Standard or Enterprise? 1

[Davetoo]

Looking to begin my migration...not really sure which version I need.

Currently running 2003 Standard...so my assumption is to go with 2008 R2 Standard. Nothing fancy in my environment, just file server/print server duties on the network as our business functions are run from an AS/400.

Any compelling reason to go with Enterprise over Standard?

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

There are no more PDC's! There are DC's with FSMO roles!

 

[58sniper]

Do you need anything that Enterprise gives you? You didn't mention if you were going to use RTM or R2, but

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/r2-compare-roles.aspx

shows a pretty good breakdown of features.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[Davetoo]

Going with R2, as I indicated, but I just don't see what Enterprise would give me over Standard...I did read the comparison, just looking for real world experience.

Thanks.

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

There are no more PDC's! There are DC's with FSMO roles!

 

[58sniper]

Unless you were going to try and cluster something, then I would stick with Standard for plain file & print services.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[chriscj21]

Hi All,

As per previous posts, there are very few functional differences between Standard and Enterprise. Feature-wise; yes, 2008 (R2) Standard will not allow failover clustering. The BranchCache Hosted Solution will also be unavailable. I highlight both these points as you've mentioned 'File and Print' as server purpose.

May I ask your reasoning for migration? If scalability is a concern, you should consider the additional memory that can be addressed as part of a 2008 Enterprise deployment:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...physical_memory_limits_windows_server_2008_r2

ChrisCj21: CISSP, MCITP, MCSE+S

 

[Davetoo]

I'm virtualizing as many servers as I can and consolidating existing physical servers/roles into as few virtual servers as I can at the same time. So I'm going to build out new 2008 R2 virtual machines and migrate the roles over to them. Print server, Intranet server, Cisco ACS, RSA SecurID...basically everything that isn't disk resource intensive.

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

There are no more PDC's! There are DC's with FSMO roles!

 

[chriscj21]

There are some neat features to 2008 Enterprise for Hyper-V Clustering. A comprehensive walkthrough below:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732181(WS.10).aspx

I believe R2 also allows for 'Live Migration' which is similar to 'VMotion' from VMWare.

I'm not sure of your availability requirements / scope of project but possibly these could be considerations?


Regards,



Chris

ChrisCj21: CISSP, MCITP, MCSE+S

 

[Davetoo]

The problem is I can't buy any new hardware. I have an IBM 3650 with 4TB of DASD that I'm trying to leverage as best I can.

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

There are no more PDC's! There are DC's with FSMO roles!

 

[chriscj21]

If this will be a single server solution, future proofing is not a requirement and you can handle the 32 gb limit on memory then Standard seems a logical choice. I presume this approach would cost your company less too.

You'll require a level of testing / benchmarking to ascertain how many of the VMs you can run on a single box.



Chris



ChrisCj21: CISSP, MCITP, MCSE+S

 

[jpm121]

If you're looking toward virtualization, I can't imagine why you'd pay for Standard licenses. One Enterprise license allows you to run 4 virtualized instances of 2008, so depending on your pricing with Microsoft you're getting 1 or 2 VMs free. Or, if numbers make sense, Datacenter edition is the way go to (pay per CPU with unlimited Server 2008 VM installs running).

 

[Davetoo]

I'm running XenServer.

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

There are no more PDC's! There are DC's with FSMO roles!

 

[kmcferrin]

The licensing restrictions remain the same regardless of the hypervisor that you select (Hyper-V, Xen, vSphere, whatever). Keep in mind that Windows licenses are tied to the physical hardware, regardless of whether you run virtual instances. So if you are running Xen:

1 physical server with Windows 2008 Standard gets you 1 Windows Server VM
1 physical server with Windows 2008 Enterprise gets you 4 Windows Server VMs
1 physical server with Windows 2008 Datacenter (licensed per CPU) gets you as many Windows Server VMs as you can cram into it.

If you are running two physical servers for high availability/failover, then you need to license each server for the high water mark. In other words, if you need to host 8 VMs across two servers AND there is the capability (through failover, maintenance mode, performance-mandated migration, etc) to run all 8 VMs on just one of the nodes, then you need to license each server for 8 VMs. That could be a total of 16 Standard licenses (8 per host), 4 Enterprise licenses (2 per host), or Datacenter licenses (1 per CPU per host).

Again, the hypervisor that you select is irrelevant, the Windows licensing stays the same. The only difference is that each Standard and Enterprise license also comes with one physical license in addition to the VM licenses, so you can run one copy to get Hyper-V and then use the VM licenses for the number of VMs that you have.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Windows 7
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

 

[Davetoo]

Now that's a good piece of information! Is the Datacenter per physical CPU or would dual quadcore processors requires 8 Datacenter licenses?

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

There are no more PDC's! There are DC's with FSMO roles!

 

[Davetoo]

Cancel that...got hold of my vendor and it's per physical. This will save me a ton as I can purchase two Datacenter licenses for about $5k and run a mix of Windows 2000/2003/2008 servers on it.

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

There are no more PDC's! There are DC's with FSMO roles!

 

[jpm121]

For future reference, here's a handy calculator from MS that will show the breakeven point for each type of license.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/howtobuy/licensing/calc_2.htm

It's labelled for 2003 but still applies (it's linked from the 2008 R2 licensing site).

 

[kmcferrin]

Yup, Microsoft's per-CPU licenses are based on physical socket count, not core.

Right now wee have 4-core and 6-core CPUs, but imagine how cheap it gets to virtualize when you're using 8-core or 12-core CPUs...

Also, the more nodes that you have in your virtual farm, the more likely it becomes that Datacenter is the right licensing option.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Windows 7
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator