Windows 2012 – Study Notes

This pages will continue to grow as I finish studying for the Windows 2012 Exams. I will break the studying up into 46 sections.

01 – Windows Server Editions

1. 4 editions
2. No 32bit editions
3. Can switch between the Gui and Core
4. No Itanium
5. No standalone HPC Server. You can add it to other servers here as a package.

Foundation Server Edition

• Scaled Down
  • limited to 15 users
• Designed for small business file and print sharing
• Simple dashboard
• Physical server only (not virtual machine)

Essentials

• 25 Users
• 1 physical or Virtual Server
• Defaults to Server Manager

Standard/Datacenter

• Contains all Windows Server 2012 Features
• Standard
  • 2 Virtual Instances
• Datacenter
  • Unlimited number of virtual Instances
  • Not available via Retail Channels.
• Licensed per user (cal)

02 -New Features in 2012

Server Interfaces

There are now 3 interfaces:

1. Core
2. Minimal
3. Full GUI

Windows 2008 made you specify the interface at install. You couldn’t change this option unless you re-installed. 2012 allows you to switch between the interfaces at any time however you do need to restart the server. You can do this by enabling or disabling the item in “features”. It is called “User Interfaces and Infrastructure”.

Server Core

Roles Not available in Server core:

• Active Directory Federation Services
• Fax Server & Application Server
• Network Policy & Access Services
• Remote Desktop Services / Gateway / Session Host / Web Access
• Volume Activation Services
• Windows Deployment Services

The number of roles supported by Server core has increased:

• 12 of the 19 roles are available to be used.
• Only 9 were available in 2008
• Only 10 were available in 2008R2

Server Core 2012

• SQL Server is supported in Server core!
• Server Manager has changed significantly
  • Provides access to most admin functions
• Manage Pools of servers from Server Manager

Storage Spaces

This allows you to:

• Combine several disks together.
• They can be internal or external and SSD or Standard.
• Allows you setup a large pool and then you can set it up into one or more virtual drives.
• Supports Redundancy
• Support Thin provision

Resilient FS (ReFS)

• New Generation File System
• Self Healing (reduces downtime by not needing to restart)