Understanding Windows Server Editions

hello again as you know I am Eli the computer guy and today's class is understanding Windows Server editions so so so wait wait this is kind of like the licensing class where I don't want your eyes to glaze over I know when I start talking about this stuff the first thing you're going to want to do is click Next and go to the next video but as a professional technician you need to understand the different editions of Windows Server software that are available on the market and and understand what they do this may come into play if you are a manager or if you are asked to make the decision on what software to buy or if you come in behind another technician or another company and you're asked to make repairs or to make upgrades to systems knowing what the different server operating systems can do can really matters I mean if your client is asking you to do something that this server operating system simply cannot do it would be best if you know that if you understand that there are different additions to the server software understand that there's different functionality for the different editions of the server software and and just how they all work in a real network environment so this class is understanding Windows Server editions give me a second where I come back we're going to open all this up so I can really explain to you all these different editions of server software because they get just foolishly confusing now as we talked about before in other classes in this server track remember a server is simply a computer that provides services to other computers on the network so if you have a computer with a shared folder and people can access that folder you have a server if you have a computer with a shared printer and your buddy across the hall can print to the printer that is connected to your computer then your computer is technically a printer server even if the operating system that is on that computer is windows xp home edition still within the IT world that is a server now server operating systems are basically operating systems that are optimized in order to provide services to network clients so obviously if you have a Windows XP home computer it is optimized to do a lot of things you can play video games on it you can edit graphics on it you can do all the kinds of things that you're going to want to be able to do on it but that Windows XP home operating system may not be very good at connecting 10,000 clients at any one time that's not what its optimized for server operating systems are optimized for being able to handle all these connections and being able to provide services to lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of clients like I say a standard Active Directory server Windows Server can support up to 10,000 user accounts so I mean that's that's that's a lot of a lot of user accounts so when we start talking about the server operating systems so when we're talking about server operating systems we're talking about Windows Server 2000 Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 these operating systems are optimized to be servers now as we talked about before you have the server so now we have we have software that's optimized to give resources to multiple clients on the network but then there are add-ons there are components that are added to that core operating system in order to make that server do the things that you think a server should do so what this means is if you want to have a web server so if you to host your own website you install either iis or a packet onto a Windows 2008 server operating system and you now have a web server if you want a domain controller for a network so you want a domain where you have user accounts and computer accounts and all of that you would need a server with a component called Active Directory and if you have Active Directory that will then make that server a domain controller foreign network if you want an email server then you need a Windows 2008 server and then you need something called exchange a software to install on top of that server so don't get you know back in the day back in the day back when I started back in what 98 99 whatever we dealt with NT 4.0 and that that was our servers and NT 4.0 there were only two flavors of it there was NT 4.0 server and then there was like NT 4.0 data center Edition and really all you had to know about what Edition you needed to buy for your company is if you knew what the data center Edition did then you probably needed to buy it if you did not know what the data center Edition did then you probably did not need to buy I mean basically there were only two versions of the server software and you almost always use just just the standard server now Microsoft just like you know in the desktop world where they came out with you know Vista Home basic Vista Home Premium Vista business vista ultimate and some other stuff they've kind of done that with the server software so before where you basically had two different server operating systems and that was it you now have lots you probably have ten and so all of these different server operating system packages do different things and so just just realize that when you go out to buy a server operating system is that that they do do different things like we're going to talk about one of the editions of the server operating systems that does not have direct active directory at all so no active directory possible so if you bought this type of server operating system you could not have a domain control period you cannot create a domain so just to remember when you're dealing with the server operating system so the server operating systems means it's a ace and operating system that is optimized to deal with clients connecting to the computer but everything else on top of that is an add-on it is in addition whether it's iis as a web to publish websites whether it's SharePoint for to share documents whether it's exchange to do email all of those things are additional add-on components sometimes they come with the operating system sometime you so you have to buy it separately but if you need to do if you need your server to do a specific function you need to make sure that that option is available in whatever Edition you buy so with that let's let's let's dive in and we'll talk about some of the different editions that are available right now so the first addition that we need to talk about is web or Windows Server web Edition so what this is is this is a server operating system that has been optimized to provide websites or to provide web solutions for companies so the video component of our website here at everyman IT comm is run on a Windows 2008 web Edition server we don't need Active Directory we don't need a lot of fancy things basically we need a just a very very very stable platform in order to be able to distribute our videos from so that's why we're using the web edition the web edition is one of the least expensive editions of all the the server software out there but it is exceedingly limited in a lot of functionality basically what the the web edition is meant to do is it's meant to combat Linux's Apache web server now if you know anything about Linux or you know anything about open source the Linux Apache web server is completely 100% free well back in the day if you wanted to run a website using a Microsoft server you had to spend anywhere between 700 to a thousand dollars just for the server software and then you added whatever whatever web hosting software you want it on top of that so you could either go with the free Linux version that that that's really good I mean a lot of people use it or you could spend a thousand dollars just on the software so of course a lot of people didn't want to spend a thousand dollars so what Microsoft did is they came up with this web edition server software that only costs about $300 so they dramatically reduced the price point with the idea being you know if you have administrators that are already used to dealing with a Windows environment you can buy this relatively inexpensive web server and your people will still understand how to use it they don't have to get trained in Linux they don't have to get trained in Apache they don't think it rained and all that stuff you know this this is this is a this is an operating system that they already basically know so that that's why the web edition was created but you have to be careful again it doesn't do Active Directory it doesn't do virtualization it doesn't do a lot of things that the other editions of the server software do if you're looking for just a very rock-solid way to provide web applications or websites to either internally or to your customers web the web edition may be what you're looking for if you're trying to look for something like file servers Active Directory virtualization all that kind of stuff stay away from the web edition seriously I know either you or your boss are going to see that web edition only cost about $300 versus the other editions of the operating systems costs between six hundred to two thousand dollars and you're going to want to buy the web edition but the web edition is very very very very limited so so just be careful with that so the next edition of Windows server operating systems they were going to talk about is something called the foundation edition and and this is actually something that was new to me like literally when I don't know where they come up with these editions from when I was doing research for this class to make sure I understood what was going on I found this whole new edition that they they just popped out of nowhere basically the foundation edition of the the Windows server operating system gives you all the functionality of a standard edition server so this gives you a is the ability to to provide websites it makes it a file server it gives you Active Directory basically it does everything that you would think a server does but it's limited to 15 accounts so you can only connect 15 computers into the domain that is created by this foundation edition of the server operating system so with a foundation you're able to create a domain like you would with a normal server software you do have Active Directory which would allows you to do permissions and group policies you can host a website you can do everything just about that the full fledge server edition would do but it's limited to 15 computers being able to connect to that Network if you try to connect any more than the 15 computers Microsoft has this whole list of ramifications in what happens it's like if you connect the 16th computer then it'll give you 10 days to upgrade to something else before it shuts the entire network down I want something wacky go go look at the standards before you you decide to use the foundation but basically the foundation is just the the core the stuff that you would think that that a server should be able to do web server FTP server Active Directory server virtual private network server remote desktop server all that stuff but it's limited to 15 computers so if you're looking for something more robust than the foundation edition of the server operating systems the the next thing is really build gates or gods or somebody's gift to the small business world and that is a Windows Server Small Business Edition I've been using these since you know the 2003 version came out and it's it's absolutely fabulous basically what the the small business server does is it packages a lot of functionality into a single server so that you can give a small business client one on the server that provides the functionality that a large enterprise or corporation would have so your server you get the Active Directory so you can create domains you can run a website off of it you can do FTP off of it but beyond that so beyond the normal server stuff is it also is bundled with the add-on of Microsoft Exchange server which is the email server so if you or your client needs to have be able to have the email services needs to be able to push out email to the things like smartphones or iPhones they need to be able to do any of that then the small business server comes with Microsoft Exchange just built into it you can also get it with Microsoft sequel server I don't really know anybody using Microsoft sequel server but it is a possibility for you beyond that there is a special component that's that's built in to the small business server editions that allows you to be anywhere in the world you can use internet explorer connect to the server and then connect to your desktop computer so let's say you're you're the the owner of a company and you're off in Italy because you're taking a vacation and somebody says they need some information you could literally sit in Italy sit down to the computer with internet explorer you could connect to the server and then do a remote desktop connection and remotely control your computer or again imagine if you have an employee that's home and that's sick and you need information from that person well they can go to their their computer at home with internet explorer access their computer at the office and be able to do work or whatnot I've seen this used a lot especially for part-time bookkeepers so like part-time accountants where people will set up or businesses will set up there's just one stand-alone little computer and every once in a while the accountant accesses that computer from the outside world in order to do QuickBooks because they're able to do that remote desktop connection basically small business server does everything that a small business would need the limitation up for it is that you can only put up to 75 computers on to the small business server network and honestly most people suggest you don't put any more than 50 simply because with all of the stuff happening on a single system on a single server you can really bog down the system if you have more than more than 50 computers connected to that to that that server but basically the server Small Business Edition if you deal with small businesses or you are a small business you should really look at this because this gives you all the functionality of a server and now it even has decent backup in there it gives you exchange which the other which you normally you have to pay an additional $1,000 for it gives you just all this wonderful functionality in one simple addition so so if you're dealing with a small business this is probably what you want to go with so next we come to just the standard a server edition for Windows servers so Windows Server 2008 standard edition this is the standard server that you will run into in a corporate environment or in the real world unfortunately too many small businesses don't know about small business a server and so they go out and they buy the normal server and it doesn't do a whole lot for them but they think they have a server so you do run into it a lot basically what the server allows you to do is it gives you all the functionality of the server and with no limitations other than well really hardware limitations so with with a standard edition server you have Active Directory so you can create a domain beyond that unlike a small business server or with that foundation edition you can do trust relationships and either make it a child or a parent domain so so if you have a standard edition server you can make that the parent of child domains again that gets into a lot of complicated stuff so if you don't understand child domains and you don't understand trusts just take my word for it standard edition will do that for you you can put as many user accounts on to that Active Directory server as you want like I say Microsoft I think says for hardware requirements you can go up to about ten thousand user accounts per Active Directory server for the Windows standard edition so I mean that that's that's a lot of user accounts that you can put onto one server if you really want to and basically they suggest you cap it at ten thousand simply because of hardware performance issues you can do a full web server and FTP site off of a server standard edition so if you wanted to run I don't know the next travelocity you could run that off of the the standard edition it has FTP it has VPN connection so you can create virtual private networks from the outside world and get into the server and and things like that what it doesn't have though is again remember that exchange what I was talking about is an add-on components for a server so you get exchanged the email server as part of small business server but not part as the nor of the normal server with a normal server you just get Active Directory you you have the ability to create websites you have the ability to create virtual private networks and such but you don't get the functionality of Exchange Server or Microsoft sequel server on there you can install that later but it will cost you about a thousand dollars so basically the server standard edition is is the standard for for most companies out there you can you can put in two clusters you can do a lot of things with it but this is this is a very solid just stable edition of the of the operating system that doesn't have a lot of additional bells and whistles now once you get past the Windows Server standard edition then you get into the bigger more expensive server operating systems this is where you have Enterprise Edition you have data center Edition and you have something called HPC a high performance computing edition these go back to if you don't understand what they are or don't know what they are then then you don't need them these are very very very very expensive forms of the server software and you're not going to run into it until you actually get a job where you need this stuff so if you're running massive databases again like Travelocity or some some some you know software company that just needs incredible amounts of data then you may have like the the data center Edition if you're dealing with a huge corporation you know three four hundred thousand employees you might need the Enterprise Edition I want you to understand that these editions do exist and so they're there stuff that is above a Windows Server standard edition but you're probably not going to see it in the real world and even if you did get your hands on a copy of it probably wouldn't really know what to do with it because it's very very specialized software so just remember that even the past standard edition there there still are a lot of other editions that to go with so as I talked about a little bit before you have the server operating systems and then you have server software and so you have to make sure that you understand that the difference between the two microsoft package is a lot of software or a lot of components with their servers so again if you buy the the web edition of Windows Server you will get the ability to host a website so there's something called iis or internet information server that allows you to host a website on a web edition computer if you're dealing with a Windows Server foundation they give you the component to do Active Directory so that you can commit can create a a domain for your computers and for your users something many people get confused with is that they then start thinking that Microsoft gives you more stuff than it actually does give you so one of the products that Microsoft has that many people are used to hearing about is something called Microsoft exchange exchange is an email server so this is how emails get routed to a company and then an exchange server then routes those emails to all the different users to smartphones to computers etc so all the rules for how emails will be handled within a company resides within an exchange server where you have to be careful is the exchange server is in is software that is in addition to a normal server so if you want to run an exchange email server you have to buy not only a Windows exchange which will cost you a thousand or two thousand dollars but you also have to put that onto a server that has Windows a server standard edition on it so you have to buy the Windows Server standard edition which will cost you six hundred to a thousand dollars and then on top of that you install exchange server that is a different product it is bundled if you buy the small business server they bundle those two products together but in the normal regular world if if you want to run an exchange server you have to buy both the Windows Standard Edition server and Exchange server you install the exchange server software on the window standard edition server the same is true with MS sequel so Microsoft sequel is database software this you have to install again onto a Windows service you have to buy not only the Microsoft sequel software but also the server software the same is true for SharePoint services so if you want to share files and do all that that kind of stuff you have to install SharePoint Server on top of the Windows server operating system many people get this confused they see windows exchange server and they just by that exchange server software because they they they think that's the entire thing that's the entire product they don't realize you also have to buy the server operating system or they buy the SharePoint software and they think they're going to get everything with that package and no you get the SharePoint point component but you have to install that SharePoint onto a server operating system a huge pitfall and and it can make things expensive really quick as as technicians who are going to be hopefully at some point giving advice to the boss on what you're going to buy or you are the boss and you have to figure out what you're going to buy understanding how this works makes a huge difference when I was looking to have a work order system for my company I found a lot of products that did not seem very bad to begin with and they were they were like you know you pay three or four thousand dollars for the product and then you pay $500 per per user account and it was a little expensive but for but for the functionality that would give us it was reasonable until they told us you have to install this software onto a Microsoft Standard Edition server you need Microsoft sequel in order to run the database component and you need Microsoft Exchange to run the email component well that meant this this three thousand dollar piece of software was going to have another thousand dollars added for the server was going to have another thousand dollars out of fur exchange and was gonna have another thousand dollars added for Microsoft sequel so three thousand dollars then a balloon to six thousand dollars also remember as we talked about in the licensing you do have Kal's client access licenses or with exchange you have whatever their version is basically for many pieces of the server software not only do by the server software itself but you actually have to buy access licenses to access it so when you buy exchange server you get five access licenses that means you can only create five mailboxes five user mailboxes with the product you bought if you want to create anymore mailboxes you have to buy those impacts you may buy another five cows or another ten cows or another twenty cows but those are all additional money so again if you have a 10-person office you're thinking about you know let's say buying a work order system like I was thinking about you have to add in okay it's going to cost $4,000 for this work order system plus it's going to cost $3,000 for the server software the exchange software and the sequel software on top of that if you have 10 or 15 employees each one of those needs an access license to access not just the server but also exchange and Microsoft sequel so that may add another one or two thousand dollars so that this product that you thought was very reasonable Lee priced at let's say three thousand dollars you may end up having to spend eight thousand dollars in total licenses to get that that bloody thing to work this really really really does happen in the world real world and like I say these these costs can spiral dramatically but but the main thing to remember is especially when you're looking at buying or putting a Microsoft server into production for the most part exchange Microsoft sequel SharePoint services and a number of other of these special specialty things that a server can do are add-on components you have to buy those pieces of software on top of the server operating systems and then you also have to buy access licenses just like you have to buy Cal's for a server so so so just keep that in mind so that's about it for this class I just wanted to give you an overview of the different editions of Windows server operating systems that are out there mainly so you know that there are all these weird little additions that are out there and that they all do their own weird little things I mean the worst thing in the world that can happen to you as a technician is that you buy a product you implement a product you do all the work you buy equipment you do everything and then right at the last second you find out whatever it is you bought doesn't do this one little tiny thing that you need it to do and that that's that's when things go go go bad real quick so again as professionals you know you're going to be asked you know what is your opinion on what products to buy or you're going to be asked to specifically buy a product and you have to realize that Microsoft really has made this stuff this confusing we did that whole class simply on Windows Server licensing so Windows Server licensing is its own little annoying tedious mess and then on top of the Windows Server licensing you have to deal with all the different editions of the the server software again you know back in the day back when I started there were two versions of the server software if you didn't know about the second one it meant you didn't need the second one and if you knew about the second one it meant you needed it you know basically that was it you always used just whatever moves called NT server as I recall that's it that was all there is now there are lots and lots and lots of different versions out there and especially if you go back to Windows Server 2003 they bring editions of servers online and then depending on how those editions sell they either keep them or get rid of them like I just heard that there was a mid-sized version of the small business server so if you had a business with somewhere between 100 to 500 employees they had a version of small business server for your company well for whatever reason they decided Microsoft decided they didn't like that and so as of Windows Server 2008 released two or vision - they no longer have that addition that addition just just went away it disappeared it's important to understand that these additions do come and go and that they may exist because if you have to go in behind another technician or if you get hired to a company that already has infrastructure deployed you need to know that that infrastructure may have limitations uh that you hadn't even thought about so so again this this was a short sweet little class you don't have to memorize everything I told you in here we're gonna have resource links down there below us you know see so you can look and see what all these different servers do the main thing I just need to get to your head is you know web server Edition does one thing small business server Edition does another thing foundation Edition does another thing Standard Edition does another thing these all do different things they all have different limitations and you need to make sure you buy the right one especially in the real world like I say the web edition only costs about $300 versus the standard edition cost $800 it would be real tempting to try to lowball things and try to go cheap and only by the the web server Edition that that's not going to do well for you so so again this was just just a pretty simple class this was understanding Windows Server editions as always I'm he'll I the computer guy and I look forward to seeing at the next class

Channel: Eli the Computer Guy

Views: 139,401

Rating: 4.9203186 out of 5

Keywords: server, editions, 720p

Id: OlUhfSRolIw

Length: 30min 30sec (1830 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 16 2011