I heard through the grapevine that WINS was going to be phased out / not supported officially from Microsoft any more [ and yet they have it in Windows server 2008 ]. I can't find any information about this on the web. Does anyone know of this rumor and/or have an official release from Mircosoft (URL?)? ( This question relates to Policy – large corporate networks)
Windows – Is WINs Still supported by Microsoft
domaingroup-policywindowswindows-server-2008wins
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A lot of these answers are only partially true or just plain wrong. WINS is just another way to resolve names to ip addresses. As long as your applications know how to use DNS, WINS is not needed at all.
Edit: Okay, I can't believe how much misinformation there is on this thread. First of all, having different subnets does not necessitate the use of WINS. As long as your application can communicate with udp/tcp port 53 on your DNS server(s), you will be able to resolve hostnames just fine (yes, \\hostname will work too).
Secondly, if you're wondering why you can't resolve anything using the short hostname (i.e. just the hostname without the domain), it's probably because you never configured the default domain (or domain search list) on your clients.
And lastly (but not leastly!), an Active Directory domain is not a prerequisite for using DNS on a Windows network. The only reason you think that is because when you join a machine to a domain, Windows sets the default domain name for you. There is nothing preventing you from setting it yourself through other means (probably DHCP).
So in summary, just set the default domain and use DNS like the rest of us here in the 21st century!
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Best Answer
The WINS server is a shipping part of current Windows Server versions. It's "supported" by Microsoft.
WINS is a necessary evil because there are still applications out there (and bits of Windows, though increasing less with newer releases of Windows) that rely on NetBIOS name resolution. If you are one of the lucky people who have no applications that need NetBIOS name resolution go ahead and disable NetBIOS and run w/o WINS. On the other hand, if you still need NetBIOS then you really should be using WINS to cut down on broadcast traffic and to make NetBIOS name resolution reliable. You should also be setting your clients to "H-node" type name resolution (or, if you want no broadcast resolution at all "P-node") and specifying WINS servers as part of their static or DHCP-provided configuration.
Your comment to @MDMarra leads me to believe that your disk imaging application uses NetBIOS name resolution. In that case you're stuck needing a WINS server. I wouldn't get too hung-up on it. The WINS Server consumes few server resources and the replication can be tuned so that it isn't a bandwidth hog.