Hello, I'm building a new server for a SQL 2005 Standard Database and a library application/Apache web server. These servers will have their own ADforest on them to share data between each serveras to manage this applicaiton. My hardware will be an HP ProLiant DL380 G5 with a single Intel Quad CoreXeon CPU, 8 GB RAM, and a few SAS drives. They wont need external storage, or iSCSI should that matter.What I needed was Windows Server 2003 Standard Academic 64-Bit, but what is available to me is: Windows Server Datacenter 2008 Windows Server Datacenter 2008 w/o Hyper-V Windows Server Enterprise 2008 Windows Server Enterprise 2008 w/o Hyper-V Windows Server Standard 2008 Windows Server Standard 2008 w/o Hyper-V Windows Server ExtrnConn 2008 Windows Server Itanium 2008 Note: No 64-bit versions. I hope and assume that all these versions are 64-bit now. There's about a $300 dollar difference between all these versions. (We are extended educational prices being in K-12 Education.) And about a $3 dollar difference from ones with Hyper-V and once without. I'm not sure what Hypre-V is, or what that gets me. Which version of Server 2008 is the equivelant to what I needed? Many thanks for your input.

What you need is Windows Server 2008 Standard if you don't need clustering. If you want to cluster your machines it's the Enterprise flavour you want. If you don't need Hyper-V you can run 32-bit, otherwise you should choose 64. Hyper-V is the virtualization platform from Microsoft which lets you run virtual machines on your Windows installation. You can read more about it here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-faq.aspx

Hello, Besides the information shared by Joachim, the following page provides a detailed introduction of various editions of Windows Server 2008. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/editions.aspx You could choose one depending on your own requirement. I hope this helps. Thanks. Regards, Neo Zhu