Choosing a Windows dedicated server will provide you with your own environment that can be used for the installation of applications and components on the Windows platform that may not otherwise be available with Windows shared web hosting.
Windows provides a platform on which you can use a number of different proprietary applications and services that are only available on this OS and this is the main driving force behind the demand for Windows hosting products; example of this include websites developed using ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server databases.
A dedicated server can provide you with a number of opportunities to customise your web hosting experience to meet your individual needs because you can adapt the resources and hardware that forms your dedicated server to form something that no other business is going to be using; you may wish to choose a more powerful CPU so that your server is able to perform more calculations per minute or on the other hand additional hard drives in RAID configuration could be a necessity for you.
In any case the one way in which you are going to be accessing your Windows dedicated server is through Remote Desktop so that you are able to perform these operations and more from the comfort of the Windows GUI.
Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2012 is the latest release of the Windows operating system for the server environment; with this release there have been many new features introduced that have put the emphasis on managing multiple servers and simplifying a number of tasks related to these processes.
A number of changes and updates have been introduced to the Hyper-V platform, a feature that is used widely by web hosting companies and corporations for the hosting of virtual machines on a Windows-based infrastructure; you can expect to see limitations on VM resources being removed whilst network virtualization and cloud backup are two of the new features to be added.
IIS 8.0 has also been introduced for the hosting of websites on a Windows dedicated server; Microsoft has taken into account the high loads that busy websites can place on a dedicated server and so one of the new core features of IIS 8.0 is CPU usage caps for individual websites.
Purpose of Remote Desktop
In the same way that Linux servers have SSH access for administration and maintenance purposes, a Windows dedicated server can be access using Remote Desktop; however, the difference between SSH and Remote Desktop is that SSH is a command line-based interface whilst Remote Desktop is a GUI-based interface so that with one you will have to rely on a set of commands to interact with your server, whilst with Remote Desktop you can interact directly with the desktop of your Windows dedicated server.
Some may argue that managing a Windows server through RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) is a simpler task for beginners to pick up because they will be using a simpler and more familiar interface, but the command-based nature of the Linux server is often seen as being most effective because it allows you to get the task in hand completed in a much more targeted manner.
Connecting from a Client Computer
The Remote Desktop client is a default feature of the Windows desktop operating system for a number of generations now and has always been accessible from the ‘Accessories’ menu that is often located under Programs/All Programs on the Start menu.
The Remote Desktop client is necessary to facilitate a connection between your desktop and Windows dedicated server using the RDP. Using the Remote Desktop Client you can access your server’s GUI and share certain features of your desktop computer with your server; for example, you may have files on your local hard drive that you wish to copy over to your dedicated server and using the client application you can mount your local hard drives on the remote server so that you can copy the necessary files over.
Unfortunately, if you are a Linux desktop user then you won’t be able to access a Windows dedicated server because there is no RDP client available, but Mac OSX users can take advantage of the free client that is available for download from the Microsoft website.