This blog post is originally written by Tilak Sidduram from Dell Windows Engineering Team.
With less than a year left before Microsoft ends extended support for Windows Server 2003, including R2, most organizations still have some systems that need to be migrated to a newer version of the operating system (OS). The best candidate to replace Windows Server 2003 is Windows Server 2012 R2, but some organizations might have to opt for Windows Server 2008 due to application or hardware support limitations. If your organization will be moving to Windows Server 2008 you will want to read this blog; we talk about migrating to Windows Server 2008 SP2 (32-bit performance) on PowerEdge R220 and the various devices that are supported on this server.
Mainstream support for Windows Server 2003 ended in 2010 and the OS has been in extended support, now everyone’s well aware of the impending end of all Microsoft support in July, 2015 for Windows Server 2003. While Microsoft and Dell usually recommend that migrating to the latest shipping server OS, some customers are cautious, with a few needing/wanting to stick to a supported 32-bit operating system. Windows Server 2008 SP2 was the last Microsoft operating system to be offered in a 32-bit architecture.
A year after Server 2008 was launched, Service Pack 2 was released, and this is the only supported version of the OS. This operating system is built from the same code base as Windows Vista. Therefore, it shares much of the same architecture and functionality of the client OS. It’s important to note that Microsoft Mainstream support for this OS ends in January, 2015, so any migration plans to this OS should be considered to be temporary at best.
Windows Server 2008 is available in different editions, but for the purposes of our bench testing with the PowerEdge R220, we have only considered Windows Server 2008 SP2 32-bit Standard Edition. Dell does not officially support any version of 2008 SP2 on the PowerEdge R220 platform and does not recommend this OS/server combination for production use.
In this blog, we have outlined the performance of Windows Server 2008 SP2 32-bit with PowerEdge R220 and the various devices that can work on this server/OS combination. We will also describe the different deployment methods that can be used to deploy Windows Server 2008 SP2 on this server and the scope of testing that was performed.
Due to driver and OS compatibility issues with the Intel chipset on this server, the 64-bit variant of this OS is not viable. You should only attempt to deploy the 32-bit.
Listed below are the hardware peripherals supported on PowerEdge R220 that have 32-bit drivers. All of these drivers can be downloaded from the Dell Support website and then installed after the OS is deployed.
- Intel chipset
- Dell PERC S110 storage controller
- Dell PERC H310 & H810 storage controller
- On-Board SATA controller either in ATA or AHCI mode
- Broadcom network controllers
- Intel network controllers
- Qlogic network controllers
- Matrox video controller.
Windows Server 2008 SP2 does not contain inbox drivers for any of the below listed devices. Dell PERC S110 and H310 are the two storage controllers that are supported on R220, the drivers for these controllers are not available in Windows Server 2008 SP2 as inbox, so it’s necessary to download the required driver from the Dell support website and provide the driver at the time of OS installation in order to install the OS.
Dell supports different methods of deploying a Windows Server OS. Below is the list of Dell supported deployment methods that can be used to deploy Server 2008 SP2 on the R220. For more details on these, refer to this Dell Knowledge Base article.
- Deploying Windows Server 2008 SP2 using the operating system installation DVD.
- Deploying Windows Server 2008 SP2 using Dell Lifecycle Controller
- Deploying Windows Server 2008 SP2 using Dell Systems Build and Update Utility
Testing coverage and scope:
To make sure we have full coverage and testing performed on this OS, various scenarios were taken into consideration and a proper test plan was put in place. The OS testing mainly covered OS installation using various supported devices like Optical Drive, Recovery media, USC, SBUU, PXE, iSCSI with HDD /RAID combination, using both S110 and H310 controllers.
System functionality testing was performed with Raid mode and non-raid mode configuration. All listed network controllers were used and device specific tests were performed on those controller. Some of the features that were covered as part of this testing are Wake-On-LAN, ISCSI, Offload and Jumbo frame sizes tests. Firmware and driver update testing was performed to make sure that the devices gets updated successfully to the latest firmware and drivers version and continue to function after the update.
Windows has robust event logging and reporting features. Various tests have been performed to verify the logging and reporting of normal and abnormal events, when an event was triggered in the OS. To emulate real world user scenarios, various workloads specific tests have been executed on the server, at various CPU conditions and these stress tests have been run for a few days.
Most of the listed components on this server were put under various stress workloads and were checked for error, stability and system functionality. On a final note, we covered most of the scenarios to make sure that all listed devices were covered in this testing, however not all possible configurations were tested.