I think the days of win NT are gone. Win server has the same power options of any windows since Win2K. Guys why don't test it yourself on a VHD, instead of guessing? Deploying it is matter of 5/6 minutes on SSD, even less than W10.
Yes, this. (This is what I meant) My idea copy of Windows 10 is without the apps pre-install and without me having hack away to remove it all (or at least as few hacks as possible). But with the store so that I can add the apps I do want and with the possibility of some regular updates. Enterprise N LTSB was the closest thing to this, but it, of course, was lacking the store and regular updates. I found I could "live" with that, but it wasn't the idea setup.
Well, I kinda though you did, but I mis-understood what you meant, when you said in an earlier thread, "Just install it on a native vhd. The easiest way, or in a separate partition", I somehow equated the vhd comment with the Nano version. Don't ask my why. When you say VHD I'm guessing that you mean VMware Player or Oracle's VirtualBox. I think I'll just go with the separate hard drive, and it's own partition. Now that you have straightened me out on what's what, I'm looking forward to this weekend.
Backup becomes as easy as copying a single file Moving to another PC becomes as easy as copying a single file Deleting an OS becomes as easy as deleting a single file Partitions means wasting space, while (dynamically expandable) VHDs takes just the space needed You can boot dual boot from many VHD's using the others inside of a virtual machine, Hyperv is the most obvious but Virtualbox understands the VHD as well (not yet the VHDX, though) Just to mention few of them That's only if you create a static vhd (80GB takes time to be written). Better if you use the dynamically expanding flavor. The initilal VHD will be created in a coule of seconds, and will be enlarged while the data are really written inside of it. Plain expandable VHDs weren't not reliable as fixed ones, but the new VHDX format is resilient as a real partition (keep in mind it's supported only since win8). It's exactly the same as the initial menu during a traditional setup. 1 and 3 are core (Gui less) versions. 1 and 2 are Standard servers, 3 and 4 are Datacenter ones. In server 2012 and 2016 there isn't a functional level difference between standard and datecenter. It's just matter of licensing. For now MS provides the activation keys for datacenter and essentials (which is a different ISO), so install the image "4", if you mind to use it as a desktop OS. In win7 you need to use the dism.exe provided with the install media so instesd of writing Code: dism /apply-image /... just use Code: X:\path\to\new\dism\dism.exe /apply-image /... Alternatively you can use Imagex (easier syntax but you need to download it from the internet) you're welcome
Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 Windows Server 2016 Essentials Technical Preview 5 Of these three which would you say has less bloat running in the background? I would assume the essentials, but these days a naming scheme really doesn't mean much.
The HyperV has no GUI. It's just meant to run other machines inside it. So it's the less bloated, yes. But hardly is what you want. The server essentials is somewhat similar to the old home servers and small business servers. Essentials is intended as an easy to configure, server meant for relatively small corporations and also for home use, for people who runs an HomeServer, wants the remote access from the outside, wants a client machines backup and so on. A great product bot being mostly preconfigured it comes with a lot of roles and features that in the standard server are optional. So it's way more resource demanding than the standard version out of the box. But those aren't bloat, are services and features, very welcome for people who needs them. The Standard ISO contains the core and the standard servers, and also the nano (which is a separate WIM inside the ISO). Core and nano are GUI less, the standard comes with the W10 gui, and with a minimal initial configuration, only defender is preinstalled, but (unlike w10) can be removed from the server manager. Then there are a zillion of features that you can add, from the essentials role (see above) the hyperv, the deduplication, the iscsi target, the windows update serever and so on. In short out of the box it is (way) lighter than W10 but, if you want, you can configure it to run dozens of services and virtual machines. You can have configurations that may require 16 CPUS, and 128GB of memory or more, but I guess it isn't your case
I do want the desktop. So the GUI interface is my goal. Just want the least out of the box (less for me to hack away or disable). In that regard, I'm assuming the only difference between Standard and Datacenter would be the number of supported cores and ram (and price). They don't seem to be any different out of the box. Unless I'm missing something.
With that text you confused me when talking about standard and stuff. So from the 3 OS he listed you would say "Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5" is the least bloated one?
YES. And that ISO will give you the option to install either the standard with & without desktop or data center with & without desktop (four options). From a previous post, he told someone he recommended the datacenter edition (option 4). Which is basically the standard edition, but with different licensing (particularly with more core and ram support)
Yes I wrote it above. But given the serial providede by MS (for now) is about the datacenter, is better to install directly it or you will spend some minutes more for the edition upgrade.