A good place to start when discussing NT optimization is with an explanation of the fundamental differences between the NT Workstation and NT Server products, and what impact these differences have on NT’s performance. This is especially important because your choice of Server versus Workstation is likely to have a significant bearing on the performance of your system when handling different kinds of tasks.
Interestingly, there has been some controversy surrounding the issue of differences between NT Workstation and Server. The original controversy started when Microsoft announced during the last stages of NT 4.0’s development that Windows NT Workstation 4.0 would be physically limited to a maximum of 10 simultaneous inbound TCP/IP-based network connections. An outcry from the Internet software development community quickly ensued, because this limitation would effectively force their customers to purchase Windows NT Server (which costs approximately three times as much as Workstation) to run their software. This in turn meant a higher overall product cost and a lower likelihood that customers would want to buy their products. After all, with Microsoft bundling a free Internet Information Server (IIS) with every copy of NT Server, why would anyone want to spend money on another product? Software vendors cried foul, and accused Microsoft of anticompetitive behavior (a complaint heard more and more frequently these days, I might add).
In response to the pressure put forth by the development and user communities, Microsoft removed the physical restriction from NT Workstation, but simultaneously reworded the license agreement to state that the user still could not legally exceed 10 inbound connections. Although many considered this reversal a victory against the Microsoft juggernaut, the victory was a relatively small one. As a result of the licensing change, it is still virtually impossible to deploy NT Workstation as an Internet server without violating the NT license agreement. Many companies who are developing Internet server software for NT continue to battle Microsoft on this issue.
The leader of this opposition is Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly & Associates, a Sebastopol, CA, software developer and publishing company. When Microsoft justified its position by stating that there are “significant differences” between Windows NT Workstation and Server products, O’Reilly decided to take them to task. He immediately put Andrew Schulman, a senior editor at O’Reilly & Associates, to work on dissecting NT Server and Workstation to discover whether Microsoft’s claim was true.
What Schulman found was that there is little or no difference between NT Workstation and Server. In fact, he discovered that by making a few well-placed changes to the NT Registry database, one could actually convert one product into the other. Apparently, NT references information in the Registry to determine which version it is and how it should configure itself. Furthermore, testing of NT Workstation systems converted to NT Server yielded virtually identical results to systems running “true” versions of NT Server. Even when confronted with this information, Microsoft continued to claim that the two products have important differences, and it continues to do so to this day.
MORE INFO: The above information was garnered from several sources, some of which you may wish to consult for additional information. One location is O’Reilly & Associates’ Web site at:
There is also additional information on the subject at the Windows NT Magazine Web site at:
http://www.winntmag.com/
When on the Windows NT magazine site, search on the keyword phrase “O’Reilly.”
CAUTION: Although it may be tempting to try to use this trick to turn your Windows NT Workstation machine into a Server, this practice is not recommended for many reasons. The most important of these is that if the procedure is done incorrectly, NT will detect that the product is being tampered with and disable your system (believe it or not!). Doing so also violates the NT license agreement, and Microsoft Product Support definitely does not support the procedure. As a result, it’s likely that you’d be on your own if you were to experience problems or require assistance with your NT installation. Finally, without the actual NT Server CD-ROM, you won’t get the extra goodies that come with NT Server such as FrontPage and Network Monitor. In my opinion, these additional products (in addition to the peace of mind you’ll have by not endangering your system with unsupported hacks) make the price difference between Workstation and Server worthwhile.
Aside from the extra software such as FrontPage bundled with Windows NT Server, the key differences between NT Workstation and Server, as claimed by Microsoft, are:
The disk-cache flushing algorithm (known as the write-throttling feature) in NT Workstation and Server are different. NT Server’s is tuned to handle heavier, server-like loads, whereas NT Workstation’s is designed for desktop-oriented tasks.
SRV.SYS, the server component of Windows NT, is said to be less pageable (i.e., able to be swapped to disk to recover memory) in NT Server than the one found in NT Workstation. This is because the expected load on this service under NT Server is higher, and NT attempts to enhance its performance by limiting the ability for the service to be paged from real RAM to virtual memory (disk).
In Windows NT Workstation, the NT Virtual DOS Machine (VDM) or MS-DOS subsystem is preloaded into memory to increase application startup times for MS-DOS and 16-bit Windows applications that use it. By contrast, Windows NT Server does not preload the VDM because it is less likely that these types of applications will be run with any regularity on an NT Server.
Windows NT Server and Workstation are said to use a different number of system worker threads and blocking operation threads, which are used by the operating system to carry out important I/O (input/output) functions. Windows NT Server is tuned for faster performance of server-oriented applications and I/O operations, whereas NT Workstation is optimized for desktop applications.
Windows NT Server offers a feature that allows you to tune it for either file and print server performance or application server performance, depending on its intended usage. This feature enables NT Server to achieve higher performance than NT Workstation on larger networks, because this feature doesn’t exist in NT Workstation. However, even Microsoft admits that with networks of 10 users or less, the differences between NT Workstation and Server in this regard are virtually nonexistent.
Product modification issues aside, there are also other tangible differences in the features of Windows NT Workstation and Server. NT Server has a host of capabilities that are either enhanced versions of those found in NT Workstation, or not found in the NT Workstation product at all. Table 1-1 lists these features and compares how they’re implemented in each of the two flavors of NT.
A final note: Sometimes the question of NT Workstation versus Server isn’t only one of performance. Many server-oriented products such as the Microsoft BackOffice family of products, many network backup utilities, and other similar programs require Windows NT Server to install. These applications check to see which version they are being run on, and won’t install if they don’t find Windows NT Server running. Therefore, be sure to check the requirements of your software before purchasing your Windows NT software–you may not have a choice.
In real-world testing, the performance differences between NT Server and Workstation are fairly obvious even after spending only a short time with them. When using NT Workstation, desktop-oriented activities (such as running user applications or using various components of the NT Explorer interface) seem quicker and more responsive under Windows NT Workstation than under NT Server on the same system. This happens because NT Server purposefully deemphasizes local application processing in favor of server-related tasks such as file and network I/O operations. In addition, NT’s caching and paging algorithms are tuned differently for the different activities Microsoft expects you’ll perform with each product.
In a similar fashion, you’ll also notice that a heavily taxed Windows NT Server running as a network server provides greater responsiveness for file, printer, and application requests from network clients than would a similarly configured system running NT Workstation. Although both operating systems share a common set of files, APIs, and general overall architecture, each is tuned differently for the roles they are intended to play.
SUMMARY
In this chapter, we gave you a “crash course” on Windows NT’s design, and its most important features and technologies. We discussed the benefits offered by NT “out of the box.” We also investigated Microsoft’s claim that NT is a completely self-optimizing operating system and discussed the limitations of this ability. In addition, we discussed the inherent differences between the Windows NT Server and Workstation products, and the role for which each was designed.
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