So I have 3 freshly installed Windows Server Virtual Machines with nothing installed but the base operating system. These are running on Windows 10 Enterprise with Hyper-V.
1. Windows Server 2012 R2 (GUI)
2. Windows Server 2016 (GUI)
3. Windows Server 2016 (Core
These virtual machines are on a strict memory diet 
I have configured all three to have 32mb available RAM but on dynamic memory.
With no user logged-in and with only default services running, here are the results:
We see that the Windows Server 2016 Core installation runs at 454 MB next to it is the GUI for 2016 then finally at 692 MB for 2012 R2.
Now with Administrator Logged-in:
Now with Administrator Logged-in but closing server manager for virtual machines with GUI installed.
Trying to install IIS on all three VM using PowerShell:
After Installation:
I also tried browsing the default web site installation of each IIS as seen on this screenshot and here’s the memory assignment from Hyper-V:
I’m signing out of the server to make sure no UI is running or services other than the web server that we have just installed.
*Launches 3 Visual Studio 2015 and creates 3 web performance test projects*
I have created 3 simple load test from Visual Studio to simulate browsing to the websites. If you are familiar with Visual Studio impremise load test, you will notice that the scenario is a single webtest that will be invoked multiple times by a load test. The multiplied scenario is a just basic web request.
Lets run the load test:
We are running the load test for 5 minutes:
And after a few more minutes:
I want you to draw your own conclusions based on the data that I have shown in this blog. I also wanted to publish the Load Test Results, but thats for another time. Until then, see ya!
Busy Saving The World 