Windows Server 2019 Essentials for Small Business is Coming – Redmond Channel Partner

News

The ‘Essentials’ version of Windows Server 2019 for small businesses is coming

• By Kurt Mackie
• September 05, 2018

An upcoming edition of Windows Server 2019 Essentials for Small Business is available from Microsoft this year, the company announced on Wednesday.

There’s a catch: this could be the last Essentials edition Microsoft ever shipped. “There’s a good chance this is the last edition of Windows Server Essentials,” Microsoft’s announcement of its Windows Server 2019 Essentials plans read.

Windows Server 2019 Essentials will have features like the standard edition of Windows Server 2019. Microsoft specifically called two features. For example, the Essentials edition will support Storage Migration Services, a way to inventory and move old server settings to a new target server. The Essentials edition will also be able to use System Insights, a Microsoft service that uses machine learning to predict system events, such as estimated CPU and network capacities, as well as storage and volume consumption. .

However, Microsoft will not include the “Essentials Experience role” in Windows Server 2019 Essentials, the announcement says.

“The Essentials experience primarily simplified file sharing and device management,” the announcement says, suggesting that organizations could use the Windows Admin Center browser-based management portal instead.

This point is a little confusing since the Essentials Experience role was previously described as an option for users of Standard and Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2012. So maybe Microsoft is trying to say it’s dropping this Essentials Experience role option for users of Standard and Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2019. This is unclear.

Microsoft believes small businesses should prefer to use its Microsoft 365 Business license package to access hosted services from Microsoft’s data centers, instead of hosting their own servers to run their applications and store their files. The cost to use Microsoft 365 Business is $20 per user per month, according to Microsoft’s pricing page, but it includes Office apps, Exchange Online services, and SharePoint Online, among other solutions.

In making its decision to move forward with an Essentials edition of Windows Server 2019, Microsoft first consulted with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) community and “other influencers” to get their input on the needs of small enterprises. After these discussions, Microsoft deemed it necessary to release another Essentials edition.

“While our small business customers are embracing cloud services where they can, on-premises servers are still valuable and desired in the short term for reasons such as price and the ability to run traditional applications that may not have no corresponding cloud functionality yet,” Microsoft explained.

Microsoft previously said Windows Server 2019 would arrive this year, although pricing is usually announced last. Even though the price of Windows Server 2019 is not yet publicly known, the price of Windows Server 2016 can be used as a guide. Windows Server 2016 Essentials is priced at $501 for organizations with up to 25 users and 50 devices, with no additional charge for Client Access Licenses (CALs), according to Microsoft’s pricing page. CALs are typically required when end users connect to Windows Server in some way, and are required when using the Standard and Datacenter editions of the server.

With Windows Server 2019 Essentials, organizations will be able to run “traditional applications, such as file and print sharing.” However, an option regarding multi-domain support will be removed from this release. For example, while Microsoft allowed an option for Windows Server 2016 users to support multiple domains and multiple domain servers, this ability will disappear with Windows Server 2019 Essentials.

Here’s how Microsoft phrased the question:

Windows Server 2019 Essentials has the same licensing and technical features as its predecessor, Windows Server 2016 Essentials. If configured as a domain controller, Windows Server 2019 Essentials must be the only domain controller, must run all Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO) roles, and cannot have two-way trusts with other domains Active Directory.

If this is a limitation for small organizations, Microsoft hasn’t explained it. According to a Microsoft document, there are three FSMO roles, which are now called “Operations Master Roles”. There is the Primary Domain Controller Emulator role for processing password updates. A relative ID operations role is used to manage domain global IDs. Finally, there is an infrastructure operation role to maintain domain security. Apparently, these three roles must be configured on the same server when using Windows Server 2019 Essentials edition.