With Windows Server, How Can You Go Wrong?
April 12, 2017
With Windows Server, How Can You Go Wrong?
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Windows Server
We are primarily a Windows shop, with only our ERP system running on HP-UX. We use Windows for everything else. The nice thing about working for a university is that we are able to leverage Microsoft's Campus Agreement, which makes it affordable for a smaller, private university. We are approximately 30% virtualized, using Microsoft Hyper-V for all of our virtual servers except our Cisco UC environment which is only supported on VMWare. We use Windows for our website, all apps, file sharing, DHCP/DNS, printing, WSUS, Active Directory, our Sharepoint environment, and our exchange environment which is quite small since we're mostly on the Microsoft Office 365 cloud. We'are used to managing Windows for out entire IT careers so we are quite comfortable and familiar with it.
- There is no match for Windows Active Directory. I've tried to set up a Linux-based LDAP environment before and failed miserably as my experience with Linux is very limited. However, Windows AD is easy to set up, manage, and it just works great.
- File sharing and print server management are two things Windows also does very well. We have many professors who use Apple computers and they are able to connect to our file shares and our printers across campus.
- DHCP and DNS work wonderfully well on Windows. Again, very easy to set up and mange with very little experience necessary. I've set up DHCP on Cisco switches and routers before, but Windows does a much better job in my opinion.
- Microsoft Hyper-V works like a charm, and I really wish Cisco would support running their UC apps on Hyper-V since VMWare is so expensive. Hyper-V makes it easy and intuitive when it comes to setting up your Hyper-V environment and the creation of virtual machines. It does an awful lot of checking things for you so you can feel confident that your environment and your VM's will run as they're supposed to.
- The UI!!! I can't understand why Microsoft decided to give Windows Server 2012 the silly Start Screen and took away the Start Menu. That didn't bother me as much with Windows 8, but there is no need for this silliness on a server. Come on Microsoft, keep things plain and efficient; don't try to make Server look pretty!
- Windows Server backup is lame; in an enterprise or even smaller company, you definitely need some REAL backup software (like CommVault) that is very robust and gives your organization's data the protection it needs. Windows Server backup just doesn't have the full functionality of a product like CommVault
- I've never been a huge fan of Microsoft file and folder permissions. This is where Microsoft could learn a thing or two from Unix/Linux. Windows permissions have always been unnecessarily complicated and convoluted. My colleagues and I have been managing Windows for a long time now and we even get confused from time to time when it comes to file/folder permissions with issues such as permissions inheritance and effective permissions and the various ways in which file shares can mange these permissions.
- 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.
- HP-UX
HP-UX is a great product, but it has a much higher learning curve than Windows server. Even if you're familiar with Linux/Unix, HP-UX will still be very challenging if you've never used it before. HP-UX commands can be different than even other Linux/Unix commands. Whereas everyone has used Windows in their life, making Windows server intuitive and easy to learn.