Available packages for Nano Server in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4
As described in my blogpost on the differences between Server Core and Nano Server, I stipulated that Nano Server is intended for fabric purposes; to provide the best platform for Microsoft’s cloud platform, like hypervisor hosts, scale-out file servers and such.
This also becomes clear from the packages available in the fourth Technical Preview of Windows Server 2016.
When looking at the contents of the Packages subfolder of the NanoServer folder on the Windows Server 2016 TP4 installation media, the following packages are available:
- Microsoft-NanoServer-Compute-Package
- Microsoft-NanoServer-Containers-Package
- Microsoft-NanoServer-DCB-Package
- Microsoft-NanoServer-DNS-Package
- Microsoft-NanoServer-DSC-Package
- Microsoft-NanoServer-Defender-Package
- Microsoft-NanoServer-FailoverCluster-Package
- Microsoft-NanoServer-Guest-Package
- Microsoft-NanoServer-IIS-Package
- Microsoft-NanoServer-NPDS-Package
- Microsoft-NanoServer-OEM-Drivers-Package
- Microsoft-NanoServer-Storage-Package
- Microsoft-OneCore-ReverseForwarders-Package
- Microsoft-Windows-Server-SCVMM-Compute-Package
- Microsoft-Windows-Server-SCVMM-Package
All the above packages are available as .cab files.
The packages can be added to your NanoServer installation image using the New-NanoServerImage PowerShell Cmdlet from the NanoServerImageGenerator.psm1 PowerShell Module in the NanoServer folder on the Windows Server 2016 TP4 installation media.