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Running Windows & a server from the same PC

limegorilla
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If I wanted to use my (powerful) home desktop as a server at the same time as being a normal desktop, how would I do this? Could I (for example, yes I know a licence costs a bomb and a half) run Windows server? I don't really want to run a VM as that would impact the performance

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"If it works, proceed to take it apart and 'make it work better.' Then cry for help when it breaks." - Me, about five minutes ago when my train of thought wandered.

Remember kids, A janky solution is still a solution.

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Why not run HyperV? If you get Windows 10 Pro you can use that as the main OS and run whatever server function in HyperV.

 

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2 minutes ago, Dujith said:

Why not run HyperV? If you get Windows 10 Pro you can use that as the main OS and run whatever server function in HyperV.

 

Isn't that still a VM through

Bow down to me humans.

I can't help if you don't quote me. How am I supposed to know if you need my premium support? Now starting at £399.99 a year.

Also, be a sport and mark the correct answer as the correct answer. It will help pour souls in the future when they are stuck and need guidance.

"If it works, proceed to take it apart and 'make it work better.' Then cry for help when it breaks." - Me, about five minutes ago when my train of thought wandered.

Remember kids, A janky solution is still a solution.

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Just now, limegorilla said:

Isn't that still a VM through

Yes, but its a type 1 hypervisor. That means whatever you are running on it has direct hardware access, shared with your main OS ofc.

You can set how many cores, memory it will use. So if you are running something like Nextcloud it would just require 1 core and 8GB.

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11 minutes ago, limegorilla said:

Isn't that still a VM through

what do you want the server to do? You can use windows like server just fine. Windows server mainly gets you their server programs like AD and their DNS and DHCP servers.

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20 minutes ago, limegorilla said:

If I wanted to use my (powerful) home desktop as a server at the same time as being a normal desktop, how would I do this? Could I (for example, yes I know a licence costs a bomb and a half) run Windows server? I don't really want to run a VM as that would impact the performance

What server functions are you wanting to run? A lot of stuff can be done on Windows 10 without the need for Windows Server.

Main Rig:-

Ryzen 7 3800X | Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming | 16GB Team Group Dark Pro 3600Mhz | Corsair MP600 1TB PCIe Gen 4 | Sapphire 5700 XT Pulse | Corsair H115i Platinum | WD Black 1TB | WD Green 4TB | EVGA SuperNOVA G3 650W | Asus TUF GT501 | Samsung C27HG70 1440p 144hz HDR FreeSync 2 | Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS |

 

Server:-

Intel NUC running Server 2019 + Synology DSM218+ with 2 x 4TB Toshiba NAS Ready HDDs (RAID0)

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What server functions are you wanting to run? A lot of stuff can be done on Windows 10 without the need for Windows Server.

I want to be able to A. Access my storage & B.Host my website (yes my bandwidth is adequate)

Bow down to me humans.

I can't help if you don't quote me. How am I supposed to know if you need my premium support? Now starting at £399.99 a year.

Also, be a sport and mark the correct answer as the correct answer. It will help pour souls in the future when they are stuck and need guidance.

"If it works, proceed to take it apart and 'make it work better.' Then cry for help when it breaks." - Me, about five minutes ago when my train of thought wandered.

Remember kids, A janky solution is still a solution.

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24 minutes ago, limegorilla said:

I want to be able to A. Access my storage & B.Host my website (yes my bandwidth is adequate)

Both can be done on regular Windows 10 easily.

 

File sharing is a native feature of Windows and will require nothing more than ticking a box.

 

Hosting websites can be done natively using IIS however I would recommend you Google WAMP Server, it's a stack that contains Apache, MySQL & MyPHP all preconfigured are ready to use. It's extremely configurable, each module is upgradeable or downgradeable as required and it has a tonne of guides and reference material available online.

 

One caveat is that you would need to leave your PC running all the time but this exists even if you switched to server.

Main Rig:-

Ryzen 7 3800X | Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming | 16GB Team Group Dark Pro 3600Mhz | Corsair MP600 1TB PCIe Gen 4 | Sapphire 5700 XT Pulse | Corsair H115i Platinum | WD Black 1TB | WD Green 4TB | EVGA SuperNOVA G3 650W | Asus TUF GT501 | Samsung C27HG70 1440p 144hz HDR FreeSync 2 | Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS |

 

Server:-

Intel NUC running Server 2019 + Synology DSM218+ with 2 x 4TB Toshiba NAS Ready HDDs (RAID0)

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What's wrong with virtual? You'd run Windows 10 Pro as your base OS, play your games have your fun. Then in the background via Hyper-V you'd have whatever server(s) you want running.

 

Probably the one thing you'd be starved for is RAM. 

 

Depending on how you want to share your files (FFA or username/password) you could just share them directly off your windows 10 box. However for the website - if it's internet facing - I'd run in its own VM or on the cloud (droplet?).

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Servers and desktops don't.. in theory need to be on different systems pre-say. The trouble comes in if you want to play games on you desktop and it's running servers and your game BSOD's the desktop.. then your servers will go down and.. maybe another system in your infrastructure relies on it and it also goes down etc. In general desktops are much less reliable.

 

I'd say if your just developing or testing stuff it would be fine to just install whatever daemon you wanted.

If you have other people / systems involved your going to want a separate system. A VM on your desktop won't solve the reliability issue.

 

If you want a website ya, digital ocean might be prefect.

"Only proprietary software vendors want proprietary software." - Dexter's Law

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In short you cannot run Windows Server on your desktop as this is already a desktop system like windows 10. Sure windows 10 does have server features, but it's just as much a server as a pi.

Your option is to put windows server in a VM or rebuild the whole computer into two VMs. or simply get a tiny server to have home..

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Something else to consider is your electric bill and how much keeping a gaming desktop on 24/7 for server use might cost VS a lower power dedicated server.  Remember that those high powered gaming GPU's suck a lot of juice!

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