I use it on the DCs in a test environment and I’ve never had any issues (as
expected – there’s less to go wrong). The better performance due to less
overhead is palpable. I also use it for Hyper-V, which seems a no-brainer
for that.
In production I don’t think it would fly here because people are just too
used to the GUI. Also, I have to admit that although everything was easy
enough to configure and get up and running, if something went wrong I would
experience extra anxiety because I’m so used to at least partially using
the GUI to troubleshoot and fix issues. For example, what if you have no
network connectivity and desperately need to sift through Event Logs? For
some people PowerShell may be good enough for that, maybe. However, with
the 2012 and later version, you should be able to add the GUI temporarily
if really needed, since it allows going back and forth between the two.
(I’m not saying this is a good way to manage servers!)
If you’re really comfortable using PS and the CLI for everything it seems
like the best way to go. At this point on Windows 2016, it seems that if
you want the GUI you need to install the whole Desktop Experience, which is
even more reason to use Core. (Hopefully that will change with the RTM
version.)
*From:* listsadmin@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:
listsadmin@lists.myitforum.com] *On Behalf Of *Ryan Shugart
*Sent:* Friday, January 8, 2016 11:21 AM
*To:* ntsys...@lists.myitforum.com
*Subject:* [NTSysADM] server core, actual experiences?
Hi:
One of the things I’m looking at doing in 2016 is migrating our
domain controlers, currently about 38 Server 2008R2 around the world, to
2012R2. Our DCs are just DCs, DNS and DHCP servers, I keep as much 3RD
party software off of them as I can. I’m really considering using server
core for all but a couple DCs, as I manage most of them remotely anyway and
the AD Powershell module seems pretty full featured in 2012R2. I’ve seen a
lot from MS on server core, but haven’t seen as much from people using it
in the wild in large scale deployments. Does it mainly work as
advertised? Any got yas other than the obvious 3RD party software issue?
If you’re not using it, why not?
Ryan
Ryan Shugart
Windows System Administrator
MiTek USA, MiTek Denver
303-723-4975
MiTek Holdings, Inc., 2011-2014, All Rights Reserved
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