In part one of our three-part look into Windows Server 2012, we took a deep dive into the new licensing options. Today, we’re going to closely examine what really sets the two licensing options—Standard or Datacenter—apart.

Enterprise IT leaders contemplating their enterprise’s journey to Windows Server 2012 are likely to set aside extra hours to assess the use cases for licensing the Standard or Datacenter editions. Many of them will recall the time they had to spend wrestling with choosing among previous Windows Server editions in all their variety. Windows Server 2008, for example, came in Datacenter, Enterprise, and Standard editions, each with its own licensing structure (per processor vs. per server), virtualization instance counts, and highly disparate feature sets.

The good news is that this time around, setting course—at least at the big-picture level—should be a bit of an easier process. Why? In a departure from its past approach to Windows Server licensing and features, Microsoft has created the Windows Server Standard and Datacenter 2012 editions that, in most respects, are two peas in a pod.

SOURCE: cio.com