The assessment phase is an important step of any server migration
project. During this phase, you will assess the readiness of your
environment for the deployment of Windows Server 2012. A key aspect of
this phase is determining whether your current server hardware, and
hardware you plan to purchase, will support running Windows Server 2012
and the various server roles and features you need to deploy in your
environment. As this lesson demonstrates, performing such an assessment
can be done in various ways using different types of tools.
If your current server infrastructure is very small (only a
handful of servers), you can perform a manual assessment by using the
documentation that came with your server hardware, viewing and
recording server BIOS information, exporting system configuration
information using msinfo32.exe, inventorying roles and features using
the Get-WindowsFeature cmdlet of Windows PowerShell, and performing
similar types of procedures. Once you have compiled such information
about your servers, you can validate them against the hardware
requirements for the different Windows Server 2012 editions.
Windows Server 2012 editions
Microsoft has simplified the licensing model with Windows
Server 2012 by eliminating the Enterprise edition of previous
versions of Windows Server. In addition, the Standard and Datacenter
editions that are designed for midsized and large organizations now
have feature parity, and they are both licensed by processor plus
client access license (CAL). The only difference between the
Standard and Datacenter editions are the virtualization rights
included with the license:
In addition to the Standard and Datacenter editions, there are
also two other editions of Windows Server 2012 available that are
designed for more specialized use:
-
Essentials edition, which is intended for small business
environments and includes a simpler interface, preconfigured
connectivity to cloud-based services, a 25-user account limit,
and no virtualization rights
-
Foundation edition, which is an economical,
general-purpose server released through OEM channels only and
has a 15-user account limit and no virtualization rights
Note
REAL WORLD Windows Server
licensing
In the past, the licensing of Windows Server editions has
been a complex and confusing subject that often made it difficult
for organizations to determine how much they should budget for
licensing costs and whether or not they are in compliance. With
Windows Server 2012, Microsoft has simplified the licensing model
for Windows Server so that you can more easily determine how many
licenses you need to purchase to run the number of physical and
virtual instances of Windows Server 2012 you need in your
environment. For more information and examples of different
licensing scenarios, see the Windows Server 2012 Licensing &
Pricing FAQ at http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/D/B/4DB352D1-C610-466A-9AAF-EEF4F4CFFF27/WS2012_Licensing-Pricing_FAQ.pdf.
The minimum system requirements for installing the Standard
and Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2012 are as
follows:
-
A 1.4-GHz, 64-bit processor
-
512 MB of RAM
-
32 GB of available disk space
-
A network adapter card
-
A graphics adapter that supports 800 by 600 or higher
resolution
Bear in mind that performance depends upon hardware, and your
servers will need to exceed these minimum requirements to provide
acceptable performance in most scenarios. For example, if you plan
on installing MAP 7.0 on your server to perform an assessment of
your environment, you will need system hardware that meets the
following minimum requirements:
-
A dual-core, 1.5-GHz processor
-
2.0 GB of RAM
-
1 GB of available disk space
-
A network adapter card
-
A graphics adapter that supports 1024 by 768 or higher
resolution
In addition, the inventory, assessment, and reporting
performance of MAP are based primarily on the speed of the CPU and
the amount of available RAM of the computer on which MAP is
installed.
If you plan on purchasing new system hardware and deploying
Windows Server 2012 on such hardware, you can assess the readiness
of the new hardware before you purchase it by using the Windows
Server Catalog website shown in Figure 1, which identifies
system and peripheral hardware from different vendors that has been
certified for Windows Server 2012. For more information, see http://www.windowsservercatalog.com.
