This edition is a good choice for companies with small-to-medium IT infrastructure that are seeking a robust and efficient system. To begin the comparison of the two Windows Server 2016 editions, let’s take a look at some of the limitations of the Standard Edition
Standard Edition supports virtualization. Just for reference, server virtualization provides a means of partitioning the physical server into smaller virtual servers, thus maximizing the available resources. Standard Edition allows you to create two virtual machines and one Hyper-V host per license.
A new and exciting feature of Windows Server 2016 are the containers. Compared to virtual machines, containers are a more lightweight solution. Designed to allow for packaging and running Windows and Linux applications, they provide isolated environments and are perfect for apps that are supposed to quickly respond to changing demands. In Windows Server 2016 Standard, you can use as many Windows containers as necessary, while the amount of Hyper-V containers is limited to two.
The Standard Edition supports inherited activation, with the only limitation requiring the server to be hosted as a guest at a datacenter.
