Hi, I can spin up for free a Windows VPS (win server 2016 with graphical interface or win server 2022 core version since it has only 1GB of RAM). The problem is that outside of Linux I have absolutely no experience. I would like to try hosting something also on Windows server just to take away some load from other machines or even just to learn something new.
Therefore I have the following questions:
*Is there any starting resource for windows selfhosting you can recommend? I would love if a list like the awesome selfhosted existed for services that can run on windows.
*Is there anything non-enterprise for which a windows server would provide any advantage over Linux?
*Does anyone self hosts on windows server? Can I ask what you use it for?
Thanks
In my experience, there’s a reason most things on the internet are not hosted on windows.
That said, you’ll want to look at IIS as a starting point.
Honestly, I think you’d be better served learning/understanding docker and just get that up and running in windows to host stuff instead. Managing windows hosting is a bizarre mix of hoping between quasi gui property windows and control panels.
I totally agree. If I could choose, I would have preferred my seventh personal Linux server instead of a windows machine but that’s what Microsoft offers to me. I fear that Docker, which I use all the times on Linux, would probably have too much overhead on windows. I still have to deal with a small size VPS. I have not many chances to run a Linux VM on top of windows to host docker and expect to have resources left to run a container with it in 1 GB of RAM.
I will defined look into IIS for web server/reverse proxy though. Thanks.
Just bear in mind that microsoft.com is hosted on Linux. If Microsoft don’t host their own website on IIS, why would anyone else?
Yeah exactly. Also: there’s more Linux on Azure than windows, and AWS hosts more windows than all of Azure.