To give you my take, there is no need to have Windows server in the home if you do not use Windows. Even then, if you are not administering systems, then there is no real need. If you want single sign on, you could use Samba-AD like me to get things jiving between the unix-like systems and the Windows systems. Other than that, while hyper V is nice, you can get similar functionality [read not necessarily ease of use] out of other solutions without having to pay the MS tax.
Again, it all depends on using the right tool for the job, but I rarely see people running a full MS Windows stack in their home lab for personal use outside of studying for a certification or learning how to do something for work. You may be surprised to find that a workgroup and powershell scripts works good enough for most home use.
Might Windows Server be a lower barrier to entry for people less interrested in min/maxing their setups, and an easy-mode interface which is familiar ?
As for actual use case, I could understand if one had a large family and did roaming profiles, storing them centrally so single place for backups, and pick-up-and go on any of the computers, but I come from a large family, and we just used our own computers, with central shared storage.
That’s a completely valid use-case. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I know the term “normie” gets thrown around when people don’t want to configure and compile their own linux kernels, but there is something to be said for familiarity.
That’s precisely why I’ve used Windows Server at home in the past. I no longer use any server stuff at home, but at the time it was a lot easier for me to go from Windows to Windows than it was Windows to [Distro].
I don’t know if it’s really a lower barrier to entry. You don’t go from just being a power user of windows to setting up a domain controller without spending some time learning. At that point you could also be learning Ubuntu.
I don’t see a use case for windows server at home (not to be confused with a “home lab” type of environment).
Even if you had “a big family of technofiles” like 7 people with their laptops + a few desktops you could still cache credentials for network file shares and local web service.
I probably wouldn’t want all those people and machines at home relying on some janky home lab “ooh I got a rack” setup either. I’d prefer a pair of regular - production worthy proxmox hosts and then maybe one other smaller node to help with etcd and ceph and other consensus/voting based stuff.
Really good question. Depends on the usecase really.
What I would do is run Linux on the hardware and virtualize windows. You will have best of both words and that way you can use ZFS for storage. There is nothing hindering you in presenting a ZFS ZVOL to a windows VM using iscsi if you somehow want to use windows file sharing instead of samba.
For me there is no need for a Windows server when it comes to my home lab. My main reason for a home lab is to test out different things like Kubernetes, Openstack, different Linux distributions an so on.
Having a Windows server with a full AD/GPO and all that makes no sense since it would only be able to manage/benefit a tiny part of my envionment.
My setup today is based on a Proxmox cluster with hyperconverged Ceph storage, it is really redundant enough to run my “production” workloads, and of course also all the experimental stuff.
Setting up the proxmox environment is so easy that anyone with basic understanding of server and network environments could do it.
Finally, I think people that are interested in setting up home labs in the first place are not the ones looking for the easiest point and click experience anyway, for me it is more about learning how stuff really works, and then you have to dig under the hood, no matter what products you are using.
“Why would one run windows server? Give me reasons - I don’t know why”
to
“What should I run in my home-lab”
There are reasons one may want to run windows server, as above. These are irrelevant really vs. what to run in your personal home lab for personal use. The question was posed in the context of “people are running windows server - why?”
As to myself - I run either KVM or VMware. Because I don’t have windows installed on bare metal. But this thread isn’t about what I run at home - it’s “why would I run windows server”
I see people using the AD / GPO justification exhaustively but samba-ad-dc easily brings those capabilities to the table with a quarter of the hardware resources needed plus its so easy to enable RFC2307.
Also some of the arguments I’ve been reading how marketable Linux are skills in this thread are very 2005-ish. There is plenty of enterprise demand and support for Linux and Unix systems in the corporate space. Having Unix and Linux skills will give you a huge edge over the other candidates while knowing only Windows might put you in competition against a greater number of people.
It doesn’t though. Linux doesn’t have the majority of GPO available to it. You can only replicate existing GPO so you still need windows server to start.
A windows DC will run in 2 GB of RAM (i have several serving real users in production with 2-4 GB for a 40 site domain). Or less in a test/dev/lab environment.
RAM is cheap
Also, if you’re running a modern hypervisor that does memory page sharing (e.g., ESXi, probably hyper-v) then most of that memory can cover multiple VMs as well.
Samba-ad-dc will happily run in a Raspberry Pi 3 and serve dozens of users which is a lot more than you will find in your default homelab (which normally consists of one geek).
Sure, but then you need a Pi - and physical networking to get to the rest of your lab. The RAM in your main workstation should cover that, and if not you’re talking less than the cost of a pi in extra memory. And you’ve also got the convenience of running your entire lab in one physical box using virtual switching.
Sorry but in the real world RAM really isn’t a reason to not run windows (to do windows things at least) these days IMHO. RAM is cheap enough that for a typical lab setup it doesn’t really matter for basic stuff like that whether its on linux or windows.
And if its something non-trivial where the OS does matter (e.g., you’re labbing up say, exchange or SCCM or whatever), you’re tied to that OS anyhow…
Yeah, that I’ll give you, but if you run everything as VM templates, standing up a new lab environment is a case of cloning a few templates and running some scripts. In a way it will make you run through setting it up multiple times and automating stuff
Again… the OP was “why do people run windows” not “please can people tell me ways i can run windows services on something else”
I don’t think rsat is going to suddenly unlock all of the GPO that samba doesn’t have at it’s disposal. You’re welcome to set it up and prove me wrong.
Windows server has more in its arsenal than just AD + Group Policy, but the original arguments I had go back to ‘depends on what you wanna do with it’. I think you’ve just skimmed the thread and missed the domain forest for the trees.
So if you can run windows services on something else, then that’s NOT something that only Windows can do. I think that’s a fine rebuttal. I’m sure if you went full Windows, you would have a great time. I want to know if there’s any reason you HAVE to use windows.
