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Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

jasoneckert.github.io

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Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#51

Post by stackskipton »

andai wrote: post #13
aninteger wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "legacy" because it's essentially tied to Windows. Yes, technically it works on Linux, and no doubt that was an amazing feat, but no serious company is running MSSQL on Linux when all the documentation, all the best practices are all based on running that on Windows.

Why did they port it to Linux? Knowing nothing about this, I wonder if they're getting ready to retire Windows Server, and wanted to get their server products off it? Edit: How they did it is also quite fascinating: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/blog/2016/12/16/s... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/drawbridge/ >a key contribution of Drawbridge is a version of Windows that has been enlight…

Two big reasons I realize,

First reason is MS SQL team read the writing on the wall and realized if they wanted a chance to stay relevant, they needed to support Linux. I'm not sure that play really worked for them but it also gave benefits for number 2.

Second, they had to eat their own dogfood operationally with Azure and hated the taste of dealing with Windows. Linux offered lower RAM/CPU footprint along with much more ease of use with Kubernetes/Containers. Yes, Windows containers exists but as someone who has had to use them, it's rough experience.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#52

Post by josephg »

What is the RAM and storage on each of these machines? Is it possible the Snapdragon has packaged RAM (with faster interconnects as a result), and the x86 machine is using DIMMs with longer traces? And what about storage? For that matter, what CPUs are you using?

Its possible ARM is a better architecture. But a lot of benchmarks end up stressing one part of the system more than any other. And if thats the case, faster RAM or faster syscalls or faster SSD performance or something could be whats really driving this performance difference.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#53

Post by Uvix »

jiggawatts wrote: post #31
keithnz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in no way that I can see is MSSQL or Server "legacy".

Even Microsoft considers Microsoft SQL Server legacy! It's had virtually no new features added between 2022 and 2025 other than AI and cloud integration. All the truly capable people have long since left that team and moved into various Azure and Fabric teams. To give you an idea of how bad things have gotten, there's like one guy working on developer tooling for SQL Server and he's "too busy" to implement SDK-style…

They also still don't have ASP.NET Core support for SQL Server Reporting Services - you're stuck in ASP.NET Web Forms land if you want to embed reports in your app.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#54

Post by Marsymars »

phwbikm wrote: post #8

Cant believe somebody is still using windows server? What’s the use case?

Not a business use case, but I run it for my home server. I've got some QNAP JBOD SAS enclosures that only support firmware updates via Windows (or QNAP NAS). Every other disk enclosure I looked at involved some compromises (e.g. rackmounted, or non-SAS, or a custom-built thing that I'm not really interested in.)

The next best alterative would be a Mac Studio with Thunderbolt enclosures, but that would be notably more expensive, and macOS isn't great as a server OS.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#55

Post by whatever1 »

I mean we were suspecting for some time that smartphone processors have reached parity with laptop class ones. MacBook Neo proved it.

Not clear how both Amd and Intel not only lost the smartphone fight but also lost in their own field (aka servers, laptops, desktops)

15 years ago if I told you that windows would be running better on ARM you would call me crazy.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#57

Post by trollbridge »

Loudergood wrote: post #10
icedchai wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh. State government is the only place I've encounter MSSQL in the past 10 years.

It's common as the backend to a lot of SMB scale ERP and CRM solutions. But almost all of those run on SQL Express.

Yep. Cabinet Vision as of 3 years ago required installing both SQL Server 2016 and 2019, plus 2010-vintage Microsoft Jet database, plus Powershell 2.0, plus .NET 3.5.

It’s completely dominant in its industry and has no real competition. Pricing starts at $200 a month for the most basic, single user setup and goes up (way up) from there.

And no, it doesn’t work on ARM, at all. I tried.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#58

Post by trollbridge »

chaps wrote: post #22
Incipient wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For mid sized businesses, where you're mostly just doing some business reporting, a single mssql instance makes for a great and very cheap 'data warehouse'. All the auth magically works for people to connect with Excel, and powerbi+cloud just works out of the box. I'd be curious what a better/non-legacy solution is! (as I do this stuff haha, and don't see much else other than full cloud options, sf etc)

These days I think airtable and other "no code" systems fit this bill well.

MSSQL doesn’t come with usage based pricing.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#59

Post by jasoneckert »

josephg wrote: post #52

What is the RAM and storage on each of these machines? Is it possible the Snapdragon has packaged RAM (with faster interconnects as a result), and the x86 machine is using DIMMs with longer traces? And what about storage? For that matter, what CPUs are you using? Its possible ARM is a better architecture. But a lot of benchmarks end up stressing one part of the system more than any other. And if thats the case, faste…

Both systems have DDR5 soldered to the mainboard and NVMe SSDs (the Intel system has a faster Samsung model compared to the Foresee model in the Snapdragon system).

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#60

Post by jiggawatts »

jasoneckert wrote: post #46
1970-01-01 wrote: post #39

>Across multiple runs of each test, the Snapdragon system produced consistent, repeatable timings nearly every time. On the Intel system, results varied significantly, occasionally beating the Snapdragon, but most of the time falling behind. The Snapdragon was the clear winner on each test overall. They blogged everything to generate the setup, including the hunch and test code but the anecdotal results are missing.…

I intentionally left out screenshots of the output for a couple of reasons: 1) They’d distract from the main point (I wasn’t aiming to write a benchmarking post), and 2) They can be misleading, since results will vary across ARM hardware and even between Snapdragon X Elite variants. Instead, I included the PowerShell snippets so anyone interested can reproduce the results themselves. For a rough sense of the outcome:…

You likely tripped over a difference in power management profiles (and capabilities) between Intel and ARM.

You're testing "variability" and latency, and you even mention that "modern Intel CPUs tend to ramp frequency..." but entirely neglect to mention which specific Windows Power Profile you were using.

Fundamentally, you're benchmarking a server operating system on laptops and/or desktop-class hardware, and not the same spec either. I.e.: you're not controlling for differences in memory bandwidth, SSD performance, etc...

Even on server hardware the power profiles matter! A lot more than you think!

One of my gimmicks in my consulting gig is to change Intel server power settings from "Balanced" to "Maximum Performance" and gloat as the customer makes the Shocked Pikachu face because their $$$ "enterprise grade server" instantly triples in performance for the cost of a button press.

Not to mention that by testing this in VMs, you're benchmarking three layers: The outer OS (and its power management), the hypervisor stack, and the inner guest OS.

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