How to buy a small Windows server for home use ?

MoneyMoney

Regarding the MSDN I think you are over thinking it. If you have a commercial use absolutely you require the licences but if this is test stuff then you will be fine. It won't matter if your MSDN licences are revoked or they don't pay the bill, once you install and activate you will be fine. To be clear I have been through a dozen M$ audits and passed them all, they never once looked at any test or lab servers, if it wasn't in production it didn't count.

System

Neil_Jones wrote: »

I don't think this even needs a Windows Server.

I was able to run MySQL, Apache and similar on my six year old laptop and it ran happily. IIS can be added to Windows 10 Pro as an optional feature as can I believe Active Directory, though of course bear in mind all home versions of Windows cannot log onto it.

Can confirm it doesn't need to be Windows Server to run MySQL as a server. It also doesn't need to be powerful as the systems my former employer was deploying in casinos were 6/7 year old Dell Optiplexes and some of the older stuff coming in for service from places where space was seriously restricted were actually Intel Atom micro-PCs.

SSD is the thing you need, not raw CPU power.

warehouse

Could you install Ubuntu on to your main PC then run VMWare from that? Yes you'd need Windows licenses for images but as others have said there are trials available. Is your MSDN licnese an open value one? If so then you are able to use all software from MS up to the date the agreement expired without an issue.

WobblyDog

To answer more questions, the server has an Intel Core i3 540 3.06GHz processor. I think the main bottleneck is disk I/O (some of my databases are quite large) so more RAM is probably required. I plan to carry on using SQL Server at home, as long as the developer edition is cheap or free.

Microsoft's current pricing for Windows Server makes me wonder if they've given up trying to compete against Linux in budget server market, and maybe I should stop trying to run Windows Server at home.

EveryWhere

WobblyDog wrote: »

To answer more questions, the server has an Intel Core i3 540 3.06GHz processor. I think the main bottleneck is disk I/O (some of my databases are quite large) so more RAM is probably required. I plan to carry on using SQL Server at home, as long as the developer edition is cheap or free.

Microsoft's current pricing for Windows Server makes me wonder if they've given up trying to compete against Linux in budget server market, and maybe I should stop trying to run Windows Server at home.

Think about SSD as suggested, if it fits with your setup.

Otherwise, increase RAM and install Server Standard using the existing licence, in order to be able to address more RAM.