Why Businesses Use Windows Server 

Gosh as an IT contractor I've gone into some situations and I think to myself "WTF were they thinking when they set this sh*t up?"

So much valuable information! Chris get your cert.s up to date. They are useful credentials to impress doubters. What a fantastic subject for a presentation. You could probably speak hours on it. And inspire coders to improve Linux servers by showing them what is needed.

Hello and welcome back from your holiday! Great video explaining all those tidious things a server entails! I hope you'll have time to explain the differences between zfs, btrfs and their home and commercial applications... Maybe a tutorial how they can be utilised in a home or a nas installation... Have a nice day!

Ladies and gentleman: witness the slow transition of a man, from clean-cut Windows Admin to full Stallman. ;)

My rules are pretty simple, if the business is new I recommend all linux servers, but if the business has some years under its belt (usually all windows server 2003, 2008...), I tend to leave it as it is... I mean, I can patch it, improve it, but I never overhaul it. Did it twice.... lesson learnt.

Don't hate the GPO, hate how an administrator utilizes them. The enterprise environment I'm in has several forests, and a few buckets for a domain object. The GPOs allows us to define security for foriegn nationals and isolate them from the restricted data, or define a role for a pc, and amon gd other things. You are correct if someone has on policy trying to manage all things, though. If a distro couldnoffer the granularity of the Windows GPO, and the framework if .net, then you will see companies moving over to Linux. Remember, Active Directory was Miceosoft's response to Novell's NDS.

Chris, Gillette wants to know you location.

Just recently switched all of my servers from Windows Server to Ubuntu Server, no regrets.

More about ZFS please! Maybe an overview on your favorite features, and a short tutorial how to setup a home server? Thanks!

HI Chris, great video . Have a question what would you use to manage linux desktops if you were to go all linux environment?

P.S.: To comment on the printer part, I've used TOSHIBA SMB+/ enterprise printers on my laptop and they work full feature using cups.. including things like stapling and punching. The same goes for KYOCERA. Not too sure about other brands. It works with printer sharing too, if you just use it as a reference object and attach Windows drivers. I've even seen it at a customer as replacement of the Microsoft Windows Print Server as it was constantly crashing with all the variety of drivers on it, where cups didn't have a single problem and just worked.

chris, please tell me why one site is telling me i can install windows server on any computer, while my motherboard manufacturer is telling me only windows 10 and rhl is supported and not windows server

What do you mean with "Linux AD"? Is that Fedora-DS (389 directory server)? Or something else?

I am so glad you turned down this road , since we're on the topic of windows server .. A video about creating VM pools and deploying the virtual desktops to the network, that would be great. I have not much experience with Windows Server and Hyper-V but I am interested in it, if not for anything else the fact that HyperV allows you to dynamically allocate Memory which is pretty huge. For everyone else I am not talking about storage I am talking about dynamically allocated RAM . I think it would be a useful video , even if someone wanted to mess around and pump out a few desktops sharing a powerful machines resources to less powerful machines for a home lab. The storage configuration is where is gets a little foggy for me. How to setup persistence locally and or across the network thinclients/fatclients NFS/SAN all the good stuff. I know I've asked a bunch of times for you to do this within Linux , something rhel based since your active in that community (rather it be Debian) , but if it has to be windows I'll take it 👍👌💪

I used to work for a very small company that used windows server. They were not using active directory, or even any virtualization of any kind, yet spent the money on windows server 2012 r2 and a dell tower server computer. It hurt my brain and soul how much money he spent on what was used as a nas and quickbooks server. -Edit Also i saw some comments about people shoving this stuff in a closet. Theirs was in a really hot non ventilated closet with a bunch of DIY wiring to add stuff that the business used. It was sketchy and kinda dangerous in there. Not to mention so so hot.

we just migrated our old fileserver (Server 2008) to Server 2019 via file replication. Is this really that bad? We use the fileserver so users get their own space where they can put their files. And also other Shares like "Groupshares". We often have the Problem that our login script fails to connect shares from the fileserver to the user's client pc. There isnt even an error message or anything. But thats pretty much it. Is there a better way to do this?

I see you're becoming a Linux senior, with that beard. Just kidding, awesome video once again!

Hey Chris, I have a question for you... Hope you can answer or make a video about it... First-off, I love the fact that an hardcore Microsoft Admin/User is even attempting what you are doing... Keep on the good work, it is worth it! Here is an intro, I was a backup admin on Active Directory for a year, and now, a full system admin on Azure AD. (The one included with business essential licences) The company is fully O365 integrated, with Sharepoint and everything... We are using O365 services to their limits (and have found many!). Microsoft being Microsoft, they always change the rules and we loose functionalities on a weekly basis... Also, as a side note, I manage the complete Microsoft infrastructure and don't Own a Windows computer... I do everything on Linux! The company is making a slow turn (powered by me!) in the direction of Free and Open Source solutions. Namely, we are slowly switching the dev team to Linux desktop because The dev environment is a nightmare on Windows and WSL... Here comes the question: Azure AD, Sharepoint, O365 etc. makes it sooooo easy to manage users that I am spoiled! What would you use to build a business based on Linux? For Groups, User Management, Authentication, etc... Basically, I want to be able to deploy new users in the blink of an eye, Like on Azure (auto-deploy users environments) and be able to lock users in or out in a click (or command) Like Azure permits... We are slowly deploying web services on docker containers on a swarm... So far it has been great, but it does not help with the desktop apps etc. Thanks for your input.

So what's wrong with DFS? The latest iterations of Win svr (16/19) are solid with their replication topologies. How would ZFS handle file and share permissions (any better) in an AD environment? And what about syncing these ZFS repositories across different sites?

I know you're not kine on Windows any more (and so do I) but you made a very honest and objective video as to why businesses still use Windows servers

What market share LINUX/Widow :) in servers sector?

Thanks for helping me with my assignment

What certificated do you have

What is the Linux version of group policy?

Hi all. I'm young IT Admin. We have about 80 clients windows laptops in call center. Our company sits on Windows 2012r2. I'm planing to replace them with windows 2022 standard with GUI and run on it 2x hyper v VMs with windows server 2022 standard. One for AD, GPOs, and the other for SQL server and Internet faced interfaces. Is it good idea to go with Windows serwer 2022? Or would you go with something else? I was also considering full cloud but in 8 years time on-prem is cheaper to run.

You forgot to mention Microsoft Exchange, I work in IT and lots of our clients still use it. We try to push them to the cloud but they persist to keep their old exchange boxes....

Any chance of a video (or 2 or 3) talking about Chef, Puppet and SaltStack as viable alternatives to MS Server GPOs?

well, I am new to servers, still, haven't decided which ones to start with, this video was a piece of good information to stumble upon, thank you!

c. 04:07 : In schools it's so much easier... With my Ubuntu box I usually need about three attempts until I figure out how to use the WiFi-enabled printer: first one comes out in the dean's office, second in some department other than mine, third in the staff room, where I wanted it. All of the copies just as advertised, even if not necessarily in the right place. Meanwhile, my Mac-using workmates wonder how much it'll cost them to install the app and Windows-users look at me like I was some kind of magician. Sure, printing exams and worksheets for middle-school kids is way easier on the software than booklets and stuff. But having one person dedicated to the tricky bits, or a print shop you can send stuff to by email, should be able to take care of that most of the time.

So Question, I understand the need for business but why do you need Windows server on things like a Dedicated server? I don't have any users, it's mostly for my own use, I'll be installing basic stuff like Chrome, probably just that.

Hey Chris! I really liked this video, could you make more videos about M$ products alternatives like FreeIPA, OpenLDAP, etc? Thanks 👍

GPO < RSYNC + custom config Files. Also how does linux farms are managed without GPO ....

Very interesting point of view. I'm also looking forward for Linux solutions to get rid of AD and GPOs.

I'm not super familiar with web hosting, but we are using IIS for two things: Chocolatey and a bespoke company intranet written in C#. What would be a better way to host those services? Edit: I should note that the intranet also uses SQL server, but I believe that can be run in a container (drawbridge?) on Linux?

I'd like to see a video on large scale linux based configuration management systems. What do you think of Canonical's Landscape project, and things like Puppet? Thanks.

I take it a bit differently: 1. .net development heavily relies on Microsoft infrastructure especially when it comes down to integrating with security database integration(development for one group implement both in AD Level, sharepoint and exchange). 2. manageability in larger scale giving a more wholesome solution to a business which make it easier to manage in terms of enterprises and outsourcing. as far as i aware in linux administration things are more fragmented and it could be less obvious how to combine several systems. 3. due to a platform being more used it lead that there is bigger base supporting it from past usage and active people who can support it. it also means it is more well known to third parties and there is bigger place as result for third parties tools . 4. hard to migrate from existing systems. while possible it often not economical to migrate the servers and in other cases doesn't worth the hassle the 2nd and third reasons it is also why there is less adoption of linux for general application, it is more manual and not necessarily as discovered for general application as windows. It is a vicious feedback loop(that is a self-justifying system) but it is how technology adoption operate and can be seen in why industries shy away from changing existing standards or giving alternative standards.

One of the issues with Windows in general is that "Windows is best at solving windows problems" if one gets out of the mentality that Linux has to solve stuff you need to do in Windows environments in the exact same way Windows does it, suddenly you find solutions for everything. Puppet, rsync + scripts, and even good old "ssh host cmd" can help to reproduce GPO's for Linux workstations. On the I need to run some Windows desktops front, you can use Samba 4.x it has both AD and GPO's that you administer using the Windows Remote Admin Tools from a windows computer, just like you would do on regular AD. The only thing I struggle with to replace is the Exchange calendaring and collaboration tools, Postfix + Dovecot do a terrific job as a super performant email server, but regarding the calendaring and collaboration things, polls, meeting requests, tasks and the like are Missing.

Thank you, Chris. Some Canadian federal offices still use COBOL.

I worked in an organization with people who had this fanatical belief that you had to put all your settings in just a few GPOs, rather than having granular ones, because "it is too slow otherwise". I mean, maybe that was true 25 years ago, but not now. The environment needed a total revamp of GPOs and settings, and I did that. Pretty much singlehandedly. In order to have policy "flow" down as it needed to, I had to have granular policies. Plus, obviously, I was able to name the GPOs descriptively.

Curious why do do prefer 2016 over 2019. 2016 had that patch issue where it took forever to do updates. 2019 fixed that.

In the company where I work we have 50 percent in Linux and 50 percent in Windows. The only reason why we can't drop Microsoft is because AD and GPOs. There is nothing in the open source (even in the red hat space) that can beat the simplicity or even all the functionalities of that products.

Samba 4.x is a full Active Directory replacement, including GPO using RSAT to manage it from a remote computer.

In post soviet space windows servers are used mostly for one thing: accounting/ERP with access through rdp. Sometimes for hyper-v (what an awful experience) and active directory... and nothing more really.

I use two Windows servers 2016 to hold up the right side of my desk in the server room. They are not plugged in.

Yeah, inexperienced admins especially create gigantic group policy objects and cram everything in there. I mean, there's a sweet spot somewhere in there on how much you split that out, too many rules can affect loading times, and of course you should disable the part that isn't relevant (either the computer settings or user settings, depending on what you're doing). I had to sort one such situation out myself. And they had also set it so that restrictions that should only take place on specific computers happened on *all* computers. Terminal servers and laptops should *not* have the same GPO's... it was pretty bad. But it's hard to live without group policy, as you say, if you have Windows clients. As in, almost undoable. And right now, windows clients are the norm.

I witness a huge decline of UNIX and GNU/Linux and a rise of Windows Servers in the Enterprises. My understanding is that Microsoft has heavily invested in making sure that IT graduates are so much vendor locked that all that they know is Windows, Visual Studio, C#, MS SQL, Active Directory, Azure, etc. that the large enterprises become almost completely locked up with M$. 15 years ago you needed a security step-out to deploy a Windows Server in the environment. Nowadays, you'd rather need architectural step-out to deploy anything else than WS on Azure. But everything is cyclic. I foresee a big inhousing back to on-premise DCs, and hopefully back to UNIX/GNU/BSD.

Hey Chris, if you were to create an entire small/medium business environment entirely on Linux, which distro(s) would you use for server and desktops, and why?

A few years ago I had an Intel NUC. Installed Lubuntu on it and setup a folder on the desktop and shared it. Right away it was working everywhere, Windows sharing was such a pain with user permissions, even with "everyone' I still sometimes could not see it, yeah..

Very interesting point, the question is while on the server it looks like no one is using windows server like they used to, on the background things are still pretty much the same. Microsoft worked very hard to facilitate integration and migration of many of the old legacy application to cloud or containers. But also you will be surprised to learn that many of the big enterprises still use file old school ntfs for file services and storage, although now there’s an added bonus which works pretty good, file deduplication released since 2016 has made things a bit easy and cheap azure back ups means fault tolerant is easily achievable and sysAdmins can now sleep peacefully

Can you create a windows server 2016 course playlist? If you have time.. Like how to install windows server,ADDS,DNS etc..

What about DNS and DHCP?

You forget to mention executives and their silly freebusy to set meetings in Outlook. Without it the CEO will always say no to leaving Windows. Executives love Outlook and their precious archive pst folders

Being using and still use GPOs for simple things, force a wallpaper, disable usb usage, map drives etc. And i have it per department. Usb GPO for accounting department is separate from the one that is assigned for management. I've being wondering, why cant a man just export all that work and import it on a new system, and i dont just mean servers. Pcs as well. I made the config and when i have to rebuilt a pc i have to do it all over again. Doesnt happen often but its a pain. As far as file sharing, couldnt agree more with what you said but hey, not my equipment. I just work on it. For some reason companies feel more legitimate paying licences for servers, stations, users. They kind of like it. When they see that you are using linux, you are some kind of a weirdo even though their web server, ftp server and mail server run on CentOs. Being looking at proxmox for VM and thinking of giving it a shot. Ever used it? It would be cool if you did and know your way around to make a video about it. All of my VMs now run on Hyper-V. Thinking of experimenting a bit on that. Built a pydio server just to see how its done Btw, windows need IIS if you want to run a windows ftp server. Win 10 as well

You would be surprised at how many companies use iis for hosting sites and FTP/FTPS. A lot of my day is dealing with customer's iis set ups.

The L-3 factory in Greenville, TX, went totally Linux years ago; all LDAP!

I work for a particular US State's government. We still have IIS as the de-facto web hosting platform on the majority of our servers across all of our departments. (we're talking hundreds of servers here.) I'm not a fan of it, but it's what we've got both because of legacy applications and the massive presence of .NET developers. If I had it my way, we'd be running Apache-based web-servers using either PHP or Python, but it looks like things will end up going the .NET Core route, which I believe can run on its own somehow? idk.

Hi guys! I have a problem during installing Linux mint 19.1 when i wanted to install Linux i got an issue that says efi file system has crashed. What can i do with that? Tryied from an USB drive.

Is there Group Policy alternative with GUI on Linux?

Thanks!

There are application specific servers (MSSQL, Microsoft CRM, etc.) that still need it

ZFS is not based on BSD (Free or otherwise). One could argue that Solaris (System V Release 4) had the original BSD as part of it's base (The other two were System V and Xenix.), but the BSD releases we know today (OpenBSD and FreeBSD) are derivatives of the original BSD code. ZFS was created by SUN Microsystems. They also releases an open source license of it with the OpenSolaris. This was later removed when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems. The open source version of ZFS has been ported to many OS versions such as Linux, MacOS and BSD. It's now maintained as OpenZFS. I run both Solaris and Linux platforms using ZFS, and I can easily say that the Solaris version of ZFS if far more stable and functional than the OpenZFS based ports.

The Oracle OS with ZFS is not based on FreeBSD. It’s a SVR4 UNIX system, It’s called Solaris (SUN Microsystems made it)

A lot of small business deployments seem to come when they pick an ERP or accounts system that's fully locked into Microsoft (windows server, msSQL, AD). Between that and the army of consultant/resellers convincing them Linux is hobby stuff and MS is 'the real thing' they've got most SMEs.

What about Windows Deployment Services, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) or System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

Only for AD. 2nd reason- Hyper-V is quite user friendly and feature rich too compared to kvm & others. (Very small biz size >5 users case)

My company does .Net development and so our clients mostly use Windows, and sites we create are still hosted by iis either locally or in azure. Until .net core comes closer to parity with Windows .net framework I see a lot of software and custom stuff still being windows based. That said there is this contingent of people who are pretty convinced MS is heading towards a Linux kernel based OS. Ultimately this seems to me like it would be good for Linux.

As someone who screws with Windows server 2012R2 setting things up to learn about them I can confirm... *GPOs ARE A PAIN IN THE HECKIN' ARSE!!*

What Linux cert would you go for?

Man I have created my own SMTP provider on Windows Server 2016 about a while ago, then it works very well and I don't have any problem except the delivery status, I got the emails into the JUNK folder. I asked a friend to solve this problem but he told me that I need to set the SPF, RDNS and MX-Records to get a high rate of email delivery, I hope to find me a right solution for this issue :)

Before this video even starts I'm gonna guess Active Directory and Exchange

$20000 Server but they only ship software for windows???? so basically only a third of the Software all other printers come with?

You will have a neckbeard by then. Great information. Thanks, Chris!

I still have to use iis because the software we use is written in .net

what are the clouds made of?

We use iis for a production web site today

Isn't Ansible a good alternative for GPOs?

Great video, thank you!

U agree with the GPO setup. My current company does the bad way , one or two gpos for everything...I tried to suggest them to change it to something more sustainable and they outright rejected it...

Cabonite evault is a windows app for backup... so that is why we store on windows servers.

Many admins still use IIS for websites

Hi, Chris ! Nihao (Chinese salutation most common) !

Windows servers are good at Hyper-v, AD, DNS, and you are right about GPO's & Firewall Rules! there are a lot of windows admins that do not practice their craft and use best practices! Powershell basically to me is open source mgmt without looking at a gui! But again their are better Linux Alternatives!

the healthcare realm still uses windows server heavily!! And iis!! At least that’s my experience with a lot of major hospitals

use windows server 2012 just because linux is such pain in but to work with , was never able to make smb work after a reboot or work at all , , never manege to make linux connect to windows machine to just do backups , and remote desktop dose not work well with linux ,

Can you do home cloud like drop box video setup. Share dir in windows 10 sucks.

Chris, you mention Linux Desktop as an alternative for GPO's ? Could you elaborate ?

5:08 Sir, that's wonderful. I want to ask why a company needs a windows server to manage printers, instead of using the printer directly?

Please do a new comprehensive series on ZFS vs hardware raid vs software raid.

Just to mention the most popular ones: Exchange, Sharepoint, SQL, WSUS...within an OnPremise environment. I'm also curious how Linux could impelement its own Active Directory solution but maybe it is not going to happen in the near future. I like to use Windows for work-related things and for gaming but I'm a big Linux fan since several years. ;)

Largely agree, you forgot exchange server...

Will you please do a (honest) video about how Linux does get viruses? Also what is the difference between a Linux distro and Android?:)

what is file replication?

Just an all around good rant even if us gaming nerds understood about 1 % of it 🤔

You keep confusing Group Policies, preferences and the actual objects. The idea is correct but it's being stated incorrectly

The way I see it, you can save on man-power to maintain a Windows Server environment as it's not a difficult system to maintain (most of the time), but your savings go to licensing. On Linux, you save on server software (I mean, 90% is free), but you pay a lot more for sysadmins who need to know their way around such system. I'm happy to maintain my Linux workstation because it's a machine for my sole use, but I wouldn't feel as confident in maintaining a Linux server. Troubleshooting in Windows is easier since 99% of issues are caused by updates, which you can identify and research (I have a Microsoft Offenders list above my desk with the latest troublemakers). To troubleshoot Linux, it takes a vast amount of knowledge about the kernel and operating system; far greater than what a typical desktop Linux user needs to know about their system. Admins with such knowledge and experience are not easy to come by, and they're definitely not cheap. You don't have to be a genius to maintain a Windows server, and the learning curve is so much gentler compared to Linux. But if you're willing to learn and are brave, you can achieve far greater feats on Linux.

GPOs is what makes windows administration great. Windows is a dream to administrate when you have thousands of endpoints.

I work in information technology and use server 2012 on my two servers. I really like windows servers so user friendly.

Entrenchment. Folks have had a Windows system for a long time and just don't want to change. Or, the admins don't have training in other systems and so they just continue using Windows.

As a curiosity, why the dislike for 2019 vs the love for 2016? My experience is the other way around, at least in our environment.

Your content is so legit and high quality