Tuning Windows Server 2003 on IBM System x Servers

Windows® Server 2003 is Microsoft’s mainstream server operating system and has been now for almost four years. Over previous versions of the Windows server operating system, including Windows 2000 Server and Windows NT® Server, Windows Server® 2003 offers considerable improvements in stability, performance, security, scalability and manageability.

Since the last iteration of this Redpaper, Microsoft have announced three important enhancements to the core Windows 2003 server operating system. These are:

Windows Server 2003, Service Pack 1 for 32-bit (x86) Editions
Windows Server 2003, x64 (64-bit) Editions
Windows Server 2003, Release 2 (R2) for 32-bit (x86) & 64-bit (x64) Editions

Windows Server 2003 is designed to be largely self-tuning operating systems. A standard, plain installation of either operating system yields reasonably good performance results for most purposes. In some instances, specific server settings and parameters can be tuned to optimize the performance of the Windows server operating system even further.

This IBM Redpaper describes several of the practical steps that can be employed to see Windows perform optimally for a given server implementation. Each of these techniques is another potential weapon in your arsenal of methods to extract the best performance possible from your Windows server. This second edition builds upon the performance tuning techniques detailed in its previous release to also emphasize the performance benefits that can be realized from these important product releases.

This Redpaper is extracted from the IBM Redbooks publication "Tuning IBM System x Servers for Performance," SG24-5287.

Introduction
Windows Server 2003, 64-bit (x64) Editions
Windows Server 2003, Release 2 (R2)
Processor scheduling
Virtual memory
File system cache
Disabling or removing unnecessary services
Removing unnecessary protocols and services
Optimizing the protocol binding and provider order
Optimizing network card settings
Process scheduling, priority levels, and affinity
Assigning interrupt affinity
The /3GB BOOT.INI parameter (32-bit x86)
Using PAE and AWE to access memory above 4 GB (32-bit x86)
TCP/IP registry optimizations
Memory registry optimizations
File system optimizations
Other performance optimization techniques
The Future of Windows Server
The team that wrote this Redpaper

Related product families

Product families related to this document are the following:

• 2-Socket Rack Servers
• Microsoft Windows