What has Windows Server 2008 brought us?
With the growth of businesses, we see the need for technology in the workspace increase as well. Businesses now acquire the use of networks based on servers, more so than in the past. Many aspects of a business are now electronic as we are attempting to become a “paperless” society. Microsoft understands the needs of these corporations and growing companies, technology wise. In 2008 they launched a product that would assist in the securing and proper sharing of the needed information. One February 28, 2008, Microsoft released Windows Server 2008. This hit the market in different editions as well as with vast improvements from its predecessor Windows Server 2003.
The editions that Server 2008 comes in are; Web, Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter. The main differences we can compare between these have to do with the number of processors, amount of physical memory, and the features supported. To begin with the Web edition is for computers that are serving as Internet or intranet Web servers. Although it is comparable to the other editions; it cannot function as an Active Directory domain controller and you are not allowed to run client/server applications that are not web based. The maximum amount of processors that Web Edition can support is four. This would be suitable for a small Web based business, which doesn’t need the high-end additional features for their network.
The Standard Edition is close to being a full edition of Server 2008. It carries with it the main components and features needed but doesn’t entail some of the pricier additional features like Hyper-V for more than one image. Just as the Web edition, the Standard edition can support up to four processors within the server. Some of components not included in this edition are; hot add/replace memory support, Cross-file replication and Active Directory Federation..