I am going to run you through step by step how to download and install windows server and explain its benefits.
Firstly I downloaded windows server 2012 (or Windows server 8) from the 'DreamSpark' website as it is free for students of our University. It is the sixth release of the program.
System requirements:
Processor: Minimum: 1.4 GHz 64-bit processor
Ram: Minimum: 512 MB
Disk Space: Minimum: 32 GB
Once the file is downloaded run the install file.
Once the setup files are loaded, you will see the following screen. These can be changed to suit.
Then click "Install now".
In the following setup screen, you will see four options. Select Windows Server 2012 DataCenter Evaluation.
After you click Next from previous screen, Read the License terms, tick the "I accept the license terms" and click Next
Now It will ask you for the drive (or partition) you want to install it on.
Now once we picked our partition, clicking on next from previous screen will start the setup. This process might take a while.
Once the setup is done, it will restart and start your Windows Server 2012 for the first time. It will ask you then to set up a password for the Administrator user.
The setup will finalize your settings, might take a couple of minutes
Once you Log in, Windows Server 2012 will show the Server Manager
By using windows server it means that you dont have to buy as many licences for certain software that you may be using. Th4e software is simply licenced on one machine (maybe a virtual machine) and can be accessed from all other computers. Also data deduplication has saved companies more than 70 percent of their disc space by not having to store the same data on all machines.
