Upgrading to Windows Server 2019 on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers

Some IT admins who manage Dell EMC™ PowerEdge™ R740xd servers with Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors in a Microsoft® Storage Spaces Direct environment are considering upgrading to the Windows Server® 2019 operating system. The potential space savings from storage deduplication could lead to consolidation and cost savings.

In the Principled Technologies data center, we performed hands-on testing to measure the benefit of performing this upgrade—a reduced storage footprint resulting from the deduplication features in the Windows Server 2019 version of Storage Spaces Direct. To quantify the amount of work required to get this benefit, we also noted the time and steps necessary to carry out the upgrade.

Windows Server 2019: The operating system that bridges on-premises and cloud