Performance and Scalability

This white paper examines performance- and scalability-related changes in the Windows Server 2003 operating system, beginning with core operating system enhancements, followed by an examination of workload-specific changes and throughput gains for several common server workloads: database, Web, file, Active Directory, Terminal Services, and Windows Media Services.

VeriTest, an independent test lab, has found that Windows Server 2003 outperforms Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 by a dramatic margin—typically performing two to three times faster on the same hardware.

Windows Server 2003 offers compelling performance advantages over UNIX variants, and industry-leading price-performance.

Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition, is optimized for enterprises requiring the highest levels of scalability and availability. Datacenter Edition enables critical solutions for databases, ERP, high volume real-time transaction processing, and server consolidation.

This article explains the five strategies that help provide maximum application availability and solution reliability in datacenter configurations with Windows Server 2003.

This paper describes the overall kernel scalability improvements that have been made to Windows Server 2003 on large x86-based and 64-bit systems with eight or more processors.

This document describes important tuning parameters and settings that you may want to customize to help improve performance in various workloads.

Enterprises can achieve mission-critical availability with fault-tolerant solutions based on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, which carries far lower costs than proprietary solutions.