Hi Reuben,
Thanks for the feedback, we are glad that you find the content useful!

Regarding your questions, if you do not have your own IT staff, you should consider moving to the cloud. This could include both your servers and productivity tools (O365). O365 is a very easy-to-use solution for email, give you licenses to all the Microsoft Office tools, collaborate tools, cloud storage and more.

If you need to manage your own hardware, then you should virtualize your environment (using Hyper-V) and run it on a Failover Cluster for high-availability. Here is Altaro’s guide: https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/failover-cluster-manager/

Be cautious when virtualizing your AD domain controller if you are running the VM on the cluster. A cluster uses Active Directory to start, and if the DC is in an offline VM, it cannot be started. This has been fixed since Windows Server 2012 R2, and you can find out more info in this Altaro blog: https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/virtualized-domain-controllers-4-myths-12-best-practices/

Let us know if you have any specific questions!

Thanks,
Symon Perriman
Altaro Editor

Hi Bob,
For your scenario you could keep you hosts running Windows Server 2019 and deploy Windows Server 2016 within your guest VMs. You can run a virtualized RDSH on Windows Server 2016 to retain support. You can find more information about this configuration from Microsoft here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remote-desktop-services/rds-supported-config

Thanks,
Symon Perriman
Altaro Editor

Hi Bert,
The Windows Server Standard Edition gives you a Windows Server license for the host plus 2 VMs. Yes, you could buy a second license to run 4 VMs. More info at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/product-licensing/windows-server

You should also consider whether it would make sense to buy a second host for this second license, so that you can then create a 2-node failover cluster.

If you plan to have more than 6 Standard licenses on a single host (for 12 VMs), you should get the Datacenter edition, as this is approximately 6x the price. Pricing info at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/windows-server-pricing

Please keep in mind that Microsoft licensing can change, so always check with your local supplier while planning your deployment.

Thanks,
Symon Perriman
Altaro Editor

We read them like it’s our bible.
: )

We are a small non profit and have been given access to windows software like MSDN Premium, 5 full licensed keys for server 2019 Datacenter, 50 keys for Win 10 Business, etc…. Stuff like that.

We have access to IT folks that can build whatever we need but I would like you opinion about how to build out a Windows Hyper-V host and all of it’s relative win servers needed as VMs.
We can, and have, already setup the Hyper-V hosts and have a few VMs running for various items.

But have yet to setup a VM for AD, DHCP and DNS.

Right now everyone is just usign “workgroup” mode but I would like to move them to domain eco system.

We have about 50 people that would use inside and outside the center (nonprofit) so OWA is a must although we are thinking about O365 as well even though we have used Enterprise/Business class GMail for 15 years.

Have you written anything like that yet?

Again, thanks for your help.

It really help us.

And we tend to be a hub for other non-profits so once we learn, we show others, etc…

Thanks.
: )
Step by step would be awesome for things like

Anyone got any suggestions for a way forward? The client companies are committed to RDSH – it is perfect for their use-case. One client has on-prem Exchange servers and the other is a candidate for Exchange online (eg E3). Thanks!

now I want to run another VM on that same hardware.
I just need to buy another 16 cores? or would I need to upgrade to Data Center (or move to another hosting platform such as KVM)?

The official statement is in the product terms: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/product-licensing/products
The turning question is: does the additional software or role only provide services to the local host, which includes VM operation, or is the service available to other operating instances, including the instances inside guest VMs? File servers, domain services, and the like all instantly forfeit a vOSE right. Web services might also forfeit a right, unless you’re only running some sort of site for local host management (like OpenManage).
In this case, “backup software” can fall in two different categories. If the backup software on a Hyper-V host is only responsible for that system and its own VMs (as VMs, not as a central point for OS-level backup software inside the VMs), then it’s fine. If it’s running the centralized backup management system for the company, then it forfeits a vOSE instance.

Do you have a Microsoft source on this statement? Saying that installing a backup software on the host uses up 1 of both VMs you can run on a standard, may impact lots of customers that think to get away with a single-host server and licenses for their vm’s, without even thinking about that 1 VOSE that will be absorpt on the host if you run anything non-hyper-v on it.

thx!