Windows Server 2022 announced for general availability — Redmondmag.com

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Windows Server 2022 announced for general availability

Windows Server 2022 was announced by Microsoft as reaching “general availability” (GA) on Wednesday, meaning it’s deemed ready for deployment in production environments.

Organizations have Core and Desktop installation options for all product editions. Windows Server 2022 follows Microsoft’s traditional fixed lifecycle policy, with five years of “mainstream” support and five years of “extended” support.

The product update cycle for Windows Server 2022 follows the Long-Term Servicing Channel, with new product releases occurring every two to three years. Earlier this year, Microsoft ended its semi-annual channel update option for all Windows Server products.

Windows Server 2022 supports in-place upgrades from Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2016, a Microsoft spokesperson said via Thursday email.

Windows Server IoT 2022 GA
Microsoft also announced Windows Server IoT 2022 GA on September 1.

Microsoft emphasizes dedicated use scenarios for Windows Server IoT 2022 and offers the product in six editions. Windows Server IoT 2022 features are very similar to Windows Server 2022. However, licensing only happens through original equipment manufacturers.

There will be no Essentials edition of the product, the announcement states.

“Note that we will no longer have an Essentials version for Windows Server IoT 2022,” Microsoft said. “You can learn more about other available versions of Windows for IoT here.”

Windows Server 2022 GA
The Windows Server 2022 product is actually billed as reaching the GA stage earlier, on August 18, according to Microsoft’s lifecycle support page.

This date of August 18 GA was apparently chosen so that Windows Server 2022 would reach the end of the product on an “update Tuesday” date (the second Tuesday of a month), according to an explanation from Arpan Shah, general manager. from Azure. His full statement is captured in this ZDNet article by journalist Mary Jo Foley.

The September 1 date marked GA for all customers, the spokesperson explained:

We announced Windows Server on September 1, when it became generally available to all customers, including new customers. Only customers who already had Windows Server were able to download the new Windows Server on 08/18.

Foley also discovered that Microsoft has no plans to release a Hyper-V Server 2022 product. The 2019 version of the product is the latest of its kind. Microsoft wants these customers to use Azure Stack HCI instead.

Only the free Hyper-V Server 2019 product will be gone, but it’s supported until January 2029. Hyper-V is included in Windows Servers, however, the spokesperson explained.

With the release of Windows Server 2022, Hyper-V is included as a built-in role in Windows Server 2022 Datacenter, Standard, and Essential editions, as it has been with previous releases for over a decade.

Windows Server 2022 editions
Windows Server 2022 is currently offered in three editions – Datacenter, Standard, and Essentials – according to Microsoft’s pricing page.

The Datacenter edition of Windows Server 2022 is aimed at “highly virtualized data centers and cloud environments”, priced around $6,155. The Standard Edition is for “physical or minimally virtualized environments,” priced at around $1,065. The Essentials edition is aimed at “small businesses with up to 25 users and 50 devices,” priced around $501.

The Essentials Edition is the only listed offering that does not support Client Access License (CAL) fees. When CALs are required, each customer must have a CAL license to access the servers.

The differences between the Standard edition and the Datacenter edition of Windows Server 2022 are indicated in the pricing page.

A Standard Edition licensed server can only run two operating system environments (OSEs) or virtual machines. The Datacenter edition can run an unlimited number of OSEs or virtual machines. The Standard edition only supports “single storage replication volume up to 2TB”, while the Datacenter edition fully supports storage replication. The Standard edition also lacks software-defined networking and software-defined storage features.

In June, Microsoft had outlined a preview-stage Azure edition of Windows Server 2022, which was later called “the Datacenter Azure edition,” but that edition is currently not listed on Microsoft’s pricing page. This product allows organizations to access a new “Azure Automanage” feature with its “hotpatch” capability. This Datacenter Azure edition and the Azure Automanage feature still appears to be in preview.

The Azure edition of Windows Server 2022 Datacenter will be available as an image in the Azure gallery, the spokesperson clarified:

Windows Server 2022 Datacenter: Azure Edition is a Windows Server image from the Azure Gallery that provides customers with additional features such as HotPatch, SMB over QUIC for secure file server migrations and more when used with Azure Self-management.

Features of Windows Server 2022
Microsoft provided a fairly comprehensive description of Windows Server 2022 features in June.

This version of Windows Server is notable for bringing Secured-core protections to the server product, as well as HTTPS and Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3 security protocols used by default. Secure protections, which ward off malware at the boot level, are already available on some Windows 10 PCs.

Microsoft has covered the basics of Secured-core in this recent “Intro” article.

In addition to secure core advancements, Windows Server 2022 offers many network and file server additions, including:

• Server Message Block (SMB) over QUIC, which is a virtual private network replacement based on User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and TLS 1.3 protocols, rather than TCP/IP and RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access).
• SMB compression for faster transmission of very large files.
• Domain Name System (DNS) over HTTPS (DoH) encryption to prevent DNS queries from being seen or modified by attackers.

These features and more are explained in this September 1 article by Ned Pyle, Microsoft Senior Program Manager on the Windows Server team.

Availability of Windows Server 2022
Windows Server 2022 products sold by Microsoft’s hardware partners were not listed. Microsoft just pointed to this partner directory search page. Microsoft recently released a note to its storage partners about Windows Server 2022 testing, so hardware partner efforts are likely in different states.

It is possible to download Windows Server 2022 bits to test them via the Windows Server Evaluation Center page.

The server is accessible to run on an Azure virtual machine through Azure Marketplace. Bits are also available for download from the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center page.

Windows Server Summit
Microsoft plans to talk more about Windows Server 2022 at its Windows Server Summit online public event (register here), which will take place on September 16 at 10:00 a.m. PST.

The conference will feature Windows Server luminaries. It brings a “first deep look at Windows Server 2022”. The event will also include a discussion on Windows Server IoT 2022.