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Windows Server 2012 Editions & hardware requirements.

This article gives a brief about the various editions of Windows server 2012 available:

If you are purchasing or downloading the ISO, there are only two editions of Windows server 2012 available . They are 

  •  Windows Server 2012 Standard Edition 
  •  Windows Server 2012 Datacenter Edition

As opposed to windows server 2008,  there is functionally no difference between both editions, ie clustering, hyper v etc possible in both. Also there is no hardware limitations between the editions. Only difference is in the virtualization rights. While standard edition licenses upto 2 vituial instances , Datacenter provides license for unlimited virtual instances.

There are other flavors of the OS that are available through OEM. Given below are the details :

  • Windows Server 2012 Foundation server 
  • Windows Server 2012 Essentials 
  • Windows storage Server 2012 workgroup
  • Windows storage Server 2012 standard
  • Windows Multipoint Server 2012 Standard
  • Windows Multipoint Server 2012 Premium
  • Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012

Among the above, Foundation server has a limit if 15 users , which cannot be expanded . Also it doesnt support virtualization. Essentials server can support upto 25 users,provides some basic backup/restore functionalities, but again no virtualization functionality

Hyper-V server 2012 is free to download, but doesn't come with any free virtual machine licenses.That means  the hosted Virtual machines should be individually licensed.

Minimum hardware requirements:

Proessor - x86-64
Processor speed - 1.4 ghz
Mem- 512 MB
Hdd space - 32 GB



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Comments

  1. VysakhNovember 20, 2013 at 2:27 AM

    Nice one for those who want a quick overview about windows server 2012 editions.
    Thanks for the post..

    ReplyDelete

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