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Linux roles and features |
Updated: 7 Apr 2024
Windows servers support a wide range of services to support clients and applications, some of these can be done with equvalient services on Linux servers. So here is a list of roles and features that the current Windows servers support with names and links of the Linux equivalent.
a) List of Roles that Linux supports (equivalent to Windows' roles)
| Windows Role | Description | Linux Service |
|---|---|---|
| Active Directory Certificate Services | Create a Certificate authority to manage certificates for users and computers | OpenSSL (tools only) |
| Active Directory Domain Services | Create a Domain Controller for a domain to manage users, groups, computers for an organisation | Heimdal Kerberos 5 realm |
| Active Directory Federation Services | Create a simple federation and single sign on service to access web sites and applications | SAML , Shibboleth or OAuth |
| Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service | Create an LDAP database to store application specific attributes and values | LDAP Server |
| Active Directory Rights Management Service | Create a secure rights management datastore to authorize users to certain information | RMS SDK |
| Application Server | Manage and host business applications esp. those using .NET | ASP.NET Core Runtime |
| DHCP Server | Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol - Provide IP addresses to local subnets | DHCP Server |
| DNS Server | Domain Name Service - Provide name resolution for TCP/IP networks | Bind DNS server |
| Fax Server | Provide facsimile services on this computer over a telephone network | Fax Server |
| File and Storage Services | Manage and store documents and files on this server | Samba |
| File and iSCSI Services | Manage file servers and storage using File server, Branchcache, Data deduplication, DFS namespace and replication, File Server Resource Manager, VSS Agent Service,iSCSI and Server for NFS. |
Open-iSCSI, NFS Server, Rsync, DFS |
| Storage Services | Storage management functionality | Built in |
| Hyper-V | Server Virtualisation | Virtualbox, QEmu |
| Network Policy and Access Service | Provide Network Policy & Access server, Routing & Remote Access incl Dial-in and VPN, Health Registration Authority and HCAP services to protect and maintain your network | Freeradius, Open VPN, StrongSwan VPN |
| Print and Document Services | Provide central printing and remote scanning services | Samba server, Zentyal print server |
| Remote Services | Seamless connectibity and always on or manager experience with DirectAccess. | n/a |
| Remote Desktop Services | Provide remote login facilities to applications | SSH Server ,X11, xRDP |
| Volume Activation Services | Key Management service for Windows and Office application activation | n/a |
| Web Server (IIS) | Web server including ASP, ASP.Net CGI | Apache , Nginx, ASP.NET Core |
| Windows Deployment Services | Deploy windows to clients | PXE Server |
| Windows Server Essentials Experience | New for 2012 R2 - PC Backups and Remote Web Services. | n/a |
| Windows Server Update Services | Deploy regular security and bug fixes to clients | Unattended upgrades, yum-cron |
b) List of Features in Windows Server and features that Linux supports.
| Feature | Description | Linux Feature |
|---|---|---|
| .NET Framework 3.5 Features | Microsoft .NET Framework, XPS Viewer and WCF Activation | .NET |
| .NET Framework 4.5 Features | Microsoft .NET Framework | .NET |
| Background Intelligent Transfer Service | Receive files from clients using BITS | BitTorrent |
| Bitlocker Drive Encryption | Encrypt entire drives for data protection | LUKS drive encryption |
| Bitlocker Network Unlock | Use a network based key protector for auto unlock system drives in a domain. | n/a |
| Branch Cache | Configure a hosted cache or branch cache content server for HTTP or BITS. | Cache-FS |
| Client for NFS | Enable access to files on Unix based NFS file systems. | NFS Client |
| Data Center Bridging | Provide standards for hardware based bandwidth and transport reliability. | n/a |
| Direct Play | New for 2012 R2 - Direct play features (multi-player network support) | n/a |
| Enhanced Storage | For access to additional functions for Enhanced Storage devices. | n/a |
| Failover Clustering | Provide high availability for servers. | See application specific setups |
| Group Policy Management | Enable GPMC tool for group policy management | See password policies |
| IIS Hostable Web Core | New for 2012 R2 - Cut down web server. | See lightweight web servers |
| Ink and Handwriting Services | Ink support and handwriting recognition . | Xournal, Stylus Labs Write |
| Internet Printing Client | Enable IPP printing via the web | CUPS |
| IP Address Management Server | Provide central framework for managing IP such as DHCP and DNS. | OpenNetAdmin or Webmin |
| iSNS Server service | Provide Internet Storage Name Server for discovering iSCSI SANs. | iSNS |
| LPR Port Monitor | Enable Line Printer Remote port monitoring used by Unix devices | CUPS |
| Management oData IIS Extension | Provide Powershell cmdlets through ODATA based web service under IIS. | n/a |
| Media Foundation | Windows Media foundation, Media SDK and DirectShow for media files. | GStreamer |
| Message Queuing | Enable message queuing between computers, http, DCOM and remotely. | Linux Message Queuing |
| Multipath I/O | Provide muliple support paths to devices using a Device Specific Module. | n/a |
| Network Load Balancing | Provide IP load balancing across 2 or more computers for services such as IIS | Apache mod proxy balancer |
| Peer Name Resolution Protocol | Provide name resolution for applications across computers | n/a |
| Quality Windows Audio Visual Experience | Provides QoS for streaming audio and video files over network | Plex, Kodi |
| RAS Connection Manager Admin Kit | Tool to create profiles for remote services and networks. | n/a |
| Remote Assistance | Enable remote assistance tools to allow other users help to resolve problems | VNC client e.g. xvnc |
| Remote Differential Compression | Computes and transmits differences between objects over the network | n/a |
| Remote Server Administration Tools | Enables tools to manage Domain, DNS, DHCP and other roles and features | Built in |
| Removable Storage Manager | Enables management of remote storage devices such as tape devices, disks for backups | Built in |
| RPC over HTTP Protocol | Enables Remote Procedure Calls over HTTP for access to Exchange using Outlook over internet | n/a |
| Simple TCP/IP Services | Provides some simple TCP/IP services e.g. Char Gen, Daytime, Discard, Echo, Quote of the Day | n/a |
| SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support | New for 2012 R2 - Support for SMB 1.0, CIFS and Computer Browsing | Samba |
| SMTP Server | Simple Mail Transport Protocol server for delivering email for another application | Postfix, Sendmail, Exim |
| SNMP Services | Simple Network Management Protocol for providing system information over network | SNMP |
| Storage Manager for SANs | Provide facility to create and manage LUNs for Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage | Built in |
| Subsystem for Unix based Applications | Allow to compile and run unix programs on Windows | Built in |
| Telnet client | Command line telnet tool to remote systems | SSH client |
| Telnet Server | Provide telnet server for clients to access | SSH server |
| TFTP Client | Trivial File Transfer Protocol client to access TFTP servers | TFTP |
| User Interfaces and Infrastructure | Provides user experience and infrastructure options including Desktop Experience. | Various Window Managers |
| Windows Biometric Framework | Allows fingerprint devices to be used to logon to Windows. | Fingerprint GUI |
| Windows Feedback Forwarder | Provide feedback to Microsoft after setting group policy on an OU See CEIP. | n/a |
| Windows Identity Foundation 3.5 | Provides a set of .NET Framework classed for claims based identity in .NET apps. | n/a |
| Windows Internal Database | Relational data store used by UDDI, AD RMS, Windows Update service etc | MySQL, MariaDB or MS SQL |
| Windows Powershell | Install Powershell command line and scripting tool | .NET Core Powershell |
| Windows Process Activation System | Generalises the IIS process model for WCF applications | n/a |
| Windows Search Service | Provides fast file searches on a server. | Locate or Find |
| Windows Server Backup | Install new Windows Backup tool. | See Software Manager for apps |
| Windows Server Migration Tools | Tools to allow migration of roles, settings, files, shares from earlier versions of Windows to 2012. | n/a |
| Windows Standards-Based Storage Management | Ability to discover and manager storage devices using the SMI-S standard. | n/a |
| Windows System Resource Manager | Tool to control how CPU and memory is used | Sysctl |
| Windows TIFF Filter | Perform OCR on TIFF 6.0 compliant files for indexing and searching (2008 R2) | n/a |
| WinRM IIS Extension | Allow management requests via WinRM from clients (2008 R2) | OpenWSMan |
| WINS Server | Windows Internet Naming Service for Netbios names | See Bind. |
| Wireless LAN Service | Configures and starts the WLAN service | Wireless networking |
| WoW64 Support | Allows Wow64 to support 32 bit applications on Server Core installations. | See 32 bit libraries. |
| XPS Viewer | Install XPS Viewer application to view XPS files (2008 R2) | MuPDF |