Windows Server 2016 Essentials

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Familiar Windows 10 GUI
Familiar Windows 10 GUI

The preview for Windows Server 2016 Essentials is out and it sports the exciting new look and feel of the Windows 10 . The new OS makes it easy for newbie administrators to setup the organizations network by running a First server in the network routine. The routine creates the first domain controller and DNS server for you.

At the end of initial installation an icon for a digital dashboard called the Windows Server Essentails Dashboard is placed on the desktop. When launched, it displays “Getting started, monitoring, and health report” options. The dashboard is organized into 5 major screens; The home screen for getting started, and monitoring, The Users screen, Devices sceen, Storage, and Applications.

Windows Server 2016 Preview 3 Getting Started Screen
Windows Server 2016 Server Essentials Dashboard.

The Home screen, the default, is where you run setup for updates, add accounts, create folders, and set server backups, among other things. From the home screen one of the first things that are intuitively placed on the getting started menu are the setup and configuration of Windows updates. Followed by creating, and configuring user accounts.

Users tab to display and modify new users and groups.

The users tab in the dashboard lets you display and modify newly created users and groups.

The devices tab lets you view computers in the domain, and the backup state of these computers.

The storage tab show server folders, which is a concept from Windows Server 2012 Essentials. Server Folders are a set of shared folders with an arbitrary amount of space for user home folders.

The devices tab lets you view the domain computers and their backup state.
The devices tab lets you view the domain computers and their backup state.

Free Windows 10 for all!

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Microsoft has announced that it in addition to offering free upgrades for current licenced copies of Windows 8 and Windows 7, it will offer the upgrade to users of non-genuine Windows as well. In an effort to bring all desktops in the world to Windows, it made the policy change. What is interesting is that it gives away the upgrade, it will keep track of genuine and non-genuine copies. Not sure what implications this will have for users of the operating system that acquired previous versions by other means, oh hmmm..

upgrade-matrix-windows10

 

parts of this post from ZDNet article: http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-to-launch-this-summer-with-free-upgrades-for-pirated-copies/