Windows Server vNext Insider Preview Build 20201 [Installation Guide]

Earlier this week, Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview build 20201 to the Dev channel. As usual, that comes alongside a bunch of other releases, such as a new SDK and a new Windows Server build. What’s different about this new Windows Server build, however, is that Microsoft actually published a blog post detailing what’s new.

Typically, new builds show up for downloads, and Microsoft doesn’t even acknowledge their existence.

➤ DOWNLOAD WINDOWS SERVER 2019 VNEXT HERE:
✓ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windowsinsiderpreviewserver

WHAT’S NEW IN BUILD 20201?
CoreNet: Data Path and Transports
● MsQuic – an open source implementation of the IETF QUIC transport protocol powers both HTTP/3 web processing and SMB file transfers.
● UDP performance improvements — UDP is becoming a very popular protocol carrying more and more networking traffic. With the QUIC protocol built on top of UDP and the increasing popularity of RTP and custom (UDP) streaming and gaming protocols it is time to bring the performance of UDP to a level on par with TCP. In Server vNext we include the game changing UDP Segmentation Offload (USO). USO moves most of the work required to send UDP packets from the CPU to the NIC’s specialized hardware. Complimenting USO in Server vNext we include UDP Receive Side Coalescing (UDP RSC) which coalesces packets and reduces CPU usage for UDP processing. To go along with these two new enhancements, we have made hundreds of improvements to the UDP data path both transmit and receive.
● TCP performance improvements — Server vNext uses TCP HyStart++ to reduce packet loss during connection start up (especially in high speed networks) and SendTracker + RACK to reduce Retransmit TimeOuts (RTO). These features are enabled in the transport stack by default and provide a smoother network data flow with better performance at high speeds.
● PktMon support in TCPIP — The cross-component network diagnostics tool for Windows now has TCPIP support providing visibility into the networking stack. PktMon can be used for packet capture, packet drop detection, packet filtering and counting for virtualization scenarios, like container networking and SDN.
(Improved) RSC in the vSwitch
● RSC in the vSwitch has been improved for better performance. First released in Windows Server 2019, Receive Segment Coalescing (RSC) in the vSwitch enables packets to be coalesced and processed as one larger segment upon entry in the virtual switch. This greatly reduces the CPU cycles consumed processing each byte (Cycles/byte).

However, in its original form, once traffic exited the virtual switch, it would be re-segmented for travel across the VMBus. In Windows Server vNext, segments will remain coalesced across the entire data path until processed by the intended application. This improves two scenarios:

– Traffic from an external host, received by a virtual NIC

– Traffic from a virtual NIC to another virtual NIC on the same host

These improvements to RSC in the vSwitch will be enabled by default; there is noo action required on your part.

Direct Server Return (DSR) load balancing support for Containers and Kubernetes
DSR is an implementation of asymmetric network load distribution in load balanced systems, meaning that the request and response traffic use a different network path. The use of different network paths helps avoid extra hops and reduces the latency by which not only speeds up the response time between the client and the service but also removes some extra load from the load balancer.

Using DSR is a transparent way to achieve increased network performance for your applications with little to no infrastructure changes.

➤ FULL CHANGELOG HERE:
✓ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/08/26/announcing-windows-server-vnext-preview-build-20201/

According to Microsoft, this build of Windows Server vNext is actually for the next Long-Term Servicing Channel release, and it includes both the Desktop Experience and Server Core.

➤ MORE INFORMATION & RESOURCES:
✓ https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-releases-windows-server-insider-preview-build-20201-with-new-features

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