What’s new in Windows Server Technical Preview – vNext (Part 1)?

Microsoft has released a technical preview of the new Hyper-V Server/Windows 10 release this fall. There are several areas of new or changed functionality. In this 2-part blog post, I’ll highlight the major changes impacting virtualization and Hyper-V.

  1. Rolling Hyper-V Cluster Upgrade
    If you are running a cluster of nodes at the Windows Server 2012 R2 level, you can add a Windows Technical Preview node to the running cluster. The cluster continues to run at the 2012 R2 level until all nodes are upgraded to Windows Technical Preview. Once the upgrades are complete, you run the PowerShell cmdlet Update-ClusterFunctionalLevel on the managing host, then on each VM on upgraded hosts, run Update-VmConfigurationVersion to allow the VMs to use new features available in the Preview. It is important to note that once a cluster has been upgraded, you cannot revert to Server 2012 R2 level nor can you add nodes running Server 2012 R2.
  2. Storage QoS
    Storage Quality of Service is a brand new feature in Preview which allows you to create policies for Hyper-V and Scale-out file servers for storage performance monitoring and management. With Storage QoS, you create policies on a scale-out file server and apply them to virtual disks and VMs, services or tenant. It allows storage performance to fluctuate according to the usage and demands of the targeted QoS clients. There are PowerShell and WMI cmdlets available to create, assign and monitor Storage QoS.

In part two, we’ll look in-depth at the new functionality in Storage Replicas and PowerShell 5.0. You can read about all of the new and updated features of the Preview on TechNet here.

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