Today I was asked an interesting question if I was in recommend an Operation system for SharePoint to be installed on why should I use Server 2012 over Server 2008 R2.   My first response like always is because it is better.  You really have got to love the knee jerk reaction however after thinking about it I was able to come up with a few reasons to go with Server 2012 they revolve around IIS 8.  Features that are new to IIS then SharePoint can take advantage of are the application initialization feature.  This was an extension that you could install into 7.5 before in 7.5 and configure but it comes native to IIS 8 ( http://www.iis.net/learn/get-started/whats-new-in-iis-8/iis-80-application-initialization )  so yes it comes out of the box and you can use this feature with SharePoint you will have to change a few configuration files to allow this to work.  So not a new feature but there is still one more feature that is new  and that is the Centralized Certificate Store  (http://www.iis.net/learn/get-started/whats-new-in-iis-8/iis-80-centralized-ssl-certificate-support-ssl-scalability-and-manageability). This feature lets you manager all of your SSL certificates for your entire Web Farm in one central location.   Finally the last possible reason that I could think of that benefits SharePoint is the new Server Manager Interface.  Now I can control all of my servers from one location to get health and other status in one interface (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831456.aspx).  

Welcome to SharePoint DaVinci

Hello and thank you for visiting SharePoint Da Vinci my name is Eric Stoltze I have been working in IT for the last 13 years and a lot has changed. I started out like most working with systems and have found my way to the SharePoint platform. I have been working with the SharePoint stack for a while now almost 7 years with a focus on architecture and design. I will be discussing a couple of different topics in this blog but mostly around Microsoft products but who knows what topics may sneak in.  I am looking at starting a series of blog post that focus around 2013 and SharePoint Online. So stay tuned.