Microsoft's newest Windows Server test build adds new storage, failover clustering updates
Microsoft's newest Windows Server test build adds new storage, failover clustering updates.
Microsoft released a new test build of Windows Server 1803 to Insider testers on January 16.
This test build, number 17074, is a preview of what's coming in the feature update to Windows Server (known officially as the "Semi-Annual Channel" release) that is expected to begin rolling out around April 2018. Windows Server 1803 is the server-side complement to Windows 10 Redstone 4.
Windows Server 17074 includes some enhancements to Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) and failover clustering.
As Server users may recall, S2D didn't make it into Windows Server 1709, allegedly because it wasn't meeting quality standards; Microsoft is hoping to add it back to the coming 1803 release. Storage Spaces Direct spans Windows Server clusters and creates a bus via which the servers can see all of each other's local drives. S2D was introduced as a feature of Windows Server 2016 and described by Microsoft as "the foundation for our hyper-converged platform."