Windows Server

It is really all about application support. The only option we really have is Windows Server, and where we can choose we continue to use it for consistency as well as compatibility with the systems where we are forced to use Windows Server).

About any linux distro can be setup to handle services that a Windows Server can do, except I have not personally found anything nearly as convenient of a replacement for Active Directory, Group Policy, or an RD Gateway. There are alternatives to those services, they just aren't as polished or simple to use, in my opinion.

We have not really evaluated, nor used other servers OS's other than Windows Server. Since our environment is primarily Windows-based, with primarily Windows endpoints (and very few Mac or Linux endpoints), it has been the decision of the organization to use the Windows Server as the standard. Also, we rely heavily on utilizing Windows Systems Management software, Active Directory, and Group Policy Management, in our environment, which all run on Windows Server.

We've utilized docker and debian for very specific applications and they have been useful - overall Windows Server provides a better package. I would choose VMware ESXi over Windows Server for virtualization as it's far more reliable in our experience. I can't imagine using a different OS for our guest systems than Windows Server.

There are plenty of other server solutions out there which may be better suited for certain tasks, but Windows Server is the way to get a Windows environment going. For simple setups, there are many alternatives, but often there are key features lacking, or a restriction on customization which makes them unsuitable.

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 Server. However, there are more Windows Server skills available in the job market.

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 all of these OS versions, but you need an administrator with a lot of practical experience with them. The same is true for Window Server OS.

We have been using Microsoft products for the last 15+ years and following are key point for choosing this solution:

• Trust & reliability of products.
• Customer support.
• Focusing on continuous improvement.
• In other products, we face management issues and customization is not easy and our environment is unable to bear down time therefore we choose and deploy this solution.

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.

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 between apps that we use for monitoring and logging of users.

Linux is great, but support is harder to come by. You also need to pay linux admins more as it is a much smaller group of people that can support it. Windows is the industry standard with the most support available. Going with another platform just didn't seem to make sense for our business.

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 available and I typically try to stay away from other products

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 technology,but will use Windows due to our extensive experience when possible.

We were comparing Windows Server with Hyper-V to VMware ESXi, and decided on Windows Server as we are primarily a Windows server/workstation shop, and the familiarity allowed us to spin up new Hyper-V servers quickly without much additional training required. We also have a Microsoft agreement and this allowed us to set up new hypervisors without needing to make additional purchasing of a different product.

All the other products I have used in the past OS2 servers, Novell Netware, Banyan Vines etc don't show up in the search list, which i guess goes to show that the best wins.

I have used/administered several servers using systems like Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS. While these systems are great in their own rights, you are typically using a command-line interface or shell in order to administrate the system. This requires a lot of commands to be remembered and is not always the easiest. Windows Server on the other hand has the option for using the Windows UI to be able to administrate the system with a familiar interface. Windows Server is far easier to administrate than the Linux distributions.

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 for our Oracle Database Servers and a handful of other tasks since it's better support by Oracle.

Windows Server has become one of the industry standards for providing file and directory services for the majority of users because of the ease with which it interacts with the common desktop OS, as opposed to needing to provide esoteric support for users to be able to work quickly and efficiently with their files, folders and the internet.

Windows Server is by far the easiest server option to get started with because they offer the same kind of interface with windows that most users are already familiar with. Plus, it's the most graphically friendly option, so it is easy to navigate. Lastly, it is the most widely compatible with third-party software solutions out there because it is the most widely adopted option.

We have used various flavors of Linux as it is the only other real competitor in the small to large business world. In most cases it is harder to find technical expertise in the Linux server world verse Windows Server. For this reason Windows has remained our go to operating system in our business.

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 such as DNS/DHCP/NTP, CentOS is our preferred operating system. For permissions management, auditing, file services, DNS, DHCP, and webservers Windows Server shines. The only caveat to this is most of your eggs are in one "basket" - even though you should always have redundant and co-located domain controllers.

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 very stable environments, file systems, native services useful for enterprises, and excellent security and availability features. I think it depends on the applications being run and the users running them.

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.