I recently find a tiny bit of time to build a VM with the latest version of Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview which is TP3. Earlier builds were available under name Windows Server 10 Technical Preview. For details on what’s new in this release you may refer here.
So insall UI looks very familiar if you ever installed Windows 10 and the very first window is something well familiar to all, nothing has been changed here. But second one demonstrates couple of major changes:
So default installation option entitled Windows Server 2016 does not contain “Core” in its name but this is actually what used to be known as “Core” installation option. Second option – “Windows Server 2016 (Server with Desktop Experience)” is our beloved full-fledged GUI version. And what is crucial here is that with Server 2016 this install type decision not reversible without re-installation. So once again: Unlike some previous releases of Windows Server, your choice of Server Core (which is new normal/default) vs. Server with Desktop Experience at the time of installation is not convertible to the other mode. And as you can clearly see from screenshot above the “Minimal Server Interface” and “Server with a GUI” modes present in Windows Server 2012 R2 are not available in this release.
Server 2016 also includes 3rd installation option which is not exposed in Setup Wizard – Nano Server, and you install it by configuring a VHD (details here).
To give you an idea of how new installation options compare against each other following picture can be useful (source):
And once installed with GUI your Server 2016 TP3 will look (no surprises here) very similar to Windows 10:
