This guide describes important tuning parameters and settings that you can adjust to improve the performance and energy efficiency of the Windows Server® 2008 R2 operating system. This guide describes each setting and its potential effect to help you make an informed decision about its relevance to your system, workload, and performance goals.
This paper is for information technology (IT) professionals and system administrators who need to tune the performance of a server that is running Windows Server 2008 R2.
This information applies to the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system.
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In This Guide 9
Choosing and Tuning Server Hardware 9
Choosing Server Hardware: Performance Considerations 10
Choosing Server Hardware: Power Considerations 13
Power and Performance Tuning 14
Calculating Server Energy Efficiency 14
Measuring System Energy Consumption 15
Diagnosing Energy Efficiency Issues 16
Using Power Plans in Windows Server 17
Tuning Processor Power Management Parameters 17
Interrupt Affinity 20
Performance Tuning for the Networking Subsystem 22
Choosing a Network Adapter 23
Offload Capabilities 23
Receive-Side Scaling (RSS) 23
Message-Signaled Interrupts (MSI/MSI-X) 24
Network Adapter Resources 24
Interrupt Moderation 25
Suggested Network Adapter Features for Server Roles 25
Tuning the Network Adapter 25
Enabling Offload Features 26
Increasing Network Adapter Resources 26
Enabling Interrupt Moderation 26
Enabling RSS for Web Scenarios 26
Binding Each Adapter to a CPU 27
TCP Receive Window Auto-Tuning 27
TCP Parameters 28
Network-Related Performance Counters 28
Performance Tuning for the Storage Subsystem 29
Choosing Storage 30
Estimating the Amount of Data to Be Stored 31
Choosing a Storage Array 32
Hardware RAID Levels 33
Choosing the RAID Level 36
Selecting a Stripe Unit Size 42
Determining the Volume Layout 42
Storage-Related Parameters 43
I/O Priorities 43
Storage-Related Performance Counters 43
Logical Disk and Physical Disk 43
Processor Information 45
Power Protection and Advanced Performance Option 46
Block Alignment (DISKPART) 47
Solid-State and Hybrid Drives 47
Response Times 48
Queue Lengths 50
Performance Tuning for Web Servers 51
Selecting the Proper Hardware for Performance 51
Operating System Practices 51
Tuning IIS 7.5 52
Kernel-Mode Tunings 53
Cache Management Settings 53
Request and Connection Management Settings 54
User-Mode Settings 55
User-Mode Cache Behavior Settings 55
Compression Behavior Settings 56
Tuning the Default Document List 57
Central Binary Logging 58
Application and Site Tunings 59
Managing IIS 7.5 Modules 60
Classic ASP Settings 61
ASP.NET Concurrency Setting 62
Worker Process and Recycling Options 62
Secure Sockets Layer Tuning Parameters 63
ISAPI 64
Managed Code Tuning Guidelines 64
Other Issues that Affect IIS Performance 64
NTFS File System Setting 65
Networking Subsystem Performance Settings for IIS 65
Performance Tuning for File Servers 65
Selecting the Proper Hardware for Performance 65
Server Message Block Model 66
SMB Model Overview 66
SMB Configuration Considerations 67
Tuning Parameters for SMB File Servers 68
SMB Server Tuning Example 70
Services for NFS Model 70
Services for NFS Model Overview 70
Tuning Parameters for NFS Server 71
General Tuning Parameters for Client Computers 74
File Client Tuning Example 76
Performance Tuning for Active Directory Servers 77
Considerations for Read-Heavy Scenarios 78
Considerations for Write-Heavy Scenarios 78
Using Indexing to Improve Query Performance 79
Optimizing Trust Paths 79
Active Directory Performance Counters 79
Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Session Host (formerly Terminal Server) 81
Selecting the Proper Hardware for Performance 81
CPU Configuration 81
Processor Architecture 82
Memory Configuration 82
Disk 82
Network 83
Tuning Applications for Remote Desktop Session Host 84
Remote Desktop Session Host Tuning Parameters 85
Pagefile 85
Antivirus and Antispyware 85
Task Scheduler 85
Desktop Notification Icons 86
Client Experience Settings 87
Desktop Size 89
Windows System Resource Manager 89
Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Gateway 90
Monitoring and Data Collection 91
Performance Tuning for Virtualization Servers 91
Terminology 91
Hyper-V Architecture 93
Server Configuration 94
Hardware Selection 94
Server Core Installation Option 95
Dedicated Server Role 95
Guest Operating Systems 96
CPU Statistics 96
Processor Performance 97
VM Integration Services 97
Enlightened Guests 97
Virtual Processors 97
Background Activity 98
Weights and Reserves 98
Tuning NUMA Node Preference 99
Memory Performance 100
Enlightened Guests 100
Correct Memory Sizing for Child Partitions 100
Correct Memory Sizing for Root Partition 101
Storage I/O Performance 101
Synthetic SCSI Controller 101
Virtual Hard Disk Types 102
Passthrough Disks 103
Disabling File Last Access Time Check 103
Physical Disk Topology 103
I/O Balancer Controls 104
Network I/O Performance 105
Synthetic Network Adapter 105
Install Multiple Synthetic Network Adapters on Multiprocessor VMs 105
Offload Hardware 105
Network Switch Topology 106
Interrupt Affinity 106
VLAN Performance 106
VMQ 106
VM Chimney 106
Live Migration 107
Performance Tuning for File Server Workload (NetBench) 108
Registry Tuning Parameters for Servers 108
Registry Tuning Parameters for Client Computers 109
Performance Tuning for File Server Workload (SPECsfs2008) 109
Registry-Tuning Parameters for NFS Server 110
Performance Tuning for Network Workload (NTttcp) 110
Tuning for NTttcp 110
Network Adapter 111
TCP/IP Window Size 111
Receive-Side Scaling (RSS) 112
Tuning for IxChariot 112
Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Services Knowledge Worker Workload 112
Recommended Tunings on the Server 114
Monitoring and Data Collection 116
Performance Tuning for SAP Sales and Distribution Two-Tier Workload 116
Operating System Tunings on the Server 117
Tunings on the Database Server 118
Tunings on the SAP Application Server 119
Monitoring and Data Collection 120
Performance Tuning for TPC-E Workload 121
Server Under Test (SUT) Tunings 121
SQL Server Tunings for TPC-E Workload 123
Disk Storage Tunings 124
TPC-E Database Size and Layout 124
Client Systems Tunings 125
Monitoring and Data Collection 125
Resources 128
Since the release of Windows Server 2008, customers have become increasingly concerned about energy efficiency in the datacenter. To address this need, Microsoft and its partners invested a large amount of engineering resources in developing and optimizing the features, algorithms, and settings in Windows Server 2008 R2 to maximize energy efficiency with minimal effects on performance. This paper describes energy consumption considerations for servers and provides guidelines for meeting your energy usage goals. Although “power consumption” is a more commonly used term, “energy consumption” is more accurate because power is an instantaneous measurement (Energy = Power *Time). Power companies typically charge datacenters for both the energy consumed (megawatt-hours) and the peak power draw required (megawatts).
Note: Registry settings and tuning parameters changed significantly from Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008 R2. Be sure to use the latest tuning guidelines to avoid unexpected results.
