Alongside the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft delivered its first feature update for Windows Server 2016 today.

While other companies administrators is merely commencing to kick the tires, they've already noticed a couple different surprise omissions from that "Semi-Annual Channel" update, identified as build 1709 (for September, the ninth month, of 2017.)

First, is often a brief recap merchandise made it into 1709.

As Microsoft said happens, the Server Core container image is nearly Sixty percent smaller, and the Nano Server container image practically 80 percent smaller, compared to they were throughout the original form of Windows Server 2016. Microsoft also added the promised Linux container with Hyper-V isolation support to that release.

As Microsoft officials said previously, the Nano Server is "deprecated" and substituted with Nano running for a container image. Extremely high . few users were onboard with Microsoft's push generate Nano Server the footprint version of Windows Server, and thus a repositioning was a student in order. The creation of a totally new Windows Server graphical management tool, typically known as "Project Honolulu" (in technical preview) also became a member of the new grand plan.

SMB1 and guest authentication removal also caused it to be into this release, as did a great many other compute, storage, networking and remote-desktop services updates, indexed in this Microsoft Docs article.

But a few points were cut from 1709.

For one, components version of Windows Server 2016 has vanished.Windows Server 2016 Essentials edition used to be "cloud-connected" first server for small business with as many as 25 users. Microsoft introduced the requirements edition in October 2016.

However, in a list of Windows Server installation options in Microsoft's "Getting Started" with 1709 post, there is reference to Essentials. (Owing to Directions on Microsoft for the heads-up.)

Windows Server 1709 is offered only in Standard and Datacenter editions. (At the time of October 19, Windows Server 1709 available on Azure.) It's also worth noting that athletes installing 1709 only get Server Core being installation option, nevertheless Windows Server 2016 allows both Server Core and Server with Desktop Experience installation options.

Specialists Microsoft whether the company would often produce an Essentials version of Windows Server someday and have absolutely not heard back.

Besides that, Storage Spaces Direct isn't in Windows Server 1709, as Microsoft acknowledges included in the updated Release Notes for 1709.

Storage Spaces Direct spans Windows Server clusters and produces a bus via of the fact that servers understand just about all one another's local drives. It absolutely was introduced as an effective feature of Windows Serve r2016 and explained Microsoft as "the foundation for your hyper-converged platform."

I heard recently in a of my contacts that Microsoft wasn't proud of the level of Storage Spaces Direct consequently opted to bar it from being usable for everybody software-defined Datacenter aplications in 1709. Administrators cannot add servers running 1709 to deployments of Windows Server 2016 where Storage Spaces Direct is now being used.

Our next possible update to Storage Spaces Direct is probably component "Redstone 4," the update of Windows 10 client and server due to begin rolling out around April this year.