The Difference Between Server 2008 Standard and Enterprise?


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Hi everyone. I am planning to upgrade the server at our office to Windows Server 2008 when R2 is released. From what I've found, the only difference I can find between Windows Server 2008 Standard and Enterprise is that Enterprise has "Failover Clustering". The difference in price is huge.

My question is two fold, as I really don't want to get the wrong version for our needs.

1) Would someone mind explaining Failover Clustering to me and if it's an important feature?

2) Is there anything else that is included in Enterprise that is not in Standard that I should know about? I'm also interested in other's thoughts on this. The cost is a big difference, so I feel like I'm missing something. Would Standard be sufficient?

Thanks Again,

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Ytterbium has posted some great links, I'd seriously take the time to read them.

However the shortest answer to the question is this, if you don't know that you need Enterprise, you don't need it.

As a learning thing, make the decision of what you need, if you want someone to check your requirements, just list off what the server's for and what you think, and I'm sure someone here will be able to confirm whether you've picked the right OS>

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if you don't know what clustering is you don't need enterprise. If you don't have a hardware requirement to support enterprise you don't need enterprise.

Clustering allows you to support databases across multiple servers or san's.

Example I have a server in wi and a server in pa, they both host an exchange database, if one goes down the other takes its place seemlessly, when the primary comes back it switches back to the primary. It is solution that has the ability to always be up, which is critical in a 24x7x365 enviornment and can't have noticeable down time.

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First, thanks everybody for your responses, it was REALLY helpful.

1) check out this :

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008...g-overview.aspx

2) If you look here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008...pare-roles.aspx

&

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008...pare-specs.aspx

You can see Ent has higher end hardware support and higher capacity for connections etc...

Thank you very much for those links. I'm reading through it now and trying to Bing some of the stuff as I don't know what some of those features actually do. I had been on the Microsoft site (That's how I found out that it didn't support Failover Clustering, but hadn't found the links that you had provided. They were much more helpful than what I found, and I'm sure they will prove invaluable. I do wish that Microsoft had a description of what these features were on these pages though, as it would make things much easier... Oh well... LOL

if you don't know what clustering is you don't need enterprise. If you don't have a hardware requirement to support enterprise you don't need enterprise.

Clustering allows you to support databases across multiple servers or san's.

Example I have a server in wi and a server in pa, they both host an exchange database, if one goes down the other takes its place seemlessly, when the primary comes back it switches back to the primary. It is solution that has the ability to always be up, which is critical in a 24x7x365 enviornment and can't have noticeable down time.

Thank you VERY much for your response and help. That's a very good description, and helped me a lot. It sounds like then that I wouldn't need Enterprise, as it sounds like that's the only feature not in Standard (Aside from some stuff in the links provided by Ytterbium that I'm still trying to decipher. Our previous servers have all been set up by staff that preceded me, so this is a bit of a learning experience for me. I'm a developer, not an IT Guy... LOL

Also ask you're accountant what in the budget... you're gonna wanna know!

Thanks for the response. You're not kidding. The difference between Standard and Enterprise is just astounding. That's why I figured I would ask, because I felt I had to be missing something. The links provided by Ytterbium showed that I definitely was.

Thanks Again everybody. :)

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You pay a lot for high availability which is why it is labeled "enterprise".

Yeah, which does make sense now that I know what that does. I couldn't understand it. I had read online some about it, but it wasn't clear to me what exactly it accomplished.

It's a really cool feature, and I can definitely see the benefits in it for those that need it, but it isn't something I would be using, so I guess Standard's probably the way to go for me. Barring anything else I see that I would need.

Thanks Again,

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  • 3 months later...
Yeah, which does make sense now that I know what that does. I couldn't understand it. I had read online some about it, but it wasn't clear to me what exactly it accomplished.

It's a really cool feature, and I can definitely see the benefits in it for those that need it, but it isn't something I would be using, so I guess Standard's probably the way to go for me. Barring anything else I see that I would need.

Thanks Again,

If NOT using high availability, why not using Windows 7 instead for a fraction of the costs?

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If NOT using high availability, why not using Windows 7 instead for a fraction of the costs?

Simply because windows server can do more than file sharing. AD, DNS, DHCP, Centralized GPO's, Centralized User Account Management, Security based on group memberships, and provides the base for other services (exchange, SQL, etc). There is a lot that a Server OS was specifically designed for which any Windows Desktop OS does not have.

I will give you an example. Pete is a member of Accounting, and John is a General User. You don't want John to stuble across Pete's files, but both of their files reside on the same server. To lock John out of Pete's files, you apply not only share level security but also file level security, so that even if John was able to find out what the share is (using a hidden share would be best in this scenerio), John wouldn't get anywhere.

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Simply because windows server can do more than file sharing. AD, DNS, DHCP, Centralized GPO's, Centralized User Account Management, Security based on group memberships, and provides the base for other services (exchange, SQL, etc). There is a lot that a Server OS was specifically designed for which any Windows Desktop OS does not have.

I will give you an example. Pete is a member of Accounting, and John is a General User. You don't want John to stuble across Pete's files, but both of their files reside on the same server. To lock John out of Pete's files, you apply not only share level security but also file level security, so that even if John was able to find out what the share is (using a hidden share would be best in this scenerio), John wouldn't get anywhere.

Thanks for your response. I have those things covered but ....

Now I want to add a lot of servers with WCF based services (without the need of IIS). All servers will act independant and location is of no importance (some will be in the same network segment, some are located in external datacenters). The services will use BasicHttpBinding.

Only thing we came across is the default setting of 10 concurrent connections for WCF services. In the WCF config we increased this default setting to unlimited.

Summarized: I have the need for a lot of extra "simple computers" just running our (in house developed) services and I want to know if anyone knows of more limitations we could came across.

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Hi everyone. I am planning to upgrade the server at our office to Windows Server 2008 when R2 is released. From what I've found, the only difference I can find between Windows Server 2008 Standard and Enterprise is that Enterprise has "Failover Clustering". The difference in price is huge.

My question is two fold, as I really don't want to get the wrong version for our needs.

1) Would someone mind explaining Failover Clustering to me and if it's an important feature?

2) Is there anything else that is included in Enterprise that is not in Standard that I should know about? I'm also interested in other's thoughts on this. The cost is a big difference, so I feel like I'm missing something. Would Standard be sufficient?

Thanks Again,

Be sure to take a look at the number of licensed CALs!!!: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008...us/pricing.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008...-licensing.aspx

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Thanks for your response. I have those things covered but ....

Now I want to add a lot of servers with WCF based services (without the need of IIS). All servers will act independant and location is of no importance (some will be in the same network segment, some are located in external datacenters). The services will use BasicHttpBinding.

Only thing we came across is the default setting of 10 concurrent connections for WCF services. In the WCF config we increased this default setting to unlimited.

Summarized: I have the need for a lot of extra "simple computers" just running our (in house developed) services and I want to know if anyone knows of more limitations we could came across.

So start your own thread, don't hijack this one.

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I just took a look at the MS pricing page and am not too pleased. I new enterprise was expensive, but I didn't realize it was THAT expensive. I guess that shoots my plan for setting up failover Exchange 2010 mailbox servers in a DAG (since that requires, in this case, 2 Ent licenses).

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I just took a look at the MS pricing page and am not too pleased. I new enterprise was expensive, but I didn't realize it was THAT expensive. I guess that shoots my plan for setting up failover Exchange 2010 mailbox servers in a DAG (since that requires, in this case, 2 Ent licenses).

That also requires two exchange licenses, at least thats what MS licenseing told us for active/active/passive.... we built a 3 node cluster and gawd it was expensive for mail and file shares.... (high availability was a must)... 3 ent licenses, 3 identical servers, and a shared storage system for the Quorum drive and drives got outragious in price (did fiber channels to a san, redundant fiber channels, redundant fiber switches, redundant SAN controllers)... then 3 enterprise exchange licenses (back then there was a 16GB limit for the file stores in standard and we needed at least 32GB for our one file store)... we spent tens of thousands of dollars on this..

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