This video from ITFreeTraining will look at the minimum and recommended requirements for
Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Making the right choice for the requirements
will allow you to get the best performance out of Windows Server for your needs.
In order to install Windows Server 2012, you need to meet the following hardware requirements.
You require a 1.4 GHz 64bit processor, 512 Megabytes of RAM and 32 Gigabytes of available
hard disk space. The minimum requirements listed are for the
Essentials edition of Windows Server 2012. Microsoft has not released a general minimum
or recommend requirements for Windows Server 2012, as these values would vary depending
on what the server was being used for. Microsoft does however, release hardware requirements
for particular roles. For example, if you wanted to add the Active Directory Federation
Services role, Microsoft recommends 4 Gigabytes of RAM and 100 Megabytes of drive space. For
this reason, it is up to the administrator to perform their own research of what they
are planning to use the server for, and up the requirements as required.
If you attempt to install Windows Server 2012 with less than the install requirements the
install may fail. In the case of a virtual machine, Microsoft recommends that you increase
the amount of RAM to 800 Megabytes for the install. Once the install is complete, you
can reduce the install to 512 Megabytes.
32 Gigabytes of drive space is enough to install Windows if you have less than 16 Gigabytes
of RAM. If you have more than 16 Gigabytes of RAM, the system may have problems creating
the paging file, so it is recommended to increase the amount of drive space when using a lot
of RAM.
The install requirements are enough to get Windows up and running; however they may not
give the best user experience even for basic operations. For this reason, I would personally
recommend increasing the RAM and drive space. In our testing environment; we use 2 Gigabytes
of RAM and 100 Gigabytes of drive space. This allows us to install additional roles and
test them out. For a production environment, depending on your needs, you may even want
to go higher than this.
Lastly it should be remembered that the Essentials edition requires a network card in order to
be installed. If setup cannot detect and install device drivers for the network card, or the
administrator is not able to provide network drivers for the network card, the install
will fail. This can make Essentials difficult to install on a virtual machine; however,
you would not normally install the essentials editions on a virtual machine.
Microsoft also lists some optional requirements. None of these optional requirements will prevent
Windows Server 2012 from installing but are recommend to get a better experience from
Windows.
Firstly, Microsoft recommends a DVD drive. Nowadays there are so many different ways
to install Windows you can install Windows without a DVD drive. Software manufacturers
are, more than ever before, providing simple ways to download software from the internet,
eliminating the need for the DVD drive. If you have a lot of servers, it is often cheaper
to buy a single USB based DVD drive and use it as required rather than installing individual
DVD drives on each server.
The next requirement is a Super VGA or higher monitor. This essentially means a monitor
that can support 800 by 600 or higher. With remote administration becoming more common,
in some cases after the initial install and configuration is complete, the administrator
may never physically visit the server or only very rarely.
The next requirement is a keyboard and mouse. Once again, with remote administration becoming
the norm, this may only be required for the initial install. A lot of companies will save
money by purchasing KVM’s to reduce the number of monitors, keyboards and mice required.
If you decide to remove the keyboard after the install, check the Bios setting and make
sure the computer will still boot if no keyboard is installed. Some computers have bios settings
that will prevent the computer from booting if no keyboard is detected during boot up.
To ensure the computer will always boot after a reboot or power loss, make sure the Bios
is configured to not stop if a keyboard is not detected.
The last requirement is internet access. In some cases you may install Windows Server
on a secure network that does not have direct access to the internet. Windows Server will
still install; however, some features require access to the internet, for example to download
updates. However, using software like Windows Server Update Services can get around such
problems.
This covers the basic requirements for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2. The
basic install requirements are quite low and, with the low price of hardware, you should
be able to exceed these requirements, giving you a better Windows experience.
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