If you want to provision shielded VMs on your Hyper-V hosts, you need to install this feature. It’s available in the Datacenter edition only. This allows the Hyper-V server to communicate with the Host Guardian Service.
I/O Quality of Service
Enabling this feature will allow you to set quality of service settings for your applications, including maximum I/O and bandwidth limitations.
IIS Hostable Web Core
The IIS Hostable Web Core feature allows you to write your own custom applications that can host core IIS functionality on their own. Your application will be able to serve HTTP requests and use its own configuration files (applicationHost.config and web.config) instead of the configuration files used by the traditional full Web Server (IIS) role installation. After the IIS Hostable Web Core is installed, you can open a browser and type http://localhost. This will load the traditional IIS splash screen even though the Web Server role is not installed.
Internet Printing Client
Internet Printing Client allows you to connect to and print to printers on the network or Internet using the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). It does require that Desktop Experience be installed and, as such, is not available in Server Core.
IP Address Management Server
IP Address Management (IPAM) was a breath of fresh air to network administrators and system administrators who had to manage multiple DNS and DHCP servers. It provides a centralized management pane for both DNS and DHCP and is able to help you locate available IP addresses, available subnets, and so on. Best of all, it supports multiple Active Directory forests, so it really can be a single pane of glass for your organization.
You can read more about IPAM in Book 2, Chapter 6.
LPR Port Monitor
Line Printer Remote (LPR) Port Monitor enables your server to print to a printer that is shared using Line Printer Daemon (LPD). This will typically be a Unix or Linux server being used as a print server.
Management OData IIS Extension
This feature gives you the ability to expose PowerShell cmdlets through an OData-based web service that runs on IIS. OData is a data access protocol that allows you to query and update data. To use this feature, you need to install the Web Server role.
Media Foundation
Media Foundation allows you to work with media files. You can transcode. You can analyze media files. You can even generate thumbnail images for media files. It also offers DirectX Video Acceleration and an enhanced video renderer (EVR). Media Foundation supports many of the codecs, sources, and sinks that you would expect, including AVI, DV, H.264, MP3, and MP4.
Message Queueing
Message Queueing is often used by applications to deliver messages to other applications. It guarantees message delivery and provides routing, security, and messaging based on priority between applications. Applications are able to send and receive messages from the queues. This is very useful when you need the guarantee that the message will get to its end destination, or when an application may not be able to get the message right away because it's busy or offline. If your application requires Message Queueing, your vendor will list it as one of its requirements.
Microsoft Defender Antivirus
This feature is installed by default and was previously known as Windows Defender. It’s a built-in next-generation antivirus solution that’s able to look at files and process behaviors for things that appear malicious. It gets regular updates from signatures and through machine learning and threat research.
Multipath I/O
What happens if your server is connected to its storage through a network switch, and that switch goes down? Your server can’t communicate with its storage any longer. With Multipath I/O, you can allow your server to use multiple paths to your SAN — you could have connections through two separate switches, for instance. If you have connections to two separate switches, your server will still be up and able to access its storage even if one of the switches goes offline. This allows you to build a truly fault-tolerant storage network.
Multipoint Connector
If you’re using Multipoint Services, the Multipoint Connector allows the system to be managed by the Multipoint Manager and the Multipoint Dashboard.
Network Load Balancing
Network Load Balancing (NLB) allows you to spread traffic across multiple servers, which can improve response times because the traffic is evenly distributed. It’s popular with web servers, especially with a stateless application, where the user’s request can be served by a server in the NLB cluster. As load increases, you can simply add more servers to the cluster, and when you need to do maintenance on a particular server, you do so while keeping the other servers in the NLB cluster up. An NLB cluster focuses on reliability and performance, not high availability or fault tolerance.
Network Virtualization
Network Virtualization allows you to create virtual network overlays on the same physical network. If you want to start working with software-defined networking (SDN), this is an important feature to examine. By taking advantage of network virtualization, you can automate the provisioning of networking resources, in addition to other server automation projects you may be working on.
Peer Name Resolution Protocol
Peer Name Resolution Protocol allows applications to register and resolve names on your computer so that other computers on the network can also communicate with these applications. This is especially helpful for systems that are in workgroups, rather than being domain-joined.
Quality Windows Audio Video Experience
Quality Windows Audio Video Experience, also known as qWave, is a networking platform for A/V streaming applications on home IP networks. When it’s installed on a Windows Server OS, it only provides rate of flow and prioritization services.
RAS Connection Manager Administration Kit
The RAS Connection Manager Administration Kit (CMAK) feature serves a very simple purpose: to create profiles for connecting to remote servers and remote networks. This feature is only available in the Desktop Experience.
Remote Assistance
The Remote Assistance feature allow you, as the support person, to offer remote assistance to your end users. You can view and control the user’s desktop from the server. Remote Assistance requires Desktop Experience.
Remote Differential Compression
Remote Differential Compression can help to optimize bandwidth. It’s able to look at a source and destination object and will only transfer the differences between the objects, rather than transfer the object as a whole.
Remote Server Administration Tools