Windows Server 2008 took some steps towards helping customers with best practices by increasing the default security of roles installed via Server Manager.

The following are best practices in designing and planning your VMM 2008 R2 rollout: Organizations using Hyper-V should use VMM 2008 R2 and not VMM 2007. VMM 2008 R2 can only be installed on ...

For those legacy SQL Server 2008/R2 applications that remain critical, some form of high availability or disaster recovery protection will be required to preserve business continuity.

In-place upgrades to SQL Server 2014 are supported from SQL Server 2012 SP1, 2008 R2 SP2, 2008 SP3, and SQL Server 2005, but are not necessarily the best option.