Vanilla Windows vs Windows Server

I probably should have asked this question a LONG time ago and I expect to be laughed out of this forum, but I NEED find the answer to this seemingly rudimentary question...

If I intend to host a .NET web application, why would I want to use Windows Server as opposed to plain vanilla Windows? Plain vanilla Windows has IIS so it obviously is capable of serving up web pages to some degree. I can't seem to find any decent documentation on this. I guess I just always assumed that vanilla Windows is meant for developing and Windows Server is meant for serving pages. Can anyone shed some light on this topic for me or point me in the direction of some documentation?

Thanks.

Solution 1:

This isn't a dumb question at all. it's actually a good question.

My information may be out of date, but in earlier versions of the home Operating Systems (Win98 - WinXP) the version of IIS (or Personal Web Server on the older OS's) that ships with the operating system is limited to fewer connections (10 the last I knew), so that alone rules out hosting a web site that is expected to get more than 10 users at a time on a non-server operating system.

Check out this FAQ:

http://www.iisanswers.com/IISFAQ.htm

However, in a small workgroup environment, hosting your web site on a client operating system vs. a server operating system is a possibility.

*Edit - Added *

I'm not sure what your plans are - whether you're planning on hosting a site to the outside world, an internal company website (Intranet), or a small workgroup web site.

Based on the basic nature of this question (even though it is a good question) if you're looking to host a public web site I would strongly encourage you to go with a hosting company. The security hassles alone of setting up and maintaining your own service is something that requires a lot of expertise to do properly. I've been doing web programming since 1997 or so and I wouldn't undertake it myself. It's a whole different set of skills to maintain a secure environment.

Solution 2:

Firstly, I'll say: If you're a start up, do you know about the BizSpark program? It may be of interested.

It'll come down to licensing. I don't know from the top of my head, but XP/Latest Windows OS may limit itself from being used to host commercial services purely in the form of that's what it lays out in the EULA. I don't know though, so feel free to read it.

I would suppose, if it's not layed out in there, and you can install all the applications you need on it, and it's fast enough, there would be no problem. Of course, the IIS that comes with XP, at least, is different than the one that comes with Windows Server 2003.