My team and I have deployed a handful of Server 2012 machines into production now. There are some distinct features that we like, the most prominent one being for file servers and that's data deduplication. This is a feature that historically exists on very expensive SAN/NAS equipment but Microsoft added it to the operating system for their 2012 server product. In the 3 file server deployments of Server 2012 that we've done, which were all upgrades from Server 2008 or 2008 R2, we've realized about 30% deduplication ratios. In one case a 500 GB file server went from having 40 GB of free space to nearly 200 GB! Knowing that the price of the operating system is far cheaper than adding additional SAS drives, this was a no-brainer. No issues with Mac or Windows clients either, no more trying to train users not to copy the entire set of contents from one deep folder to create a duplicate.
There are a few things to keep in mind, at least if you'd like to take your time getting familiar with it and be able to function as you did in pretty much every previous iteration of the OS, at least if you're using the GUI.
Network Location with a stock installation may often be set to 'Public.' This can create problems on many levels. I used this article as a guideline for being able to switch to 'Private.'. I just launched 'secpol' from the command line to get the security manager console running.
It drove me nuts that I couldn't readily open Windows Explorer from my desktop to see the hard drives, network locations, etc. In order to get that running, I had to add the server 'Feature' called User Interface. Be sure to select all options and reboot.
One of the other curiosities is the inability from the GUI to change the license key when it comes time to activate, that has to be done from the CLI. Go figure. The command is this:
Cscript.exe %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs /ipk <Your product key>
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