Windows 10: Windows Admin Center preview channel updates and next general release

Brink · Sep 26, 2019

We have been busy since our last GA release in April, releasing four Insider preview versions of Windows Admin Center:

Version 1906 added import/export VMs, switch Azure accounts, add connections from Azure, connectivity settings experiment, performance improvements, and performance profiling tool.

Version 1907 added Azure cost estimate links and made improvements to import/export and tagging of virtual machines.

Version 1908 included visual updates, Packetmon, FlowLog Audit, Azure Monitor onboarding for clusters, and support for WinRM over HTTPS (port 5986.)

Version 1909 introduces the Azure VM specific connection type and unifies the connection types for traditional failover clusters and HCI clusters.

You can always see the full version history of Windows Admin Center at https://aka.ms/wacrelnotes.

Stay tuned for the announcement of our next GA update, which is currently scheduled to release around the upcoming Microsoft Ignite conference!
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Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...ly/ba-p/862018

See also: Announcing Windows Admin Center Preview 1909

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Brink · Sep 26, 2019

Windows Admin Center 1809 and SDK now generally available

The momentum continues

It’s been an exciting debut year for Windows Admin Center, the next-generation graphical management for Windows Server. Our team is committed to helping you manage your Windows Server infrastructure and instances, wherever they run, more easily and more efficiently. This includes delivering a platform and core set of experiences that improve day-to-day Windows Server administration, as well as lighting up new functionality and scenarios to help your organization unlock the full power of the Microsoft cloud.

In April, we announced Windows Admin Center and general availability of version 1804, and shared the user and business value provided by our reimagined management experience.

In May, we announced our SDK preview along with three launch partners to showcase the emerging value of the Windows Admin Center ecosystem.

In June, at the Windows Server Summit event, we declared Windows Admin Center as the fastest growing Windows Server management toolset ever, exceeding 1,000,000 total managed nodes in just over 2 months after GA.

In June, July and August, we continued with regular preview releases, each showcasing new and improved functionality through our Insiders program: Windows Admin Center Preview versions 1806, 1807, and 1808.

Today, we are very excited to present the latest generally available release of Windows Admin Center in support of Windows Server 2019. We are also pleased to announce that the SDK is now generally available.

Install or update today!

As a platform, version 1809 of Windows Admin Center is generally available, and contains all the features and improvements of the previous monthly preview releases. As the number of capabilities grows, please note that some extensions and features are still clearly marked as “preview” to help differentiate newer functionality and allow for flexibility of ecosystem growth.

Download: Go to ms/WindowsAdminCenter to download Windows Admin Center 1809 and browse updated documentation on a variety of relevant topics.

For customers currently using version 1804 of Windows Admin Center, upgrade to version 1809 within 30 days to remain supported under Microsoft’s Modern Lifecycle Policy.

What’s new?

There are too many additions to list them all, so here’s a summary of some key new and improved features added to Windows Admin Center since 1804…

Core functionality

Windows Admin Center continues to provide you with increasing value for single server or single cluster troubleshooting, configuration and maintenance tasks. Almost all of these were added as a direct result of aggregated user feedback:

View Script: See and copy the underlying PowerShell scripts for actions in supported modules, with syntax coloring.

Scheduled Tasks: View, edit, enable/disable, start/stop, and create scheduled tasks.

File Shares: View, edit, and create file shares and permissions in the Files tool and Storage tool.

Installed Apps (Windows Server): View and remove Win32 applications which are installed.

Apps and Features (Windows 10): View and remove Store and Win32 apps which are installed. Enable/disable Windows features.

Hyper-V: Improvements include multi-VM bulk actions, VM and host settings including nested virtualization and hypervisor scheduler configuration, integrated VM Connect web console, and more!

Failover Cluster: Added support for Cluster-Aware Updating, add/remove cluster node, validate cluster and an all-new cluster validation report UI. Hyper-V host settings on a cluster now allows you to make changes across all cluster nodes at once!

Tags: Editing and filtering improvements to better group and organize large connection lists.

Gateway settings: Improved categorization and updates to improve clarity.

Notifications: Improved notification system provides a more organized experience.

Windows Server 2008 R2: Supported as a connection target, with limited functionality.

Hybrid

Windows Admin Center continues to empower you with new and improved ways to optionally leverage Azure services from your on-premises environment:

Discover, deploy, and use Azure services: Enjoy streamlined setup right from Windows Admin Center, where it automatically provisions required Azure resources, installs necessary agents, and initializes the service behind-the-scenes. Windows Admin Center currently integrates with:

Azure Site Recovery: Protect business-critical workloads running on Hyper-V virtual machines from disaster.

Azure Backup: Protect your servers from accidental-deletion of data, corruptions and even ransomware-attacks.

Azure Update Management: Manage operating system updates across all the servers in your environment.

Azure AD authentication: Bolster the security of your Windows Admin Center gateway with features like conditional access policies and multi-factor authentication.

Azure Network Adapter: Connect an on-premises Windows Server 2016/2019 instance to an Azure virtual network via simplified configuration of point-to-site VPN.

Manage Azure IaaS VMs running Windows Server: Granular troubleshooting or configuration using Windows Admin Center, wherever you run Windows Server instances.

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)

Windows Admin Center continues to be the best way to manage and monitor hyper-converged infrastructure, including Storage Spaces Direct and SDN, powered by Windows Server 2016 or Windows Server 2019. With this update, most HCI functionality is now generally available.

Clustering and Hyper-V: All the new features listed above, including multi-VM bulk actions, add/remove node, and cluster-aware updating, apply to HCI clusters too. For Windows Server 2019 HCI clusters, the VMs list loads as much as 5X faster, and VM detail pages include performance history (hour/day/week/etc.).

Storage Spaces Direct: Create, open, resize, or delete Storage Spaces volumes with just a few clicks. With this update, you can see pool reserve capacity and read/write cache statistics for Windows Server 2019 clusters.

Software-Defined Networking: All-new tools and capabilities to manage and monitor virtual networks, subnets, connect virtual machines to virtual networks, and monitor SDN infrastructure.

General: The HCI Dashboard and pages are more colorful, more consistent, load faster, and reflow better to different window sizes.

Windows Server 2019 platform

Windows Admin Center lights up several platform features which are new or improved in Windows Server 2019. In addition to several already mentioned in the sections above (Azure Network Adapter, Storage Spaces Direct, Software-Defined Networking), the following platform features rely exclusively on Windows Admin Center for graphical management:

Storage Migration Service: Migrate servers and their data without reconfiguring applications or users. It’s fast, consistent, and scalable while taking care of the enormous complexity and subtle environmental problems inherent to server migrations, all with an intuitive graphical workflow.

Storage Replica: Set up and configure disaster protection easily via replication of volumes using Windows Admin Center.

System Insights: Manage native predictive analytics capabilities in Windows Admin Center. Use rich visualizations and a simple management interface to understand future resource consumption across storage, compute, and networking.

Extensibility and ecosystem

Windows Admin Center is an extensible platform, and partner extensions continue to contribute towards greater customer value:

Extension Manager: Users can now get notified of available extension updates, update in just one-click, and use extensions from multiple extension feeds simultaneously.

SDK: Now generally available after several months of validation by multiple partners building compelling extensions. Recent improvements include a CLI to help you get started quickly and easily, updated samples which leverage the latest features, new and improved documentation topics, and a new PowerPoint design toolkit to enable quick and consistent design mock-ups.

Partners: The Windows Admin Center ecosystem continues to grow with more partners developing and releasing extensions for monitoring and managing servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure and storage devices. DataON is releasing an all-new extension for HCI management, Fujitsu’s preview extension is now generally available, Squared Up provides unique monitoring capabilities based on SCOM, and Pure Storage is releasing an extension for FlashArray management. The following new partners are currently developing extensions and will be demoing their progress in their respective expo hall stations at Ignite: Cisco, HPE, Lenovo, NEC, QCT, and Riverbed.

Ignite presence and sessions

If you are registered to attend Ignite next week, we invite you to come visit our Windows Admin Center station in the expo hall. Here’s a list of all the related breakout sessions which will cover various Windows Admin Center topics described above:

Main Windows Admin Center session

Windows Server management reimagined with Windows Admin Center

Windows Server sessions showcasing Windows Admin Center

Windows Server 2019: What’s new and what’s next

Windows Server 2019 deep dive

The Perfect Match: Windows Admin Center & Server Core

Windows Server 2019 platform feature sessions using Windows Admin Center

Windows Server 2019 System Insights: Simplified ML for the intelligent edge

Establishing hybrid connectivity with Windows Server 2019 and Microsoft Azure

Retire your old file servers with Storage Migration Service in Windows Server 2019

Hyper-converged Infrastructure sessions showcasing Windows Admin Center

From Hyper-V to hyper-converged infrastructure with Windows Admin Center

Be an IT hero with Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2019

Modernize your datacenter with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) in Windows Server 2019

See you at Ignite!
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Source: Windows Admin Center 1809 and SDK now generally available! - Windows Server Blog

Tip Windows Admin Center - Centrally manage all your Windows 10 PCs

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Brink · Sep 26, 2019

Announcing Windows Admin Center 1809.5 Insider Preview

Thank you for your continued interest in Windows Admin Center! This month, Windows Insiders get early access to our 1809.5 release before it is made generally available.

Release Summary

1809.5 is a cumulative update to our 1809 GA release in September. This release includes various quality and functional improvements and bug fixes throughout the product:

General

Accessibility improvements

Notification message improvements

Certificate handling improvements for upgrades

New splash screen when loading Windows Admin Center

Hyper-V

Add/remove virtual disk or drive for running VMs

VM Connect web console now works in the Virtual Machines tool on Failover Cluster and HCI Cluster connections

VM state refresh time is improved on Windows Server 2019 HCI clusters

Azure Site Recovery protection status is shown for VMs across all cluster nodes

VM health alerts now show VM name instead of VM ID

Clustering

UI improvements for Cluster Aware Updating

Extension Manager

User-installed extensions are persisted across Windows Admin Center upgrades

Increased resiliency against extension errors

Hyper-converged infrastructure

There are several notable new features for hyper-converged infrastructure:

Multi-select bulk actions for drives, volumes, and servers

With full support for shift/ctrl + click keyboard shortcuts, confirmation dialogs, and improved notifications. For example, you can now delete multiple volumes with just one click:

Monitor storage per-server

How much storage capacity is used per server, and how much needs to repair (normal after restarting), is now visible on the Server detail. Now you can track exactly how resync is progressing without relying on Get-StorageJob!

Better network activity monitoring

The Server detail page now has separate charts for non-RDMA and RDMA networking, each showing inbound and outbound traffic separately (summed over all adapters in the server).
In addition to the new features described above, this update also brings many other minor fixes and improvements throughout HCI.

How to Download

Registered Insiders may download Windows Admin Center 1809.5 directly from the Windows Server Insider Preview download page, under the Additional Downloads dropdown. If you have not yet registered as an Insider, see Getting Started with Windows Server on the Windows Insiders for Business portal.

We value your feedback!

The most important part of a frequent release cycle is to hear what’s working and what needs to be improved, so your feedback is extremely valued. Send us feedback via UserVoice. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Admin Center space on the Microsoft Tech Communities forum to collaborate, share and learn from experts.

Terms of Use

All pre-release software made available to you via the Windows Server Insider program are governed by the Insider Terms of Use.
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Source: Announcing Windows Admin Center 1809.5 Insider Preview - Windows Experience BlogWindows Experience Blog

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Brink · Sep 26, 2019

Announcing Windows Admin Center Preview 1909

Hello Windows Insiders! Thanks for staying up to date on the Windows Admin Center journey! This release contains incremental changes and quality improvements for the new functionality released in the preceding previews. Specific updates to Packetmon, and a couple visual changes are described below.

This will be the last preview release in anticipation of the next generally available release of Windows Admin Center coming in the next two months.

Specific connection type for Azure VMs

In new Add connection experience, Azure VMs are now a top-level connection type. This functionality previously lived under the “Azure” tab when adding a server. When a server is added this way, it appears in the connections list as “Server (Azure VM)” so you can easily see which of your servers are Azure VMs.

Unified connection type for clusters

The two separate connection types for hyper-converged clusters and failover clusters have been merged into a single, unified connection type. Clusters can be added as a “Windows Server cluster” and the appropriate tools will be loaded and available, primarily based on whether Storage Spaces Direct is enabled or not. Hyper-converged cluster connections and failover cluster connections added from previous versions of Windows Admin Center will be automatically migrated to the new cluster connection type.

For extension developers: Extensions that enable tools for failover cluster connections and/or hyper-converged cluster connections will require a minor code change to display the tools properly in the new cluster connection. Details on this will be provided soon.

Packetmon

There are several improvements in Packetmon:

New capture dialog wizard – users need to follow several steps to set the capture conditions: select specific components, set filters, choose dropped or all packets

Capture conditions button – opens a dialog which shows the conditions used to create the capture

Restart button – reuse same conditions to restart capture

Display filters dialog – further filter captured results

Save button – save the captured log in different formats

Packet details page now shows actual names of networking stack components

Partner extensions

The Windows Admin Center ecosystem continues to grow with the recent release of several partner extensions.

IIS extension

We are excited to announce the first preview release of the IIS Extension for Windows Admin Center that provides the existing tools in IIS manager to administer and manage your web server. You can download and install the “msft.iis.iis-management” extension from the extension feed and If you are connecting to a machine to manage IIS for the first time, you will be prompted to install the IIS Administration API on the machine you wish to manage.

Lenovo XClarity Integrator extension is generally available

The Lenovo XClarity Integrator extension is now generally available with the v1.2.11 release. In addition to the existing capabilities to manage standalone servers and hyper-converged clusters, the following features have been added in this release:

In-band management for hardware inventory, events and alerts – Servers can be managed via PowerShell running in Windows Server. This allows server hardware management without the Lenovo XClarity Administrator.

Support for Lenovo XClarity Administrator version 2.5.0 for out-of-band management.

BiitOps Changes extension for server configuration change tracking

The BiitOps Changes extension is now officially available for customers. BiitOps Changes makes identifying and troubleshooting server incidents through Windows Admin Center an even quicker and simpler process through a powerful graphical change overview. Key features include:

Summarizes changes made to servers and/or services leading up to an incident

Shows changes – and changes only – in a simple, yet powerful graphical interface

Allows admins to quickly zoom in on specific changes for full details

Simple one-time installation, configuration and deployment for 24/7/365 monitoring

Highly secure with no data ever being passed from your local installation

Offered as a free trial for up to 10 servers

Learn more about BiitOps Changes here.

Known issues

Dell EMC extension – The Dell EMC OpenManage Integration extension is not compatible with Windows Admin Center v1909 due to a breaking change in this version and will fail to install. Dell EMC will be releasing a new version soon. In the meantime, you can continue to use the Dell EMC extension on Windows Admin Center v1904.1 or v1908.

Cluster connections – When adding a cluster connection, there is reference to creating a new cluster, however this functionality is not yet available. [23380016]

Azure Monitor onboarding – If you’re managing a server or a cluster using “manage as” credentials, the onboarding may fail.

Network – If you have configured an Azure Network Adapter, the value under Microsoft Azure Virtual Network Gateway Address will be formatted as a hyperlink but leads to an invalid address. [20420185]

Chrome users may see 403 Forbidden response from WAC after upgrading. The workaround is to close *all* open chrome tabs (make sure there are no chrome.exe processes running). After restarting chrome, everything will function normally. We have an error message that makes this clear, but chrome users with multiple windows admin center tabs open during upgrade will not see the message.

Thanks,
Dona and Brandon
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Source: Windows Admin Center Preview 1909 | Windows Experience Blog

Download: (Additional Downloads) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...rpreviewserver

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Windows 10: Windows Admin Center preview channel updates and next general release

Windows Admin Center preview channel updates and next general release

Windows Admin Center preview channel updates and next general release

Windows Admin Center preview channel updates and next general release

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