Windows Server

We use Windows Server for everything from hosting back-office infrastructure such as file servers, printer management solutions and operation of third party solutions and services, managing and maintaining identity namespace data and IAM solutions, hosting Microsoft SQL Server database instances and full cycle development environments (Dev, Test, QA, Performance Testing, Pre-Prod) as well as operation of many solutions in the customer facing Production environment.

• Support for a wide range of applications (compatibility) This is especially valuable.
• The cost of licensing is significantly higher than that of many competing solutions, which means the justification has to be more complete.
• The initial environment setup with full organization management provides a complete solution set to get started.
• Patching/Frequent updates disruptive nature must be accepted.

CentOS Linux, Rocky Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Hitachi Content Platform (HCP), Dynatrace, Slack, Augment Code, Google Meet, Dell PowerStore, Dell PowerEdge, Delinea Secret Server, Atlassian Confluence, Atlassian Jira

Microsoft Windows Server is the foundation of any IT environment I have worked in. Starting with Active Directory domain controllers, scaling out with additional Windows Server with roles for File Services, Web, SQL, and Application servers. Windows has always been the dominant Server OS and more administrator friendly OS to work with.

• Active Directory is the pillar of our IT environment. Windows Server hosts this service flawlessly with minimal maintenance required.
• Windows Server host Web Services (IIS) on many Servers in our environment. It is proven to be very reliable, stable, and user friendly service.
• Microsoft Technical support can be a challenge. When opening support cases, the first tier of support, log collection, and triage of the incident can be time consuming. I've also experienced long wait times for log analysis and waiting for next steps to troubleshoot. This has occurred many times over the years. The support is most times outsourced to third party company.

Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft IIS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Omnissa Horizon, Omnissa Dynamic Environment Manager, Cisco Duo, BlackBerry UEM, SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM), SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM), ManageEngine Device Control Plus and ManageEngine OpManager

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), VMware ESXi, Cisco Duo

We use Windows Server for almost all aspects of our infrastructure. Active Directory,, mail servers, file and print servers. With just a few exceptions where it made more sense to use ESXi and Linux on a few hosts, everything else is Windows Server. We've been using it since NT 4.0 and have used every version along the way up to 2025.

• It's almost become an afterthought b/c it "just does what it should"

VMware ESXi, CentOS Linux and Ubuntu

Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft 365, Omnissa Horizon

We use Windows Server's RDS as our platform for cloud application deployment to our customers. We also use HyperV virtualization to host additional Windows Servers as well as linux servers.

• Licensing for our needs has been reasonable compared to other commercial hypervisor vendors and has saved us quite a bit in our particular use case anyhow.
• Uptime has been good, reducing support costs

Parallels Remote Application Server (Parallels RAS), Sage 100, ConnectWise Asio

We use Windows Server for pretty much everyting. We use it as active directory domain , dns , dhcp , microsoft SQL and so on.

It helps to manage users, shares , folder permissions , authentication, and to manage users.

It is pretty straightforward and you have good documentation online for pretty much everything you want to acomplish.

• Improve setup time on new employees PC
• High pricing as negative
• Give control over your files

CentOS Linux, Debian OS and Ubuntu

Ubuntu, Debian OS, Wazuh, ESET PROTECT, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Power BI, Suricata IDS