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I will be purchasing a vps soon and I there are two possible operating system that I can use, Windows Server 2012 Standard and Windows Server 2008. The vps will only have 1gb of ram. Memory wise what would be the better operating system.

Thanks,

2 Answers 2

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Even though this may not be a very good question. The clear answer without a doubt is Windows 2012.

Windows 2008 has no advantages over 2012 in terms of low-memory scenarios.

Windows 2012 on the other hand, was designed more than ever, especially with virtualization scenarios in mind where limited memory or hypervisor-enabled dynamic memory is available.

PS: Both operating systems will run with 750MB of RAM.

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  • In my lab I squeezed a fully functional AD DC plus DNS into 512MB of RAM using Server Core 2012. I don't think that would have been possible on 2008 R2... Jun 30, 2013 at 1:54
  • @MichaelHampton Indeed. If you enable Hyper-V dynamic mem. with a lower limit of 512MB, a Server 2012 server will page everything out until it consumes only 512MB of RAM... however, I've found in my own tests that you gain a lot of performance if you set the min. to 750MB just so that not as much data gets paged out to disk. Just setting the min. from 500MB to 750MB or 1GB gives noticeable gains in responsiveness in my experience.
    – Ryan Ries
    Jun 30, 2013 at 1:57
  • Yeah, it was functional at 512MB, with one user and one computer joined, but I wouldn't run it that way with any significant number of objects. Jun 30, 2013 at 1:58
  • @MichaelHampton I think that may have something to do with why an "extra small" VM deployment in Windows Azure is given 750MB of RAM.
    – Ryan Ries
    Jun 30, 2013 at 1:59
  • Yeah I currently have a Windows Server 2008 Vps with 512mb of ram and it's pretty slow.
    – sidy3d
    Jun 30, 2013 at 1:59
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Besides the operating system, other applications have to be taken into account when you consider RAM. Applications like:

  • Exchange (minimum: 8GB)
  • System Center Configuration Manager (minimum: 8GB)
  • System Center Service Manager (minimum: 2GB, also with at least two processor cores)

Also, if you're running Hyper-V, you will have to take into consideration the RAM consumed for each virtual machine. So it's not simply OS - it's also what you install on top of the OSes.

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