Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Support for
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Failover Clusters:
Planning, Deployment, Management and Troubleshooting
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 is the perpetual-license version of Microsoft's server OS. Windows Server 2019 incorporates the updates for Microsoft Windows Server 2016 previously offered exclusively through the SAC program. Windows Server 2019 features important improvements in capacity, throughput, manageability, security and compliance, app compatibility, Linux support, Kubernetes technology, and hybrid integration of local and cloud resources.
Headline new features of Microsoft Windows Server 2019 include Windows Admin Center for unifying the management and monitoring of hybrid local/cloud-hosted resources, System Insights for utilizing modern predictive intelligence to manage local environments, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Exploit Guard for host-intrusion defense, container orchestration with Kubernetes, Cluster Sets for building and administering massive non-stop scale-out clusters, and Microsoft's Storage Migration Service for simplifying the upgrade process from legacy releases of Windows Server.
Progent can help you to integrate Microsoft Windows Server 2019 with the latest releases of Microsoft's key apps by delivering expert services such as Microsoft Exchange Server consulting, Microsoft SQL Server 2019 integration expertise, SQL Server 2017 upgrade services, SharePoint 2019 planning and integration, and Microsoft 365 hybrid integration expertise. Progent's solution design, debugging and training support for Windows Server 2019 are offered remotely and Progent also offers on-premises services in major metropolitan areas across the United States and Canada.
Hybrid Cloud Solutions with Windows Server 2019
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 makes Microsoft's Azure stack available to businesses of any size for creating on-premises data centers, private clouds, or hybrid systems that combine on-prem IT assets with infrastructure and services hosted on private and public clouds.
The majority of today's businesses deploy a combination of on-premises and cloud-based resources to get the appropriate trade-off of control, affordability, throughput, availability, and security they need. For some industries, regulations require that specific types of network resources and data be kept locally. In other instances, company standards or compatibility issues necessitate line-of-business applications to be hosted locally. Windows Server 2019 provides a cloud-aware solution that permits you to build and manage powerful hybrid networks that transparently access resources spread across on-premises data centers and the cloud.
Designing, creating and administering efficient hybrid environments with Windows Server 2019 demands a wide range of knowledge and experience. This is outside the expertise of most in-house IT staffs in smaller businesses. Progent's team of experts offers as-needed access to the skills you require for any facet of hybrid network deployment and maintenance. Progent's Microsoft Gold-certified and Cisco-certified consultants, project managers, and information security professionals can help you to determine the advantages of Microsoft Windows Server 2019 for your organization and create a hybrid ecosystem based on Windows Server 2019 that offers maximum business value.
The Right Time to Upgrade
The release of Microsoft Windows Server 2019 coincided with the notification of End-of-Support status for Microsoft's widely used Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 products. This means there will be no additional security updates on-premises, no other updates, no free support programs, and no downloadable technical content updates. Consequently, security and compliance will be increasingly challenging, maintenance costs and effort may go up, and network robustness may go down.
If your business needs assistance moving up to Microsoft Windows Server 2019 from Windows Server 2008 or any other legacy release of Windows Server, Progent can provide the skills to make your upgrade process efficient, economical, and fast. Progent can help you:
- Document your apps and server roles running on your existing Windows Servers
- Move your virtual machines to the Private Progent Cloud or upgrade to the current version of self-hosted Windows Server or to Azure
- Optimize your resources to minimize costs, manage resources, and enhance data security across hybrid workloads
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 is available in the value-priced Standard version and the enterprise-class Datacenter edition. The Datacenter edition permits unlimited server virtualization whereas the Standard version supports two virtual machines. The Datacenter edition also offers advanced features such as Shielded Virtual Machines, Network Controller automation, Host Guardian Service (HGS), Storage Replica, SDN network management, and Storage Spaces Direct. Many of these features are discussed in Microsoft Windows Server 2016 consulting services.
Windows Server 2019 has two installation options: Server Core and Server with Desktop Experience. Server Core features a small attack surface and no local interface but supports all role-based workloads. This so-called "headless" mode needs to be managed remotely, for example via Power Shell or Windows Admin Center. The Server with Desktop Experience option is a full installation and features a comprehensive graphical user interface (GUI) for local management. Progent's experts can assist your business to choose the editions and deployment options most appropriate for your environment, understand Microsoft's licensing requirements, and pick an optimal on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid deployment model.
Top New Features of Windows Server 2019
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 features enhancements in expandability, throughput, manageability, virtualization, cybersecurity, hybrid deployment support, availability, container management, Linux co-existence, and other key improvements. Editions of Windows Server 2019 acquired under the Semi-Annual Channel model are updated twice annually, making enhancements available more quickly than under the Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) release model.
Windows Server 2019 delivers substantial improvements in capacity vs. Windows Server 2016:
| Scale Limit | Windows Server 2016 | Windows Server 2019 |
| Max raw capacity per cluster | 1 PB | 4 PB |
| Max raw capacity per server | 100 TB | 400 TB |
| Max number of volumes | 32 | 64 |
| Max size per volume | 32 TB | 64 TB |
Additional notable enhancements in Windows Server 2019 include:
- Cluster Sets is a technology that allows dramatic increases in cluster nodes in a Software Defined Data Center by grouping multiple Failover Clusters into one large, uniformly managed fabric. You can transparently move VMs throughout the Cluster Set fabric and manage every facet of a Failover Cluster from onboarding to retirement. Clusters included in a Cluster Set can benefit from additional disk storage and RAM in another cluster without requiring that you purchase additional equipment. CPU and storage resources do not need to be the same, and resiliency matches or exceeds traditional Failover Clusters.
Before Windows Server 2019, multiple Hyper-V clusters for VMs were complicated to manage and scale 
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 introduces Cluster Sets for centralized management of failover clusters - Storage Replica has been added to the Standard version of Windows Server 2019. Storage Replica provides advanced disaster recovery support and is described in Windows Server 2016 Storage Replica deployment. Novel capabilities of Storage Replica include a test failover function that allows managers to put a destination volume online temporally for testing and backup. Also, you can now manage Storage Replica with the new Microsoft Windows Admin Center, which offers a GUI utility for controlling procedures like cluster-to-cluster and stretch cluster replication.
- Storage Spaces Direct improvements include deduplication and compression for Resilient File System volumes, native support for storage-class persistent memory, the ability to use a consumer flash drive as a witness with dual-server clusters, greater expandability (up to 4 PB for each cluster), twice the throughput for mirror-accelerated parity volumes and storage tiers, outlier detection for physical disk latency, and the ability to increase availability by selectively delimiting volume allocation. Storage Spaces Direct features are discussed in Microsoft Windows Storage Spaces Direct consultants.
- Storage Migration Service simplifies the process of moving the volume data from legacy servers to volumes in current versions of Windows Server or Azure. You can deploy Storage Migration Service to migrate to new hardware or to VMs. The tool automatically inventories multiple servers and their data; copies files, shares, and policy settings to their new servers; and allows destination hosts to take over the identity of the legacy servers so your users and apps can have access to existing data without making any changes. Windows Admin Center's GUI can manage multiple simultaneous migrations.
- Expanded Linux support enables you to run Ubuntu Linux, Red Hat Enterprise, and SUSE Enterprise Server on shielded virtual machines. Microsoft's Shielded Virtual Machines capability is discussed in Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Shielded Virtual Machines consulting.
- Windows Admin Center is a new browser-based app deployed on-premises for controlling servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) with Storage Spaces Direct, Windows 10 devices, and Azure-based VMs. Windows Admin Center can be used to manage Windows Server 2012 and later. Windows Admin Center is an "in-box" tool and therefore can be utilized to manage servers on private networks not connected to the public Internet. By posting the Windows Admin Center gateway server to the public Internet, you can manage your servers securely from anywhere.
Microsoft Windows Admin Center permits you to manage on-prem and Azure cloud VMs from a single pane of glass - Container orchestration with Kubernetes, the popular management automation tool for Docker containers, includes enhanced capability such as the ability to use integrated security tooling to protect Windows and Linux services. For information about containers on Microsoft Windows Server, refer to Microsoft Windows Server containers consulting.
- Duplicate Elimination and Data Compression for ReFS Volumes allows 10 times more data on a specified Resilient File System (ReFS) volume. Microsoft's ReFS file system, first released in Microsoft Windows Server 2012, combines silicon high-performance tiers for hot data along with HDD/SDD capacity tiers to provide scale and fault tolerance.
- Windows Defender ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) is included with Windows Server 2019 as an integrated feature requiring no special license and no agent software to install.
- Encrypted Networks is a new feature that encrypts data traveling between virtual machines communicating within subnets set to be Encryption Enabled. Datagram Transport Layer Security on the virtual subnet prevents entities accessing the physical network from looking at, altering, or spoofing network data. Traffic between encrypted subnets is unencrypted.
- A USB Flash Drive connected to your router can be assigned as a witness in dual-server clusters under Storage Spaces Direct. Using this low-cost, easy-to-configure technique, when a server fails and then returns to operation, the USB drive cluster can let you know which of the servers holds the fresher data.
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 allows a USB Flash drive to server as a witness in two-server clusters - Low Extra Delay Background Transport automatically avoids network congestion by taking up bandwidth only when the network is being only moderately used. LEDBAT enables an organization to send massive, critical updates across a corporate network without degrading the performance of mission-critical services.
- System Insights uses predictive analytics and machine learning to improve capacity planning. System Insights runs locally on each Windows Server 2019 instance and analyses performance counters and events to forecast capacity requirements in key areas including utilization for volumes, total storage capacity, CPU, and networking.
- Windows Time Service works with the modern time synchronization method called Precision Time Protocol and delivers accurate time during a leap second. Windows Server 2019 also offers software time-stamping and clock source stability. These capabilities provide greater accuracy and precision, comply with UTC and other regulations like as Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and support special time-sensitive workloads. Because network setup is challenging to support the PTP protocol, Network Time Protocol (NTP) is still the default time synchronization technique for Microsoft Windows Server 2019.
Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can help you to plan and implement a cost-effective migration to Microsoft Windows Server 2019 using a local network architecture or a hybrid on-premises/cloud-hosted model. Progent can show you how to use the new Storage Migration Service to trim off time and expense from the task of moving from outdated Microsoft Windows Server platforms as old as Windows Server 2003, and Progent's experts can show you how to take advantage of the latest features of Windows Server 2019 to improve performance, scale, uptime, and ease of management. Progent's Exchange Server 2019 experts can help you to configure Exchange Server 2019 Mailbox and Edge Transport server roles and management utilities, which require Windows Server 2019. Progent's Microsoft SQL Server 2019 consulting and development experts can help you to integrate Microsoft's flagship database engine with Windows Server 2019 to run your critical workloads in a modern IT environment.
Progent's cybersecurity consultants can assist your company to follow leading practices to build an up-to-date security solution that is seamless across local and cloud resources and mobile devices. Progent can help you to configure centralized and proactive cybersecurity monitoring and management using an effective combination of security solutions from Microsoft as well as third-party providers. Progent also offers cybersecurity audits to make sure that your network complies with regulatory and industry cybersecurity mandates such as SOX, ISO 27001, PCI DSS 3.2, and FedRAMP.
Progent's roster of Cisco-certified CCIE infrastructure experts is among the largest of any independent IT services firm in the United States. Progent can help your organization to plan, deploy and manage a modern and cost-effective hybrid network architecture that incorporates the modern high-availability and disaster recovery technologies built into Windows Server 2019. Progent's disaster recovery planning experts can help your organization plan and validate an end-to-end process for recovering quickly from any foreseen catastrophe.
To assist your company to manage your Microsoft Windows Server 2019 and Hyper-V environment, Progent can provide a variety of services like Windows Admin Center deployment, PowerShell programming, SC Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) hybrid cloud management expertise, and System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) integration. Progent also offers the ProSight family of remote monitoring and management (RMM) outsourcing packages that give small and mid-size businesses an affordable and effective option for server and endpoint management.
Download the Datasheet for Progent's Windows Server 2019 Consulting Services
To download the datasheet about Progent's consulting services for Windows Server 2019, click:
Progent's consulting services for Microsoft Windows Server 2019. (PDF - 319 KB)
Progent's Online Consulting Support and Debugging Services
Progent has 20 years of background providing rapid, top-tier remote IT guidance and troubleshooting expertise and has provided online expertise to organizations in every state in the US and throughout Canada. (Refer to Progent's Customer Testimonials.) Progent also provides on-premises support in most U.S. metropolitan areas. Progent offers as-needed expertise to assist your company with challenging IT problems or comprehensive project management outsourcing and co-sourcing help.
If you are looking for urgent remote assistance from a Microsoft-certified consultant, see Progent's Online Technical Support.
Contact Progent for Help with Windows Server 2019
To find out more about Progent's consulting and troubleshooting services for Microsoft Windows Server 2019, phone
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