storage Replica, helping to protect your business from disasters with minimal data loss.
New and improved tools for Windows Server management
We've added more core management capabilities for managing servers, virtual machines, clusters, and hyperconverged infrastructure.
- When apps or servers are running slower than usual, one of the first things that server admins check is Windows performance counters. In version 1910, we are pleased to preview a reimagined Performance Monitor. Early adopters tell us they love the new graphical views and the ability to customize views for their environment. Learn more in this detailed performance monitoring blog.
- Windows Admin Center now fully supports live migration between Hyper-V servers and clusters. Manage your on-premises Hyper-V VMs with ease using the new VM import/export and VM tagging features.
- Simplify management of your web applications with the IIS management tool in Windows Admin Center.
- The new packet monitoring tool in Windows Admin Center delivers insights via network troubleshooting and diagnostics.
- Based on customer feedback, we've also made numerous improvements to core tools such as updates, files, and server/cluster settings. Read the full list of what's new in this release
Streamlined setup and enhanced tools for hyperconverged systems
As customers refresh aging on-premises servers and storage, many are adopting hyperconverged (HCI) systems for improvements in cost and performance. Windows Admin Center now provides a wizard to streamline the initial deployment of HCI clusters, as well as new tools to help with your day-to-day management of Azure Stack HCI or Windows Server 2019 hyperconverged systems.
The smoothest path to HCI is using a pre-validated system from our partners. We encourage you to check out our HCI partner directory to find more than 150 pre-validated partner configurations.
New and updated partner extensions
We are also pleased to announce new Windows Admin Center partner extensions from Dell EMC (released in August 2019) and HPE, as well as updated extensions from DataON, Lenovo, QCT and Thomas-Krenn.AG, to provide detailed hardware management for Windows Server and Azure Stack HCI solutions. Other partner extensions offer server configuration change tracking (BiitOps), and flash array management (Pure Storage).
Get started now
Visit our website to learn more about Windows Admin Center and download version 1910 to start using these and other exciting new features. Read the full list of what's new in this release, and share your feedback with us on UserVoice.
We release new versions of Windows Admin Center every six months. If you'd like to be one of the first to try out new features and provide feedback to our engineering teams, join the Windows Insider program.
Check us out at Microsoft Ignite!
Whether you attend in person or join us for a live stream of Microsoft Ignite sessions, we have many options for you to learn more about Windows Admin Center and Windows Server.
- Check out our schedule of Microsoft Ignite sessions.
- Keep the conversation going with the Windows Server community on Microsoft Tech Community, Facebook, or Twitter.
The post Announcing the general availability of Windows Admin Center, version 1910 appeared first on Windows Server Blog.