Windows Server 2019 will bring several installation options and tuning options for virtual machines, physical servers as well as container images. In this blog post, I want to give an overview of the different installation options of Windows Server 2019.
To compare the different Windows Server 2019 editions, check out the Microsoft Docs.
Installation Options for Windows Server 2019 Physical Servers and Virtual Machines
As always, you can install Windows Server 2019 in virtual machines or directly on physical hardware, depending on your needs and requirements. For example, you can use Windows Server 2019 as physical hosts for your Hyper-V virtualization server, Container hosts, Hyper-Converged Infrastructure using Hyper-V and Storage Spaces Direct, or as an application server. In virtual machines, you can obviously use Windows Server 2019 as an application platform, infrastructure roles or container host. And of course, you could also use it as Hyper-V host inside a virtual machine, leveraging the Nested Virtualization feature.
| Installation Option | Scenario |
|---|---|
| Windows Server Core | Server Core is the best installation option for production use and with Windows Admin Center remote management is highly improved. |
| Windows Server Core with Server Core App Compatibility FOD | Workloads, and some troubleshooting scenarios, if Server Core doesn’t meet all your compatibility requirements. You can add an optional package to get past these issues. Try the Server Core App Compatibility Feature on Demand (FOD). |
| Windows Server with Desktop Experience | Windows Server with Desktop Experience is still an option and still meets like previous releases. However, it is significantly larger than Server Core. This includes larger disk usage, more time to copy and deploy and larger attack surface. However, if Windows Server Core with App Compatibility does not support the App, Scenario or Administrators still need the UI, this is the option to install. |
Installation Options Container Images
For containers, Microsoft offers three types of container images with different sizes and different application compatibility levels. You can use the Nano Server and Windows Server Core container image you already know from Windows Server 2016, or you can leverage the new Windows container image, which adds additional application compatibility to beyond the Server Core image.
| Name | Size | Scenario |
|---|---|---|
| Nano Server | ~200MB | Nano Server is great for new applications for example for .NET Core applications. This image is the smallest of the Microsoft Windows container images. It is lightweight and fast. |
| Windows Server Core | ~3.3GB | The Windows Server Core image offers the same application compatibility like the Windows Server 2019 Core Installation option. |
| Windows | ~8.0GB | The Windows container image, Microsoft is offering a new option for applications who need more components which are not included in Windows Server Core, like DirectX or proofing support. |
Installation Options for Windows Server 2019 in Microsoft Azure
Of course Azure is a great place to run Windows Server. You can run Windows Server 2019 as Azure VMs with the same installation options you have available if you download it. You can also run Windows Server Containers in multiple Azure services.
- Windows Server 2019 in an Azure Virtual Machine
- Windows Server Container Images as Azure Container Instance
- Windows Server Container Images in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or other Azure Container Services and container orchestrators
- Windows Server Container Images in Service Fabric
- and many more.
And of course Windows Server is used in the Azure back-end and powers a large amount of services.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments!
Tags: Azure, Azure Stack, Container Image, Container. Hyper-V, Installation Options, Microsoft, Nano Server, Server Core, Server with Desktop Experience, Windows, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019 Last modified: July 7, 2019
Thanks Thomas, very informative and a bit confusing with even more options. :-)
Hi,
what would be the build version for for this version of windows server 2019 ?
Thank You
Hi Thomas,
We have a read only DMZ domain controller running on Windows server 2012 R2.
We need to upgrade the server to Windows server 2019 Datacenter.
The problem is that we don’t know to to do that.
We have mounted a disk in vmware and now we just need to know the command to start the instalation.
Can you help us?
Kind regards,
Sjoerd