I am setting up a server for a small business. They are using it to run their software which access a SQL database, and they are using it for file sharing etc. They have about 7 users accessing the server. I wanted to set this up right and since they purchased Windows 2012 R2 Server i know that it comes with 2 VM licenses. I was thinking about using hyper V to setup a virtual machine and in that virtual machine setup their server for their database program and file sharing.
The main reasons I was thinking about setting it up this way is for the future. If we want to put a new server with better hardware in the future, we could just transfer the Virtual machine over to the new machine without having to setup everything from scratch. Also from the research I have been doing there may be an added benefit to virtualizing it for disaster recovery.
I am still learning, and wanted to ask the pros what they thought the best practice should be in setting up a server like this.
I was planning on installing the GUI version on the host just because I am not comfortable with powershell yet. I know the best practice is to install core and then setup your VM's that way, but perhaps I will change to that in the future.