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Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

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Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#101

Post by Melatonic »

p_ing wrote: post #18
stackskipton wrote: post #3

As former Windows person who still uses fair amount of Powershell on Linux, I was interested. However, reading the summary left me confused like you don't understand what's happening at Microsoft. > Hopefully Microsoft will spend more time in the future on their server product strategy and less on Copilot ;-) The future product strategy is clear, it's Linux for servers. .Net runs on Linux, generally with much better…

Azure services run on [customized] Hyper-V, thus Windows Server. Azure networking is Linux. EDIT: Marvel at the NT4 style Task Manager [0]. [0] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windowsosplatform/a...

Guessing some of Azure networking (or storage controllers) might even be BSD based ?

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#102

Post by jdw64 »

phwbikm wrote: post #8

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

In practice, Windows is still the de facto standard in industrial software.

At least in my experience I’m based in Korea and have worked on code that goes into enterprise systems — most MES and related systems are still built around MS SQL. SQL Server is very much alive in that space. It may feel outdated from a modern app development perspective, but the reality is that it’s deeply embedded through vendor lock-in.

What’s often called “legacy” is also, in another sense, a massive accumulation of layers built on top of it. That history has weight.

In most environments I’ve seen, the architecture ends up being hybrid: Windows on one side (for equipment control, MES, vendor tools), and Linux on the other (for backend services, data processing, etc.).

From the perspective of the companies I’ve worked with, there’s also a different way of looking at Linux. I often hear that “there’s no clear owner” — meaning no single vendor they can hold accountable. With Windows-based stacks, they feel like there’s at least a defined support boundary.

In the end, I think it comes down to perspective.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#103

Post by lloydatkinson »

kh9000 wrote: post #85
zamadatix wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can turn it on globally for all processes by creating a DWORD value named "Enabled" under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Segment Heap, and giving it a value of 3 I had previously seen this described as 0 vs non-zero. Since you have some inside experience :), anything special about 3 instead? What about 2? How would I find these value meanings out on my own (if that's even possible)? Thank…

It's a combinination of bit flags. The lowest bit controls whether segment heap is on or off. The 2nd lowest bit bit controls some additional optimizations that go along with it, something about multithreading. A value of 3 (both flags set) gives you identical behavior to what specifying SegmentHeap in your application manifest does. Using the application manifest approach is the right way to ship software that opts…

Would the (not Framework) .NET apps I work on benefit from this?

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#104

Post by Mashimo »

tokyobreakfast wrote: post #40
tempest_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not really in the space but all the CAD things I see lately are browser based "cloud offerings" Im not sure is CAD stuff is just served by a basic graphics card at this point or if there is some server side work going on. OS doesnt mean that much when every industry decided that Chrome was going to be their VM

No one is using that cloud crap professionally. The bread and butter of the CAD world is Windows PCs with tons of RAM and certified GPUs.

> No one is using that cloud crap professionally.

I would bet there are at least some people using Onshape at their job. https://www.onshape.com/en/resource-center/case-studies/

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#105

Post by bob1029 »

phwbikm wrote: post #8

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

Mine is a ~10-person bank consultancy without time or energy to deal with elite neck beard problems. Windows server, mssql and .NET are a great combo.

I wish we could separate the paid/oss aspects from the technical ones because Microsoft absolutely runs circles around every other stack when it comes to serious business software solutions, especially in resource constrained teams. I agree that oss and free software is conceptually ideal, but I also see why you might want to try different models.

Much of the Microsoft hate seems to come back to this notion that paid, COTS software is inherently evil or bad. Also, windows 11 is genuinely bad, but at least it boots up without weird issues that take an entire afternoon to resolve. I've never had a Linux experience that didn't kick me in the balls in some way. Not even the Steam Deck was smooth.

I happily throw my wallet at Microsoft if they solve my problem. Adobe, IBM, Oracle, The Empire, etc. Doesn't matter anymore. If it provides value to me and my clients, I'm going to use it or advocate for it. Spending money on good tools is not a bad thing. This world is about to get way more competitive than many of us would like for it to be. This level of petty tooling tribalism is going to become absolutely lethal.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#106

Post by adrian_b »

If indeed the supposition that the less variable and more predictable performance of the ARM CPU mattered for the observed system behavior is right, then using an x86 server CPU, e.g. an Epyc CPU, instead of a desktop CPU would provide similar benefits to the ARM CPU, because server CPUs have a lower range of variation for the clock frequency and they use less aggressive clock frequency boosting policies.

This could be tested even on the existing desktop hardware, by disabling "Turbo" in the BIOS settings, so that the Intel CPU would run at the base clock frequency, providing a lower, but stable and predictable performance.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#107

Post by pjmlp »

Alupis wrote: post #6
keithnz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The only people using MSSQL Server are people deep, deep in the Microsoft ecosystem. Think government work, and those unlucky enough to work at a pure Microsoft shop where every problem looks like a Microsoft or Azure solution. It's not a dominant database anywhere on the outside.

We are on the outside, for the types of customers we serve it is MS SQL, Oracle, DB2, or some SaaS product that you can only access via GraphQL.

Very seldom I use something like Postegres, last time was in 2018.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#108

Post by pjmlp »

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…

The main reason was to be able to deploy SQL Server in Linux based containers.

Windows Server is doing alright.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#109

Post by pjmlp »

monocasa wrote: post #24
p_ing wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure services run on [customized] Hyper-V, thus Windows Server. Azure networking is Linux. EDIT: Marvel at the NT4 style Task Manager [0]. [0] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windowsosplatform/a...

Microsoft just upstreamed support for running Linux as the Hyper-V equivalent of Dom0, so no Windows required. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.19-Improves-Hyper-V

That is still a very long way until Azure Host OS gets replaced.

Re: Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM

#110

Post by adrian_b »

cloudbonsai wrote: post #69

Reading the article, it seems to boil down to the following two observations: 1. ARM64 is actually less "smart" than x64. While Intel's Core i9 tries to be clever by aggressive boosting and throttling, Snapdragon just delivers steady and consistent performance. This lack of variability makes it easier for the OS to schedule tasks. 2. It is possible that the ARM build is more efficient than the x64 build, because Wind…

It should be noted that this is a server OS, but it has been tested on a desktop x86 CPU.

The x86 server CPUs, like AMD Epyc or Intel Xeon, have a lower range within which the clock frequency may vary and their policies for changing the clock frequency are less aggressive than for desktop CPUs, so they provide a more constant and predictable performance, which favors multi-threaded workloads, unlike in desktop CPUs, where the clock frequency control algorithms are tuned for obtaining the best single-thread performance, even if that hurts multi-threaded performance.

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