We used Windows Server. It has not been very painful but when I compare it with RHEL the patching process was lengthy. We also ran into occasional performance issues that were not very straight forward to diagnose.
Windows Server's are perfect competition for RHEL as many people use Windows Servers for deploying their applications. Windows provides good GUI but it lacks in many aspects in which RHEL is a win-win. As earlier mentioned, the performance of RHEL is unbeatable cannot be …
While many enterprise applications offer Windows Server support, I never really seriously considered it for our application, as Windows simply Blue Screens too often for serving a business critical application. Instead, I took a look at Red Hat's upstream distro, CentOS. Had …
Red Hat Enterprise Linux stands above Windows and Ubuntu, in my opinion, because of streamlined features, excellent support, and plethora of available documentation and user created tools.
Beats them all for reliability, security, ease of use and setup, as well as patching. It has fewer support problems and is easily serviced. Support is easy to find and quite helpful. Windows crashed all the time and Azure was at times spotty.
RHEL is very different than Windows, but in terms of just a simple operating system, RHEL is much more lightweight than Windows and in many cases runs more efficiently than Windows. Given the choice between the two, some application are preferable on RHEL, like Apache or …
Each of the different flavors of Linux have their positives and negatives but ultimately for the projects that I chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux was due for the need of online and phone support just in case something came up and we could not solve it on our own. This happens …
Windows Server is more cost-effective and skills are easier to find to support the products. The deployment and management of the product can be automated with Microsoft SCCM. In my opinion, Linux seems to be more secured but takes more time and effort to learn than Windows …
These are just very different products. They can all have the same functionality but the specific product knowledge with Linux is much higher. This slows down troubleshooting and can leave you with limited options for high end support. There are absolutely good use cases for …
For our more experienced users and for simple web apps we will go the RHEL route but with Windows Server such an industry standard the the ease of use of the GUI it just makes more sense for most applications that use it. It also generally has a lot more interoperability …
I have some basic experience using various builds of Linux and have always found myself coming back to Windows. Perhaps after years of working with Microsoft products they all have a similar feel and configuration options. Microsoft products are my typical first choice where …
We have various servers or appliances that run on various flavors of Linux that do their jobs well, but we configure and manage them very lightly at the OS level. Most of the admin on these devices is sone inside the applications themselves. We don't shy away from new …
For our purposes it came down to picking between Windows and Linux and at the end of the day we picked both. We use Windows for 80% of our server needs to run our Web, File, Print, DHCP, Internal DNS, Active Directory, SQL, Web and other windows based servers. We use linux …
Windows Server is the only one that has an upfront cost for licensing before hardware is considered. Windows Server is generally better suited for multi-faceted approaches; however, for just backups, TrueNAS and Synology are cheaper and just as good. For standalone services …
Windows runs some applications better and is easier for junior admins and non-technical users to administer and get started with. It obviously does not run everything better, so other operating systems are preferable in some situations. Compared to OSs like RHEL, they both have …
When using a Linux system such as CentOS in a server situation to get certain features like Windows Server, it can take a lot of jerry-rigging and configuration to get the same results that can be set up with Windows Server in a lower amount of time.
Windows Server is the most Enterprise/Business server around, easy to deploy and configure and to co-exist with other servers. Most if not every other server technology is usually very good for a very specific purpose but fail in the coexistence and integration when compared …
Windows Server has much broader support for the majority of business applications available today. Linux only has very specific application support. Windows Server is also much easier to get support for as it is not an open-source server platform and the developer provides …
I think it's best suited for all the monolithic application where you just need a VM and you on top of that VM you need to install a compatible product. So it's best suited for those. Where's not suited. As I said, maybe I've seen in my organization mostly our internal application teams, they go for a different operating system for appliances or network maybe it might be due to the product compatibility, not with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but that's something maybe you should have a look or probably it's not a improvement anywhere.
If you have one user or 1000's of users (especially using Windows), Windows Server is a no-brainer! The only reason I would suggest going with a Linux server is if you have old hardware (Windows Server is more process intensive than Linux). But, Linux is open-source, so anyone can publish updates/security updates, but on the flip side, malicious people also have full access to Linux's codebase allowing for much easier writing of exploitations/viruses/malware/ransomware.
I really love that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is reliable, that it always seems to work well.
It's very secure.
I really appreciate that Red Hat keeps everything up to date and they are on top of security, mobilities, et cetera. I'd say those are my favorite things.
Well, one of the things, this ties right back to my previous answer from what it sounds like, the cloud platform for Insights doesn't currently have an easy way to generate CVE compliance reports, or do scans for where you have remediations required, but it does not currently produce those reports in a way that I could just hand off to our security team and be like, here's our compliance, here's where all the things are specifically because Red Hat does backporting of patches and a lot of security tools don't know how to handle that and think that we're vulnerable when we're not. So from everything I've heard, it's possible. That's why I'm excited for it. But it's not easily pushed button generated report yet. So we're working with them to get that in there.
DHCP Server could be better - we use the router for DHCP Routing
Print Server - not a fan of using the server as a print server since you have to license it. Direct access to printers via IP addresses is a much more efficient way to go
Better backup program - we utilize a third-party program that gives us more flexibility when restoring individual files.
I've carefully reviewed the servers and services currently running on Windows Server 2012, and given the opportunity would renew them as is going forward. There are two systems I currently have in place, one is a very large Linux implementation for a large ecommerce site, and one is a very large backup solution front ended by FTP servers running Linux. Neither are well suited for Windows, but the overall network infrastructure is and will be Windows Server for the foreseeable future.
RHEL has most of the features that are required by an ERP solution. If you need any additional packages, RHEL has a great repository and a very easy package installation/upgrade process.
There are simply too many different parts of Windows Server to make it a cohesive piece of software. While some of the newer features found in Windows Server 2012 and 2016 have nice UIs that are logically laid out, there are enough parts of the system that is still based on old code with clunky UIs and confusing options to make Windows Server a particularly user-friendly experience.
Red Hat support has really come a long way in the last 10 years, The general support is great, and the specialized product support teams are extremely knowledgeable about their specific products. Response time is good and you never need to escalate.
Microsoft's support is hugely wide-ranging from articles online to having to contact them directly for the more serious issues. In recent years when I have contacted them directly, I have found the support o be excellent as I have found myself connected to very knowledgeable people in the field in which I needed the support. The online support available is vast and I tend to find most of the time that there is always someone out there who has had the same issue as me in the past and knows something about how to resolve it! This is the advantage of using industry standard and long-established systems such as Windows Server.
Make sure that you have detailed processes in place for every server instance you plan to install/upgrade, if possible get the base OS loaded and Windows Updates applied ahead of time, and if using a VM take a snapshot prior to installing each role, as well as along the way.
The biggest thing about RHEL that makes it stand out for enterprise users is the support that we get from the vendor. Whereas with the other ones, you're basically left on your own. There's no official repo, there's no satellite for patching. You're very left on your own with the community.
I didn't use any other system which gives the same functionality and I am not aware of any. The full integration between all components and especially the ability to integrate mail via Exchange or even via a hybrid setup with the Ofice365 cloud, including the ability to directly manage the cloud from the server, using Power Shell, is something I didn't see anywhere else.
It's only been positive and like I said before, it's been positive because it removed tedious tasks and I think that's probably what it's designed to help do from what I can tell is just to get rid of the mundane tasks of a systems administrator. The things that you just don't want to waste time doing so you can actually use your brain for something useful.
Because of our Microsoft Campus Agreement, Windows products are fairly affordable for us and that has been a huge blessing. We are considering some Azure cloud options and some of that is covered under our Campus Agreement, making it a nice incentive to start migrating certain apps and functionality to the cloud
I don't have access to our budgets so I cannot give a good answer as far as the impact of ROI on our institution, but if your company can afford it, you cannot go wrong with Windows server. Not having to send your sys admins to Linux or Unix school alone is a big savings as well as not having to train your staff on using a Linux desktop instead of a Windows-based one.
The compatibility with end users of all varieties and platforms will definitely impact your ROI in a positive way. We have Apple users, Android, Windows, and even a few Linux end users on our campus and Windows server works quite well with all of them.