Reddit reviews Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials OEM
We found 1 Reddit comments about Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials OEM. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Full OEM Version of Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials Edition25 User limit and 50 devices – No CALs ( Client Access Licenses) requiredSimplified user management and easy file sharingIncludes PC backup and optional connection to Office 365
Cost. An OEM licence of Windows Server 2012r2 Essentials (the cheapest thing you can get) is $400.
Though this is /r/storage which is for enterprise storage so that cost should be negligible.
If you have access to Windows Server freely (through education or whatever) or you're just willing to pirate, Windows Server is less buggy than Linux/SAMBA if your primary purpose is serving files to Windows clients from SMB shares. Windows Server also has an NFS implementation that works just fine if you don't want to use SAMBA at all on Linux. The comparable solution to mdraid/zfs/lvm on Linux is Storage Spaces on Windows Server (which is what I work on).
If your front end is largely, say, OS X and iOS devices I would strongly suggest going with Linux/BSD and NFS/ZFS instead.
> 16GB flash drive
Too small for 2012r2. You need 32GB of flash minimum and you're a lot better off with 64GB.