Discussion on:

10 surprising things about Windows Server 2008

If you've switched to Windows Server 2008, how has it surprised you, in good and bad ways?

J.Ja

I haven't pinpointed where the performance hit lies, but it is definately there. My client has been running an old Win2k HP Kayak P-III workstation as a server for Lacerte Tax software. I recently had him purchase a brand new HP server with SAS drives (RAID 1). After transferring the data and sharing out the folder (Lacerte uses a file-based database), the loss of performance staggering. Data that previously took a few seconds for a client machine to retrieve now take several minutes.

"So okay," I thought, "perhaps the SAS RAID could cause a performance hit." So I took the SCSI card and drive out of the old Kayak machine and installed it in the new server. Moved the data, changed the shares, etc...

Now the new server has exactly the same drive configuration as the previous machine, but the performance has NOT improved one iota. It still takes several minutes to open Lacerte, as well as things like changing from "Personal" to "Corporate" customers (which I assume involves opening a different .DBF file).

Needless to say, I'm disappointed. I don't know where the problem lies, but I suspect it is the same network slowness that Vista exibits. Either way, I wouldn't recommend 2008.

If you are having slowness for that, I would definitely suspect the networking stack too. I've noticed on some 2008 installs that the networking seemed to crawl. On the other hand, I've seen near 100% GigE speeds on transfer to/from 2008 as well. I think that the client OS plays a role in it, like it does not "play well" or something. I agree, it's disappointing. Without being there to troubleshoot, I would definitely look at networking and/or NIC drivers. That, by the way, is one MAJOR difference, more and more NICs are "software NICs" and bad drivers can kill them. We had a driver problem on a new server we built a few months ago that was causing the entire machine to crash, thanks to a memory leak in the Intel RAID driver. Gah.

J.Ja

I appreciate the suggestions. I had decided to try to upsell my client on a gigabit switch since the server supports it. The office is a bit small to justify it, but it may help resolve the performance issue. Small gigabit switches are fairly inexpensive these days.

I will also take another look athe the drivers. Good suggestion.

We recently purchased a SAN and where just getting horrible performance out of it. That is until I turned up Jumbo Frames and can now typically get near Gige throughput. Most server class network cards have Jumbo Frame Rates disabled so it is typically just a check mark under the properties for the NIC. That's just my two cents. Hope it helps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumbo_frame

You would honestly slam Microsoft and Server 2008 based solely on this one experience?

And, an experience where you the IT consultant is clearly to blame.

There is no way on God's green Earth that a brand new server with 2008 on it (I'm assuming probably a P4 Xeon with multiple cores and multiple gigs of RAM) is any slower than a old PIII PC serving as a server.

Perhaps this is another ID-10-T error.

Rather than commenting on not recommending 2008 to others, perhaps you should post your dilemma in the Q&A section and figure out exactly what went wrong.

In spite of the rudeness of your personal attack, I will not allow your rhetorical nonsense to go unanswered. I made it clear that I was speaking from the point of view of my single experience. I never suggested that a more knowledgeable tech couldn't have resolved the performance issues. However, the very idea that it requires in-depth knowledge makes my post valid.

We are all free to express our opinions here, and we are all free to change our opinions based on the experiences of others. I will not shut up simply because you don't agree with my opinion.

By the way, I normally don't revisit threads after I've posted in them. But I came back here today after having spoken to other techs whom I respect and finding that they've had good experiences with 2008 performance. There are some techs like myself who have the integrity to admit they may have been wrong.

However, I had a bad experience with 2008 and I stand by that. The fact that I may not have known all the special tweaks to make it work right do not invalidate my previous post.

please ask the vendor of that application to improve the software or at least make it compatible with 2008.

i would say this is one of the best OS i've come across if compared to NT4, 2000, 2003, R2, and 2008.

as a part of improvement they have improved the security. many softwares are not supposed to run.

imagine about cribbing about a car for not having a seatbelt with latest car of this year...

I've spoken with the software vendor (Lacerte made by Intuit - makers of Quicken, btw). Apparently the primary market of the software is small accounting firms and it is that market that doesn't want the software to change. I would really like it if Intuit would move it to an SQL-based database, but that isn't happening any time soon.

The native support for tape backup before Server 2008, was a nice feature that allowed the inexpensive backup software to work. I realize M$ has said for as long as I am aware of that they are not in the backup business. I guess I am confused as to why not? In any event, if you are looking for a tape backup solution (it will eventually go away, but it is still required by request of customers of ours) the best/cheapest option for a standalone server was by Migo. They gave me a pretty sizable volume discount. One potential issue with them is no SQL support, but its $120 retail for the server edition and I just have SQL backup to disk and include that folder after midnight.

I noticed that as well. They basically took Vista's backup client and beefed it up slightly. It's a decent backup client for a desktop, but it is inadequete for all but the least complex needs on a server. Backup prior to 2008 was still inadequete, but it was better at the very least.

J.Ja

Well, five days off the bat. I was beginning to wonder if no one had anything to say about W2k8.

I installed 2008 server for the first time last Monday. I immediately found myself googling "updates failed to configure reverting." I found a slew of hits about an upgrade/install problem.

I had it in spades but eventually got around it. Still not sure what the problem was, but on reboot it would hang forever, grinding the hard drive with a message about having to revert files...

Hope this doesn't happen every time.

The most surprising feature for me (well, absent of the one) is lack for parallel SCSI support in failover clusters. It's really shocking because all our special bought HP Packaged Clusters are parallel SCSI type.

Let me just say as a Workstation Windows 2008 rocks!

Except for a few older program everything works.

With the desktop pack installed it has a Vista look and feel but seems to be quicker and more stable.

What I really like is the Hyper-V for my development work. On the host OS I run all my desktop apps and it is my domain controller. Then I have a series of virtual machines such as my SharePoint box, Exchange, ISA etc. So now I simply bring up the box that I want to work and shut it down when it is not needed.

The only gotcha I have found with Hyper-V is my anti virus software kept deleting the virtual machine config files. This was solved by excluding the folder from the virus scans and solved the problem. I understand this is a problem for both Trend antivirus and ForeFront.

I've considered going thins route a few times, but something keeps holding me back, and I really can't place my finger on it. The big thing for me, is that I'm satisfied with Vista on my desktop. It has not given me any problems, on either my personal PC or my work laptop. But I seem to be a minority in that regard.

J.Ja

I absolutely love Server 08 as a workstation. I have been running it that way since beta on a laptop and it is by far the BEST workstation I have ever run. I even really like it as a server OS. I have it installed for several clients and for the most part it has been really great-except for the FEW incompatibilities.(expected)However one thing that REALLY aggravates me is the changes they have made to Remote Desktop Web Access. I think they have seriously over complicated something that was once simple and great. I understand the security benefits, but you can no longer slap up TS web access for use over the Internet for anyone from anywhere, regardless of OS or anything else. I think they should have left the traditional Web Access as a choice for those that want to run it that way.

I've been dual booting Xp/2008 for some time now, and 3 months ago finally made the full switch to "Workstation" 2008 - While I don't like the memory consumption on a fresh install (twice as much as XP) I'm liking everything else. I was *really* surprised to see that SLI worked as well (dual Gefore 7800GT's) using the Vista drivers.

I'm seriously contemplating using it at home now, I'm liking it that much.

Dear Sir,

This is as important as a good technical book. It sounds to me very important.

With thanks & regards,

Swapan.

Dont't believe all you read. I put up a web server for web and ftp. I needed the iis7 for the ftp portion of the 2008 server to insure compatability with the new security laws. The writeups state SSL is standard in IIS7 but you have to use IIS6 on the FTP server so where did my encryption compliance go?