Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview Supported Networking Scenarios

Updated: April 29, 2016

Applies To: Windows Server Technical Preview

This topic provides information about supported and unsupported scenarios that you can or cannot perform with this release of Windows Server® 2016 Technical Preview.

This topic contains the following sections.

• Supported Networking Scenarios

• Unsupported Networking Scenarios

Supported Networking Scenarios

This section includes information about the supported networking scenarios for Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview, and includes the following scenario categories.

• Software Defined Networking (SDN) scenarios

• Network Platform scenarios

• DNS Server scenarios

• IPAM scenarios with DHCP and DNS

• NIC Teaming scenarios

Software Defined Networking (SDN) scenarios

You can use the following documentation to deploy SDN scenarios with Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview.

• Deploy a Software Defined Network infrastructure using VMM

• Deploy a Software Defined Network infrastructure using scripts

For more information, see Software Defined Networking (SDN).

Network Controller scenarios

The Network Controller scenarios allow you to:

• Deploy and manage a multiple-node instance of Network Controller. For more information, see Deploy Network Controller using Windows PowerShell.

• Use Network Controller to programmatically define network policy by using the REST Northbound API.

• Use Network Controller to create and manage virtual networks with Hyper-V Network Virtualization – using NVGRE or VXLAN encapsulation.

For more information, see Network Controller.

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) scenarios

The NFV scenarios allow you to:

• Deploy and use a software load balancer to distribute both northbound and southbound traffic.

• Deploy and use a software load balancer to distribute eastbound and westbound traffic for virtual networks created with Hyper-V Network Virtualization.

• Deploy and use a NAT software load balancer for virtual networks created with Hyper-V Network Virtualization.

• Deploy and use a Layer 3 forwarding gateway

• Deploy and use a virtual private network (VPN) gateway for site-to-site IPsec (IKEv2) tunnels

• Deploy and use a Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) gateway.

• Deploy and configure dynamic routing and transit routing between sites using Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

• Configure M+N redundancy for Layer 3 and site-to-site gateways, and for BGP routing.

• Use Network Controller to specify ACLs on virtual networks and network interfaces.

For more information, see Network Function Virtualization.

Network Platform scenarios

For the scenarios in this section, the Windows Server Networking team currently recommends using the network adapter Mellanox Connect-X 3 Pro with the most recent drivers.

The network platform scenarios allow you to:

• Use a converged NIC to combine both RDMA and Ethernet traffic using a single network adapter.

• Create a low-latency data path by using Packet Direct, enabled in the Hyper-V Virtual Switch, and a single network adapter.

• Configure SET to spread SMB Direct and RDMA traffic flows between up to two network adapters.

For more information, see Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) and Switch Embedded Teaming (SET).

Hyper-V Virtual Switch Scenarios

The Hyper-V Virtual Switch scenarios allow you to:

• Create a Hyper-V Virtual Switch with a Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) vNIC

• Create a Hyper-V Virtual Switch with Switch Embedded Teaming (SET) and RDMA vNICs

• Create a SET team in Hyper-V Virtual Switch

• Manage a SET team by using Windows PowerShell commands

For more information, see Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) and Switch Embedded Teaming (SET)

DNS Server scenarios

DNS Server scenarios allow you to:

• Specify Geo-Location based traffic management using DNS Policies

• Configure split-brain DNS using DNS Policies

• Apply filters on DNS queries using DNS Policies

• Configure Application Load Balancing using DNS Policies

• Specify Intelligent DNS Responses based on the time of day

• Configure DNS Zone transfer policies

• Configure DNS server policies on Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) integrated zones

• Configure Response Rate Limiting

• Specify DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE)

• Configure support for Unknown Records in DNS

For more information, see the topics What's New in DNS Client in Windows Server Technical Preview and What's New in DNS Server in Windows Server Technical Preview.

IPAM scenarios with DHCP and DNS

The IPAM scenarios allow you to:

• Discover and administer DNS and DHCP servers and IP addressing across multiple federated Active Directory forests

• Use IPAM for centralized management of DNS properties, including zones and resource records.

• Define granular role-based access control policies and delegate IPAM users or user groups to manage the set of DNS properties that you specify.

• Use the Windows PowerShell commands for IPAM to automate access control configuration for DHCP and DNS.

  For more information, see Manage IPAM.

NIC Teaming scenarios

The NIC Teaming scenarios allow you to:

• Create a NIC team in a supported configuration

• Delete a NIC team

• Add network adapters to the NIC team in a supported configuration

• Remove network adapters from the NIC team

The following NIC Teaming scenarios are not supported in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4.

• Creating a NIC team with a VLAN on the NIC team interface.

• You can rename a NIC Team, however doing so might cause the statistics panel in the user interface to freeze. In this circumstance you cannot perform additional management actions, but the NIC team still functions correctly.

• Unsupported configuration detection, including the detection of vNICs, kdNICs, tNICs, or bridges in a NIC team. Because unsupported configurations are not detected, they are not blocked by NIC Teaming and might cause unstable systems or complete system failures.

• Using NIC Teaming in the Cisco N1K extension does not work. (The Windows PowerShell NetSwitchTeam cmdlets do not function correctly, and the extension relies on these commands.)

• Windows PowerShell error messages for NIC Teaming might be unintelligible. In addition, the -WhatIf and -PassThrough options for Windows PowerShell NIC Teaming commands do not function correctly.

For more information, see NIC Teaming.

Unsupported Networking Scenarios

The following networking scenarios are not supported in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3.

• VLAN-based tenant virtual networks.

• IPv6 is not supported in either the underlay or overlay.