Differences between Microsoft Servers

Essentials

An affordable and lightweight server option, ideal for small businesses. It has all the essential features and supports up to 25 users and 50 devices with a single license. Although it is the cheapest of all, it does not include some advanced features such as Active Directory, failover clusters or virtual machines.

Standard

Ideal for businesses with physical server configurations or minimally virtualised. It gives you access to all the resources you will need for a reliable and fast server that can support your workloads in all areas.

Windows Server Standard 2022 gives you the option to install Server Core or Desktop Experience. You can also take advantage of active workloads, Trusted Platform Module, Windows Defender System Guard and much more.

Datacenter

Made for businesses with highly virtualised data centres and cloud configurations. It is capable of supporting large workloads, even if you are working in an on-prem or private cloud environment. There are also new data centre-specific features, such as protected virtual machines, Storage Spaces Direct and software-defined networks.