Picking a random server from Dell’s PowerEdge product line, let’s look at R620 model.
Remember: anything blank is unsupported. Qualified is the highest level of certification, and Supported and Limited are defined at the beginning of the doc.
However, if we drill down within the 2016 release, things get a little nuanced. Notice that the Standard and DataCenter versions are checked – Qualified from the central product column – the Essentials Edition is not.
While DataCenter and Standard are indeed more robust versions of Server OS – remember, they are licensed by cores and not by Processor – as Essentials edition is. So while from a hardware perspective, the R620 could almost certainly run Server OS Essentials, the fact that it is a multi-processor with multi-cores makes it impractical to run this version of Server OS as you would need to license Essentials for each Processor. You get much more bang for your buck utilizing Server OS Standard.
Lastly, you’ll also notice for the R620 that is Qualified for Server 2016 but unsupported for 2019 (a handful of other servers fit this bill as well). Something to keep in mind is those servers likely ceased production shortly before 2019 – in the case of the R620, Dell lists the exact EOL (End of Life) on 5/25/2018. If Dell ended manufacturing the server in 2018, they probably aren’t going to have their engineers test the 2019 Server OS.
Bottom: there is a decent chance that the R620 – and other servers that are Qualified for Server 2016 – could run 2019 Server.
2 comments
Hi Doug,
Sorry, we don’t have any systems that would be compatible with Windows Server 2003. You may want to try finding Dell 11th Gen servers such as R610 or R710. We are no longer stocking these older model servers.
Thanks for the information. The link you provide takes you to a newer Dell whitepaper and it only goes back to windows 2008. Unfortunately we have servers running server 2003. We cannot upgrade the windows version since the underlying software runs on server 2003. We are currently ebay’ing servers that we know work on 2003 but we would love to get some “newer” ones that are not 20 years old. A 10 year old server would be a great improvement!! Do you happen to have a copy of the older whitepaper which shows compatibility back to server 2003? Thanks a bunch!