Windows Server Reviews

I've used it with government applications to integrate and install with Shine server and Fire servers, enabling remote access. For some clients, we have developed and installed an integrated solution for about 500 users and are usually 'anywhere applications.' One client is a government permit office, and they use it for GIS applications and keep track of services.

I'm quite satisfied with Windows Server. I find mutual authentication and the environment useful. Over the years, I've seen some very good improvements in the Windows Server's quality and functionality.

I find ethernet configuration and implementation difficult. I would also like to see more reliable updates.

I have been using Windows Server for more than 15 years.

When compared to the legacy Windows Server, stability has improved. 

Windows Server technical support is good. Over the last 15 years, I've used Microsoft technical support maybe 300 times or less, and those experiences were good.

For the most part, the initial setup is straightforward. In my experience, about 80% of the implementations were straightforward, and about 20% were a little more difficult.

It took us about six to eight months to deploy the Windows Server for my client at the government permit office.

In our case, we primarily use Microsoft, so the cost is a lot less. But some of our customers have spent approximately $12,000 a year on the operating system license.

Windows Server is a nice product, but it does have some small problems. I would recommend potential customers to do some research first. 

It's a little more difficult to implement this operating system with functionality in the cloud. Everything, including the files and interface, keeps us in a Microsoft environment, and when moving applications to the cloud, some people might find it challenging.

They have training for all the features that Microsoft offers. Technology is evolving quickly. Although I've been in this market for 25 years, I can see that I'm getting a little bit left behind because of a lack of formal training in the new functions that Microsoft and many other companies are implementing. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Windows Server an eight.

I primarily use the solution for college assignments.

We are using it just to learn how to configure all the options that Windows Server provides for the active directory and basically all the necessary configurations. It's for enterprise infrastructure, so to speak. We are mainly focusing on group policy and remote authentication, the main controller, and all the functionalities that a Windows server provides through the access directory.

The solution, in general, is quite straightforward. A beginner could probably use it with ease. It's always more or less simple to understand how this works.

Configuring a group policy has shown to be not very straightforward. For example, one of our assignments was to create a GPO that should block any user of opening and/or downloading an MP3/WAV file, and the same for video files. It was very confusing to find a solution that would do just that, we had to test different approches, or ven combining policies to achieve something that resambles what was asked to do. The default template in the File Server Resouce Manager isn't enough.

I've only been using the solution for about two months or so. It's relatively new to me.

The solution is quite stable. It doesn't have bugs or glitches, nor does it crash. It's reliable.

The solution is scalable. A company shouldn't have any troubles expanding it if they need to.

There may be 50 or 60 users on the solution currently. They're all students.

I'm not sure if I will continue using the solution of expanding usage in the future.

We've never really reached out to technical support. Typically, we'll look to the internet to search for answers. We'll google and find what we need.

I didn't previously use a different solution.

The solution is not too complex. It's quite simple to install the components, and not very difficult to configure for the most part. We're just to start using it, and it's not so complex so far. Still, it has a learning curve. You have to get to know some basic concepts before you can really understand what you're configuring. Otherwise, you get a little bit lost.

The installation itself only takes about ten minutes or so. It's rather quick. You don't really need to deploy it, per se, as it's on a virtual machine. It's not a professional environment. Of course, it would probably take longer if you have to configure all of the necessary requirements for professional applications.

My colleagues and I handled the installation as a group.

I'm not really a customer. I'm just a student learning the ins and outs of the product itself.

We are using in virtual machines the Windows Server 2019.

I'd recommend this solution. It's quite complete. For a company that wants all the necessary components to administer their infrastructure and so forth, it's quite good.

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten. If they offered better documentation that wasn't as dated I might rate it higher.

We are primarily using Windows Server for monitoring purposes.

The most valuable features are the file transfer protocol (FTP) and the secure file transfer protocol (SFTP). These are both used for file sharing.

The reporting, event logging, and event management functionalities need to be improved.

Windows Server needs more applications from the monitoring and backup perspective. These are not incorporated yet. In previous versions, the backup software was available, but not now.

I have been using Windows Server for 10 years.

There are bugs that appear but Microsoft provides updates that can rectify the bugs or expand the number of features.

Most of the features are scalable. Windows 2016 and 2019 may be more scalable, but we have not recently upgraded the infrastructure.

Our customer has a small number of people using Windows Server. 

We began with using Windows Server and we are still using it. We are looking to migrate to Linux as well, but it depends on the infrastructure and the types of licenses. Microsoft recently began including lots of applications that require licenses, where they were not needed previously.

We are also using Ubuntu Linux and CentOS, which are open-source solutions.

Certain tools are easier to use, depending on whether you are using Linux or Windows.

The initial setup is straightforward and our deployment was completed in three months.

When we implement this solution, we start in a development environment and then move it to production.

Our in-house team performed the deployment.

The number of staff required for maintenance depends on the environment, infrastructure, and the type of activity that is being done.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The most valuable feature is its stability. We have had no problems with Windows Server and we plan to continue using it in the future.

This product has very good features.

I would like to see better integration with other operating systems. For example, when I migrate from services from Linux or Unix to Windows Server, it's hard to do. I expect it to be easier.

We began using Windows Server between 10 and 12 years ago.

This is a scalable product. We have more than 150 people in 20 different groups who use it. In my personal group, we have four people.

We have not faced any problems that we couldn't solve, so we have not needed to contact technical support.

I have worked with other operating systems such as Linux and Unix, and I find that they are more complicated.

The initial setup is straightforward. It takes between two and four hours to deploy, depending on the type of service.

We installed it ourselves and we have an IT staff of about six people that use it regularly.

We have a corporate deal with Microsoft and pay licensing fees annually. It is an expensive product.

Overall, this is a good product that is easy to use, it has very good features, and I can recommend it.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our use cases are usually data and analytics. We are building platforms for our clients to exploit their data. We are building the data curation. 

Also, the analytics for the front end, and the presentation of the data for the end-user.

The features that I like the most are that it's easy to use and the integration.

In terms of support, it's pretty complicated when you have to study the documentation.

It would definitely be helpful if the documentation could be more straightforward.

I have been working with Windows Server for eight years.

We are usually working with the latest version.

Windows Server is stable.

It's a scalable product. The number of users depends on our customers. Some customers have as many as 50 users while some others have 15 users. It really depends on the clients, but we're not in the thousands of end-users.

The technical support is pretty good. We have a good relationship with our vendor's specialists. We mostly work with Microsoft and some other vendors.

Overall, they are supportive.

The initial setup is straightforward.

It took approximately a month to deploy, but it depends on the number of installations we have. Some are larger and some smaller.

We need two or three staff members to deploy it. They are PDAs, they are infrastructure people who have the tech knowledge. 

We have a team in our organization that we call specialists to configure the server. They are tech-savvy, and they know all about the backend.

We are integrators.

There are licensing costs for this solution, although it's not expensive. Microsoft is relatively inexpensive compared to other database platforms.

I would recommend this solution to others who want to use Windows Server.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for our different applications.

We appreciate how many different applications can be on the server at any given time.

The solution is easy to learn. It doesn't take much training.

The implementation is simple.

The graphic interface is very nice.

The technical updates need to be improved upon. How they are delivered isn't ideal.

Technical support in and of itself needs to be better. The experience we have isn't very good. It's hard to get timely answers to our questions.

The system needs to offer better integration capabilities.

The solution's availability could be better in future releases.

We've subscribed to Windows for many years now. It's been at least over two, but probably longer.

The solution is stable. We don't have problems with reliability. It doesn't crash or freeze at all. We don't experience bugs either.

The solution can scale. If a company needs to expand, they can do so.

Currently, our organization has 3,000 users.

We may not continue with Windows. We're moving towards graduating to Linux instead.

I've dealt with technical support in the past and I can say that we are not satisfied with their level of service. They are slow to respond. They need to act faster to get us the help we need.

We have always used some form of Windows products before we began implementing Windows Server. We originally decided to implement the server as we felt it was simple and easy to use. It also had a good graphic interface.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. I wouldn't describe it as complex. It was rather simple. In terms of people getting trained on the system, it shouldn't take up too much time so a company can get up and running quickly. That said, the time it takes to deploy is directly linked to the training. However long it takes to get your team comfortable with it, that's how long it will take to deploy.

We had an IT staff of around ten people that assisted with the implementation. We also has a team that handles any maintenance as necessary.

As the implementation process was pretty straightforward, we handled it internally ourselves. We didn't need an external consultant or integrator to help us.

We've looked into Linux. We may move over to that in the future.

We're just a Windows customer. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I'd recommend the solution to other companies.

Overall, from one to ten, I'd rate this product at a nine.

I'm an ICT system engineer and we are customers of Microsoft. 

The most valuable part about nowadays Windows is PowerShell. They got serious and implemented a real console which was always lacking in Windows. 

Compared to Linux, Windows requires a lot of restarts. If you get a CU update every month, you have to restart. Linux is better in that regard. Sometimes the PowerShell has an overly complicated syntax. 

I'd like to see some more features in the Windows administration kit - the WAC. It's this new product you got on the server and if you have a website you can manage your entire machine. It's a pretty good product, but it's still lacking some features like reporting because it's always a problem to have a dashboard for all your Windows machines, because Microsoft wants you to buy SCCM and all their monitoring services. The WAC is pretty nice but it still lacks some features. It would be great if they would develop it further.

I've been using this solution for 20 years. 

It's pretty stable compared to the old Windows version, except sometimes there are problems with the CU updates. Maybe they should consider not employing so many updates and instead focus on the quality of the updates. 

From the numbers of CPU you can pop into your machine, it's really scalable, but you need to be aware that Windows still has problems with a lot of CPUs. Managing CPUs would likely be better in Windows compared to Linux. 

The initial setup is really straightforward, especially nowadays if you're using a WSUS server together with Microsoft deployment, you'll get it just perfect. It's faster than setting up the Linux box. 

I would recommend this solution but it depends on the software you are going to use it on.  When it's about a high performance web server, I would prefer Linux because you would choose to stick to engines as a web server and this product does not run very well on Windows, so you'd end up with Linux anyway.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We use Windows Server to host all of our Windows-specific applications, such as Active Directory. We also use it for our systems that are running Microsoft SQL Server, since it used to be dependent on Windows. That is no longer necessary because we have an option to run it on Linux, as well.

Our infrastructure includes systems from Microsoft, Linux, and IBM.

Windows Server is well-integrated into what we do. It even integrates well with remote working tools like Teams.

The most valuable feature is Active Directory.

Microsoft Exchange is very valuable for us.

I am quite satisfied with the user interface.

Recently, they added a new terminal window where you can SSH into Linux machines easily. The Linux packages that are now installed with the Microsoft Store can support a miniature version of Ubuntu and Linux integration tools. When installed, it can easily connect remotely to other operating systems.

Better integration with more platforms would be useful.

I have been using Windows Server for perhaps 15 years.

It is easy to scale up and scale down Microsoft products. Expanding can be done by adding more servers, or just adding resources to a single server. For example, if I want more processing power then I can add RAM or upgrade the CPU. Then if the load on a single server becomes overwhelming then more nodes can be added.

Another case where adding more nodes is done is to have replication between data centers for Exchange or Active Directory.

We have approximately 2,000 users that access their email and we plan to continue using it in the future.

Once in a while, we contact Microsoft for support on the product and they have responded well. There have been cases where the problem is too complicated to easily correct over the phone, so they sent a local technical from their support team to assist us in troubleshooting.

Overall, I would say that the support is quite good.

We have always used Windows Server, although, with respect to email and Exchange, we switched to Windows from another product.

Setting up Windows Server is quite straightforward and easy to follow, compared to other operating systems. The GUI makes it very easy to install both the operating system and applications.

The length of time required for deployment depends on the applications that are running. In most cases, we're deploying a single application and it will take perhaps a day or two. If we are deploying infrastructure like Exchange then it may take a week or two weeks to set up the whole Exchange infrastructure.

We used a local Microsoft certified consultant to assist us in setting up our servers. We had internal skills as well, so it was quite easy to follow.

We have a team of ten system administrators who handle maintenance, although they are not specific to Windows Server. Rather, they take care of all of the products in our data center. Given that we also have Linux and IBM infrastructure, I would say that we have three personnel who take care of our Microsoft systems.

This is quite a good product and one that I recommend. I wouldn't recommend anything that does not integrate well with remote working tools, as most people are now working remotely. We are able to manage our systems from home.

Overall, deployment is quite straightforward, the technical support is quite good, and we are happy with the product. That said, nothing is perfect.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.