Why Businesses Use Windows Server

In this video, I go over why businesses use Windows Server in there environment.

Active Directory
GPOs
Print Servers

AD alternatives
- Azure
- Linux AD
- None

GPOs alternatives
- switch to non-managed
- images
- Linux Desktop

Print Server alternatives
- CUPS
- locally managed

Next video is over what a typical Enterprise business runs and how to incorporate it into a home lab. .

[mrmasterofdiabloplay]

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?"

[kaede]

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.

[kellingc]

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.

[JamesWilson-pqqp]

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.

[salvaje]

Chris, Gillette wants to know you location.

[FrDismasSayreOP]

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

[elijahhmarshall]

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.

[xzxcowy]

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

[phsouzabr]

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

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

[Falador]

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....

[nielsvanaert]

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.

[stylianoslayranos]

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!

[nielsvanaert]

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

[joschafinger]

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.

[sleipnir]

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

[katanasteel]

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

[anova]

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.

[krzychaczu]

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.

[hugovilchis]

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.