What needs improvement with Windows Server?

Active Directory should have groups and policies. It could probably provide a better overview of how Active Directory is built.

The administration interface should be more user-friendly. Some parts of the administration interface have been upgraded, while others are old-fashioned. The vendor must update everything with the same user interface and make it more modern.

The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required, considering that there has been an increase in the tool's licensing costs, especially the ones required for virtualization. The scalability of the product needs to be improved, considering that organizations may have an increase in resource requirements.

The product's pricing needs improvement.

Windows Server needs to improve its speed and stability.

Windows Server could improve its integration with cloud and hybrid environments to better adapt to modern computing needs.

Windows Server needs to improve stability and pricing.

We encounter issues related to the product's UI when multiple users access the same machine. Additionally, sometimes it doesn't work while upgrading patches from Microsoft. This particular area needs improvement.

The stability could be improved.

It would be nice if it was more user-friendly, especially for migrating applications.

More security features would be great.

The solution's licensing cost is expensive and could be improved.

Windows Server should lower pricing.

The product's user interface upgrades and firewall services need improvement.

They could provide a lot of patches for the platform.

The solution should improve its stability. After some updates, one of the KBs faced issues while booting. On boot, it started boot looping randomly. The solution is very rigid. Whenever we want to make changes that are slightly out of the ordinary, we have to do them manually.

There is room for improvement in terms of pricing.

Windows Server could improve by improving technology modernization.

What I'd like to see in the next release of Windows Server is for it to have faster updates.

While I would say scripting needs improvement, I've noticed that they started to do this couple of years ago. They do have their own WSL and PowerShell Scripts. Generally, there is always room for improvement. However, nothing comes on top of my head right now. For countries in the Middle East and Africa, their pricing is a little bit high. Microsoft is having unified pricing across the globe. That's an issue. They don't negotiate on that. It's very expensive for many countries in this region. They have something called Windows Server Core, and it doesn't have a graphical user interface, which is fine. However, there should be a management console or something that you can hook up to Windows Server Core so you can manage it much easier if you need UI or something.

The on premises to cloud migration should be easier.

The upgrade process for this solution could be simplified and made more straightforward.

Windows Server could be improved with cheaper licensing costs.

As for additional features, we are very interested in the new feature released by Windows: Azure Virtual Desktop. We are currently exploring it so that instead of people depending on their own desktop, we could work on Azure Virtual Desktop. Integration with Azure Virtual Desktop would be cool.

In terms of what could be improved, I would say the Active Directory synchronization on Azure. This is something which was not easy to do. Using Azure Active Directory, I was trying to sync and this was not straightforward. This process could be more simplified.

The solution's licensing price is on the expensive side. This is an issue which Microsoft should address right away.

Windows should add some more compatibility tools to Windows Server.

Windows could add more tools to monitor the health of the server.

I would like to see better performance and more integration options in the next release of Windows Server.

There is a need for improved security.

I can't speak to any missing features. I don't have any opinion on how to improve the product. The solution needs container compatibility. Windows Server is not able via Docker, for example.

It would be nice if the the Windows Defender feature would be enhanced to be similar to that of other antiviruses or endpoint features on the market that have whole and individual features and are reliable. At present, Defender cannot be relied on independently. Another endpoint must be installed. It would be better could we rely on the more compatible endpoint features that already accompany Windows. There should be inbuilt endpoints, such as we find with Linux, Unix, Apple Macintosh and other browsers, which don't require the installation of additional endpoints. Patch updates should be less frequent. Instead of them being put out daily, they should be put out weekly or monthly. If the storage is not installed on the SSD hard disk, it affects the performance. I am not referring to the processor, RAM or GUI, just the storage. Windows 7 worked fine on the HDD. The security should be improved. There are many services on the Windows Server which are enabled or started by default and this is unnecessary. Xbox would be an example of this. These should be removed. Only the minimum number of services needed to get the solution up and running should be included. The existence of services means open board and this opens one up to hackers and attackers. As an IT person, it should not be my role to come up with workarounds for such occurrences. This should be in Microsoft's domain.

The security policies need improvement. The port mapping and the backdoor entries need to be improved. I would like to see improvements with the security policies and there should be some other policies inbuilt with the server addition.

The security could be improved.

Windows Server needs to introduce more dashboards. A common user is not able to implement this solution. It could be simplified.

Windows Server could improve by having a faster browser, IE is too slow. There are better alternatives, such as Chrome.

The stability needs to be improved. I don't find it to be very stable. It's something they need to work on.

It is not fast and is very slow. Versions before 2002 are not stable. It is not easy to use, and it could be cheaper as well. Windows Server could use low resources and have automation abilities. Automation and implementation could be changed to work better with other systems. It needs be easy to integrate with other cloud and open source systems. Generally, people want to use open source systems because Windows Servers don't integrate easily.

They should release a command-line version of the solution.

Windows Server could be more user-friendly.

The integration and monitoring could be improved.

Security and vulnerabilities could improve.

The solution is not easy to use and could be simplified. Additionally, the solution could have better integration.

The scalability could be better.

The solution needs to be more stable and secure. Linux servers are much better in terms of stability and security and are better at thwarting any form of cyber attack. You stand a better chance if you're on a Linux box if you get hit. Not that they don't get attacked. However, Windows is a high-maintenance operating system. You have to keep it up to date almost all the time, and you also need to have a lab to test your updates as some of the updates could actually break the environment. There is a fine line between keeping it updated and breaking it.

In the next release, I would like to see better pricing.

When it comes to virtualization, VMware is a bit more advanced in terms of security. Hyper-V does provide facilities, but it probably has to do a bit more work in terms of encryption. People will normally go for VMware because of the features that it has as a server, particularly the virtualization feature.

While it is easy to use, it could be easier. The performance is good but we have had some issues when we use virtual machines. Loading and processing a lot of data leads to memory-related issues. As such, while the performance is good, it could still be improved. We are using version 2012 and it could be that other versions have improved this feature.

There should be the ability to add other databases to be installed and configured instead of going to other virtual machines. They should be better integrated so they are all in one place.

It requires a lot of monthly maintenance in terms of vulnerability management, which is the downside. I would say the biggest improvement could be improvement in the vulnerability space. Every month we get critical vulnerabilities across the Windows Server fleet. If I could see the volumes come down there, that would be the biggest step forward.

The solution is not easy to use. The solution could be more stable. It's an aspect they could improve on in future versions. The solution could be more scalable and flexible. The solution needs to offer better documentation and more training to its users. This would help customers better understand how to use the product effectively.

The only problem we have faced is when we are upgrading the solution it is complex.

It is not easy to use. It can be more user-friendly to make our routine work a bit easy. It could also be cheaper.

In regard to the next release, I would like to see a more scalable solution. I would also like to see any future developments on the market because there was a time when most companies would run away from centralized authentication systems, like Active Directory — they moved to cloud solutions. If the service could be better integrated with the Azure Cloud, I think it would be a plus for Windows.

It could be more secure. We don't like it because if you compare it to Linux, Linux is better.

Sometimes we face some overload on servers. You need to request one of the IT to assist as there is no way that you can do a remote session on it. They need to intervene directly on the server. It has to be done manually. We also can't intervene ourselves as there is no way to log in remotely to the servers. That's why IT needs to get involved. It's a pain point for us as all you can really do is wait. In a future release, it would be helpful if there were more tools to help us do some performance testing. The last time we needed to look for tools online and choose some third-party tools to analyze how the application is performing. If they could instead provide us with pre-installed tools, that would be better. There are some but they don't really give you the information that we are looking for.

We had some complaints about the initial setup.

Stability-wise, there is room for improvement.

In the future, there should be better protection for this solution.

It would be nice if the solution was a bit cheaper. The product is a little pricey.

It would be better if they had more security features and fewer bugs. They can also improve their technical support.

The security is not good. Windows Server has never been secure. You have put firewalls in place and do other things such as installing anti-virus software to secure Windows, otherwise, it won't work well. Windows will never be secure, but it should be.

I would like to see easier implementation and better customer service in the future.

It could be more secure. We can't compare it to other products because they have their own security and all those things. When it comes to email security, there are issues. Microsoft products used to get hacked all the time, but we're still comfortable with that.

I think integration with Linux operating systems would be a great idea, as well as focusing on the simplicity of running containers in the Linux environments. I think this would be a requirement for the next generation of applications running in .NET and Microsoft programming languages. Microsoft should expand to integrate the Windows Server with Azure and Linux distribution to provide a simple container environment for running dockerized applications.

I believe the solution needs to be more secure in the future.

The stability could be improved. The scalability could also be improved.

A lot of attacks are monitored however, there are a lot of things coming into it. This is why we need to provide more security with respect to the Linux platform. There's more security on Windows and not enough on Linux. The licensing for the solution is expensive.

The solution would be better by implementing more security and integration. Among some of the additional features, I would like to see in the next release are more integration and security.

I'd like to see more features and more functionality to the Microsoft operating system. The solution should be able to connect remotely and create a safer channel between the user and cloud assets, or through the internet. It's one of the biggest challenges we've had this past year. There are a lot of companies competing with each other to apply these features due to the pandemic. For additional features, I'd like to see something like third-party applications that would create a hub to receive a connection from outside. It would handle all types of servers to enable remote access for the user from home, so they can safely connect to the system and check in if there is an emergency. You know that the SCADA system is a critical system and you can be considered on-call and notified at any time. It would enable a remote connection rather than the need for long procedures to connect to my network. It could have a third-party authentication so we could connect to the server safely.

When it comes to the performance of this solution others are slightly better such as Linux. This solution promotes its services only, in some of the integrations, it does not support external ones.

The solution could have better security features. The pricing is a bit high. Linux has better pricing. They should try to make their product more competitively priced.

The initial setup could be easier. Right now, it's more difficult than it needs to be. The solution is rather expensive and could be more affordable.

The stability is okay, however, it could be better. It's an area that they could improve on if they wanted to.

The solution could be cheaper.

The initial setup could be simplified.

It could be more compatible with other platforms. The compatibility and the ease of use are areas that I would like to see improved.

It would help if Microsoft made it lighter to run on the servers and made troubleshooting much easier. I have to deal with unexpected errors and faults that happen in Windows. It also crashes. When it's a big environment, especially in an industrialized environment, we see unexpected errors. They create instability, or unexpected errors happen in the infrastructure. You need to restart the server or restart the services. You don't know the root cause of these errors.

The solution is easy to use mostly but some features can be hard to understand for customers.

There are lots of improvements that can be brought by Microsoft, although for us Windows Server works mostly as expected. For how we're using Windows Server, security is a top priority, so when talking security, it can always be improved upon, no matter what. Then there's the performance side, which is not bad, but we are currently looking to increase capacity and we have found that we need to enhance the hardware to get the performance we are looking for. Because of this, we are going to be refreshing the hardware and moving to new infrastructure in the next few weeks.

The license model needs improvement. It would be better if the license had a longer lifetime. This may be a feature that is already in place, but I like to see a monitoring feature for the desktop.

The patching could be better within the solution. There are many updates, however, if you compare it with other parts of Windows, the patching has a different management structure. The scalability could be improved a bit.

It could be more stable. Windows has certain problems that Unix platforms don't have. It requires more administrative effort as compared to Unix. I don't know why Microsoft has not changed that. It generates a lot of trash data, so slowly and steadily, you find more and more space being utilized. There is some kind of administrative load, which doesn't happen with Unix.

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

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.

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 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.

Windows Platforms become rather complicated. We started with the Windows Platform because they simplified it, but now, it has become quite complicated. The administration has become quite heavy and also the specialization. We are a rather small factory, not a big system. We are small with a thousand employees, and we need a simplified environment. In the next release, I would like to see the administration simplified.

Windows Server could be more secure.

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 would like to see the security features improved in the future.

The user interface could be simplified. Sometimes I feel like there are too many things going on at once. It should be easier to navigate and find the functions that I am trying to implement.

The price should be reduced.

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.

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.

They can simplify the utilization and control of the system when you have a lot of setups. They provided something called Windows Center or Control Center in version 2019. It's a free tool that comes with the Windows Server. You can install it on your desktop and use it. This tool simplifies the control and monitoring of all servers. If I have 200 servers, I don't need to log in to each one to configure it. I can manage them from this tool. However, this tool needs quite a lot of improvements. It's difficult to use, and they need to improve it.

Better integration with more platforms would be useful.

Right now what is needed on the server-side is an easier release process. Every year or every third year they are releasing a newer version and it could go smoother. The solution lacks a few features here and there. Although they've done a good job updating security, there's more to be done, and they should continue improving this aspect of the product.

The command-line interface should be improved. Using the command line is less-resource intensive so we use it sometimes. The additional RAM and CPU usage needed by the GUI is something that we were not used to after using Linux. When I switched to the command line, I found it more difficult than Linux.

The pricing aspect of the solution needs improvement. It could be lowered. Over time, the pricing itself has fluctuated, and now, especially pricing around mobile aspects of the solution really seems to be driving everything up. They also need to work on the license model for virtualization. The solution could offer higher availability. Users would benefit if the solution offered better management features.

The security should be improved, specifically from port security & Allowed protocols,The improvement should retire all marked ports & protocols as a security breach to enhance platform risks & stability . Overall, from a security perspective, Microsoft needs to improve. The Server platform GUI seems to take up a lot of resources unnecessarily.

It would be great to have support for direct USB recognition for the virtual machines. This will allow us to easily move files from a USB drive connected to our host to one of our VM's without having to mount and share a drive trough the network to move the files.

One area that needs improvement is the management console. It seems very easy to use but it is not as powerful as those of other vendors, such as VMware. Their solution allows for operation in a more granular and simpler way. For example, there is a wizard to migrate a VM from one node to another, or from one datastore to another.