So servers should be set to Background services and system cache?
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Performance Tuning Windows Server 2003
I know there are dozens of articles out there on this topic and many things that can be done to tune a servers performance. I'm only interested in 2 settings that seem to have a lot of controversy in all the forums etc... that I've read. They are Processor Scheduling and Memory Usage. I'm not interested in Virtual Memory as I know where to put the paging file and what to set it to. Please do not have XP and Vista in mind for these settings, I'm only interested in the server side settings.
Under Properties of "My Computer", Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced you can set Processor scheduling to Programs or Background Services. Memory usage can be set to Programs or System cache. I have read so many articles that convolute this that I need some clarification please.
Lets start with processor scheduling. If programs is selected, more processor resources are given to foreground program than background program. This is confusing because it's a server, there shouldn't be any foreground apps running unless it's a terminal app server. Background programs to me means "not the active foreground app" but one that is minimized or behind the active window. Again, being a server if its not a terminal app server there shouldn't be foreground background apps. Please explain this to me as I have my servers set to Background services so all apps receive equal amounts of processor. I don't know which one would yield the best performance.
Under Memory usage, all servers are set to System cache because they are servers. The ? for Programs says to only select Programs if it's a workstation and to use System cache if it's a server. This one seems a no brainer but please enlighten me.
We do have term servers and would suspect that processor scheduling for those servers should be set to Programs. Is that right or is there a baseline to use when setting these two options for any server?
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Answers
Normally this would'nt affect the users as you will not be working on the server console (i.e., noone is logged on on the server, except for Terminal Services offcourse).
But if you will be working on the server console a lot (and doing heavy tasks) and you do not want a lot of complaining users (and also you do not care about your work being slower) you should set it to Background services and system cache. :)
Good luck!
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by: JapyDoogePosted on 2009-06-04 at 01:11:27ID: 24544503
Background services is not for minimized / behind active window applications but for applications started as a service.
It's very easy to see what happens if you run a single cpu / single core server for testing:
Have IIS or Apache running on it, create a webpage using ASP or PHP that outputs the page generation time in miliseconds. Open the page and keep this value in mind.
Now extract a huge compressed file (or archive, or run SuperPI or an other benchmark) on the server's console and open the same page in the meantime. The generation time should be a lot higher now.
If background services are selected the difference will be smaller, so working on your servers console may be a bit slower, but does less affect the users that are using the server.
The memory part:
Programs 'take' at startup an amount of memory what they think they will need. Windows will use the free memory (not taken by a program) for caching much used files / applications.
When set to system cache, the cache will be bigger and programs will get less memory except when they really need it (instead of just taking it at startup just in case of).
I hope this helps you a bit :)