Windows Admin Center version 2007 is now generally available

Today, Microsoft released a new version of Windows Admin Center. Version 2007 is the first major update to Windows Admin Center since version 1910 was released at Microsoft Ignite last year, and coincidentally, the new version has been released on the same day as Microsoft Inspire.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft didn't test this version with Insiders at all. In fact, the latest update available for Insiders is still version 1910.2, a minor revision for the previous general release. As such, there are a few new features here that you might not know about.

The new features include a new GUI-based cluster deployment workflow, which lets users create clusters without the need for an extension, including support for deploying a cluster that spreads across two sites, a first for the Windows Admin Center.

There are also updates to some of the core tools in WAC, such as the Active Directory tool, which is now on version 0.85.0 and brings with it support for more descriptive search queries, and more. For virtual machines, it's now possible to instantly perform a full clone of a VM and run sysprep on it beforehand in one go. The containers extension for Windows Admin Center has also been updated recently with a handful of improvements. Finally, the software-defined networking (SDN) monitoring tool has also been updated with a new feature called Data Path Diagnostics, which automates packet captures to diagnose issues with data paths in SDN.

On the aesthetic side, Microsoft has updated has refreshed a lot of the icons across the board, and made some other design changes. Microsoft is also adding a new occasional pop-up that will ask users to rate their experience with WAC.

Microsoft also announced that some of its partners have updated their extensions over the past few months, with some fixes and improvements aimed at the latest release of Windows Admin Center. These include the Lenovo XClarity Integrator, Dell EMC OpenManage Integration, and QCT Management Suite. You can download the latest version of Windows Admin Center here.