Thread by @BadmusEdnut

Special thanks to everyone who helped and contributed to the #consonanceinfrastructure #infrastructure twitter chat series.

The essence of this chat is to encourage #infrastructure guys to want to do more. We see people doing big things with software development

And we want the same

Let's start with some Advantages of using Windows server.

Microsoft has taken a leap forward with WS 2012 for all users from system administrators to end users. WS 2012 is Microsoft biggest step forward since WS 2000

The list of top enhancements and features is huge.

1. GUI (Graphical user interface)- less install options
Microsoft has made server core the default installation for WS 2012. This GUI- less environment means that resources will be free for VMS and applications.

2. WS 2012 supports GUI and non-GUI interfaces, and includes the same tiled interface of windows 8 and windows phone. It's very simple to use a tile as a dashboard widget. This means that companies have the ability to build a flexible, easy-to-use management dashboard

3. Dynamic Access Control.
Network security has become increasingly difficult to maintain. In WS 2012, security is no longer at the basic file and folder level. Additional options are available, such as enforcing access at the domain level and applying policies to user roles...

Departments or even to users who connect for a specific connection.
Many organizations have started to use collaboration, which could lead to the accidental posting of confidential information. Thankful, WS 2012 has designed some serious upgrades to control this.

4. Storage spaces.
Many organizations struggle to afford expensive hardware storage area networks (SAN) or even their software counterparts. Instead of buying third party tools or expensive storage solutions, organizations can throw all of their cheap disks together into....

4 continue.. a large software pool, and create a virtual SAN and serve up virtual disks

5. Thin Provisioning and Trim. Instead of dedicating a large amount storage to a VM that may take a year or more to use, you should start small and let it grow in controlled amounts. This will reduce the storage waste and make the most of your resources.

5 continue. Once a project is finished and the data is archived, your storage may shrink. In order to support the reclamation of storage, Microsoft has created a Trim feature that locates unused storage and pulls it back into the central pool for applications to use.

6. Shared Nothing-Live Migration.
With WS 2012, the new shared Nothing-Live Migration allows you to move a VM between servers, however, the servers must be able to see each other via an Ethernet connection. Any changes during a shared Nothing-Live Migration are logged...

6 continue. and once the original copy is complete, the updated version will be applied to the source and destination virtual hard disk (VHD) files.
Once the sync is complete, the copied VM on the destination host is brought online, and then the copy on the source is erased.

7. ReFS. (Resilient File System)
ReFS brings windows server 2012 into the future with important capabilities such as support for large terabytes of data, and improved and automated healing. ReFS uses meta data to store information about files and provides various features..

7 continue. For auto correction and data verification.
Also, ReFS supports much larger volumes of data, which will be important with the rise of big data.

8. PowerShell 3.0. For those that love's command line..
Recently, PowerShell has gained a lot of credibility among administrators who want to script how reoccurring tasks are carried out. With WS 2012, Microsoft has released new PowerShell cmdlets, which means that busy...

8 continue. administrators can reduce their workload.
Also for those system administrators who haven't written a script before, there's a new PowerShell console and intelliSense. These features make writing PowerShell script a lot easier.

9. With Windows, you need less people: since it takes less time to do a task on MS windows, you can hire less people to the same tasks than on linux. You can work so fast and deploy many modules very quickly (Web server, a mail server, file sharing server..)

10. Backup.
It is easy to setup a backup strategy in WS & it is easy to restore a WS backup too. You don't need to be PowerShell specialist when you turn on the GUI function..

My Biggest challenge as a server admin is to managing bad users lol, impatient users. They expect you to have solution to everything at a short notice.

And I really enjoy WS permissions, granting controls and restricting user access.. Restricting bad Users
Lol

This brings us to the end of this session.

I will take questions now..

Thank you all for participating.
@ConsonanceClub
#infrastructure #consonanceinfrastructure