up vote 2 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

We have a test system built with Windows Server 2008 64-bit Standard edition.

We're about to create a production environment. Aside from the guidance that it is a good idea to keep test and live as closely sync'd as possible, is there any reason to, or not to, install Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit standard edition instead?

This is for 2 SharePoint farms, running on 10 VM's, with 24 cores and roughly 128GB of memory in total.

link|improve this question
71% accept rate
One difference is that Hyper-V version 1.1 is now only about 3-4 years behind the competition :) – Chopper3 Jan 29 '10 at 14:22
It's cruel to keep rubbing our noses in what we can't have, Chopper! ;) I suppose a fair question would be whether you're considering R2 solely for the host, or if this question also applies to the VMs and Sharepoint? – Kara Marfia Jan 29 '10 at 14:25
1  
ESXi is free though don't forget ;) - actually I have on-site MS support engineers who support our MS apps via W2K8 VMs on Fusion on their macbooks - seriously! – Chopper3 Jan 29 '10 at 14:28
Aah i run ESX as the host, so this is for the VM's. – Bravax Jan 29 '10 at 14:33
feedback

2 Answers

up vote 0 down vote accepted

Here is the link to Microsoft's official "whats new in Windows 2008 R2" document:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/whats-new.aspx

I think the biggest change affecting SharePoint would be the upgrade to IIS 7.5, but so far I haven't really seen much of a difference.

link|improve this answer
feedback
up vote 1 down vote

I haven't yet taken the plunge, but I'm anxious to get my HyperV servers bumped up to R2 for the virtualization performance improvements I've been reading about. You didn't mention whether you're using that or VMWare, but I suspect you'll be happy down the line if you deal with the R2 upgrade now, rather than after it's in production.

I'd do it now, but I don't think you're shooting yourself in the foot if you don't.

It's a bit rah-rah-MS, but informative.

link|improve this answer
I'm using VMWare ESX, do you have any nice links to what you were reading? Thanks for replying. – Bravax Jan 29 '10 at 13:46
Ah, then the improvements probably won't change much for you, I'm afraid. I believe they only apply to HyperV. Pretty sure I saw it in an RSS feed (maybe bhandler.spaces.live.com/feed.rss ), but I'll link a halfway decent summary above. – Kara Marfia Jan 29 '10 at 14:21
Bravax, make sure you're on VC 4U1 and ESX/i 4U1 before moving to R2, there are updated vmtools with those that directly address R2 ok. – Chopper3 Jan 29 '10 at 14:32
Thanks Chopper, I'll see if our hosting providor is aware of that. (or if we can use that version.) – Bravax Jan 29 '10 at 14:49
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.