Should an enterprise switch to Windows Server 2012 or RHEL7?

Question

Active Directory

This year the official support for Windows Server 2003 ends. In the
summer, in 3 months we plan to switch to another server, so we think what to study, switch to RedHat solutions or Microsoft solutions.
There are few cars in the organization, about 250.
Most of the PCs in the organization are running Windows XP, a few are running Linux (CentOS 6.6 and Ubuntu 12.04).
2 servers on Windows Server 2003, on which mail is running, a domain controller and several programs and Samba.
We plan to increase the number of Linux machines, I think it will be about 50. Office suites and other things have already been translated into normal solutions as far as possible, more or less significant obstacles are already behind.
The question is about GPO, it was on RHEL7 that some additional features regarding group policies appeared, but they are unlikely to be comparable with the capabilities of even the same 2003 server. I would like to hear the opinion of experienced admins. We are considering the opportunity to buy Windows Server 2012 as a domain controller and separately keep CentOS7 for FTP, mail, etc., which is better to keep on *NIX.

Answer 1

The lack of official support does not prevent you from continuing to use it, especially if something adequate is worth accessing the Internet, and the AD domain is not visible outside.
in the case of 2003, you don't even have compatibility problems, and most importantly, you apparently don't use Exchange, so you don't need to develop the domain in any particular way.
I would advise you not to upgrade to the 2012 server, but leave it as it is, at the same time try to see if the Linux solution suits you and switch to it at any free time.
PS In personal practice, I know several small organizations I know so far on the Windows-NT domain, they do not complain.
A couple on the 2000 domain, enough for the needs.
The functionality of these networks for people to work (non-IT organizations) is through the roof.

Answer 2

If there is a domain and many machines on windows, I would recommend windows server 2012 r2, one standard license makes it possible to install the system with hyper-v, and put the domain controller on a virtual machine. Plus, if there is enough power, you can put centos / debian virtual machines there for different needs.
What's really good about Windows is hyper-v, ad, terminal server. If possible, I would keep the rest on centos / debian
Although depending on how you use ad and the same gpo, you can successfully replace ldap and puppet.

Answer 3

Using Zentyal as an example , you can see what Samba4 can do:
Zentyal Directory, Native compatibility with Microsoft Active Directory®
More about the recently released Samba 4.2.0 in Russian :

After a year and a half of development, a significant release of Samba 4.2.0 is presented, which continues the development of the Samba 4 branch with a full implementation of a domain controller and Active Directory service that is compatible with the Windows 2000 implementation and is able to serve all versions of Windows clients supported by Microsoft, including Windows 8. Samba 4 is a feature rich server product that also provides an implementation of a file server, a print service, and an authentication server (winbind).