Yes and No.

This is a very common misconception.  Windows 2000 *can* take advantage of both hyperthreaded *and* dual-core processors.  To make a long story short, the OS is unaware of the underlying processor technology.  Windows 2000 will treat a single core, hyperthreadable processor as 2 processors.  Likewise, Windows 2000 will treat a dual-core processor as 2 processors.  There's nothing special needed from an OS perspective to take advantage of the processors.

HOWEVER...  Since Windows 2000 is "unaware" of the processor technology, the problem that comes into play is the licensing.  Since many of our products are licensed based upon the number of processors, it may be limited in what it can take advantage of.  For example, since Windows 2000 Server only supports four processors, you would have to upgrade to Windows 2000 Advanced Server to take advantage of a 4-way, dual core server since it will be "seen" as 8 processors.

Windows 2003 is considered "architecture aware" when it comes to dual-core processors.  From a licensing standpoint, you will still only need Windows 2003 Standard Edition which has support for up to 4 processors. Even though you will have 4 dual-core processors (which will show up as 8 in the Task Manager), you'll be OK. 

When it comes to licensing, Microsoft licenses based upon the number of "sockets" not the number of processors.  This means, that if you have a 4-processor (single core each), you can use Windows 2003, Standard Edition.  This also is true for a 4-processor (dual-core) system, even though *technically you have 8 processor cores).

Clear as mud?

https://download.microsoft.com/download/f/1/e/f1ecd771-cf97-4d98-9a1b-b86e3f24e08f/multicore_hyperthread_brief.doc

Marcus

Sorry everyone, but things have been quite busy around the cage. 

By the way...  we finally recieved another group of servers.  In the purchase were:

15 - HP DL385, Dual-Processor, Dual-Core, AMD Opteron, 8gb RAM
6 - HP DL585, Quad-Processor, Dual-Core, AMD Opteron, 32gb RAM (See previous posts)
1 - HP EVA SAN

More posts coming soon with some handy and useful information.  Keep your eyes peeled and whiskers twitching....

-Marcus

You can find out more info about the two new patches at

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/908519

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/892843

You should run Microsoft Update:
https://update.microsoft.com

or visit:
https://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/update/bulletins/200601.mspx

Well...

As for the OS...  Our servers are rebuilt with each lab engagement so it doesn't stay one OS very long.  We custom build each lab engagement based on what the customer needs/wants.

Currently it is running Windows 2003 Server, Enterprise x64 Edition.  However, these boxes can run either 32bit or 64bit versions of Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2003 Server

You should be careful when it comes to which OS you choose, as it is different how each OS "sees" the processors.  This will have an effect on what operating systems will support.

For example, with dual core servers, Windows 2000 Server "sees" each core as a separate processor.  Windows 2003 Server, on the other hand, sees each socket as a processor.  That's because Windows 2003 Server was built with an "understanding" of dual core and hyperthreadable procs.  This will make a big difference on which operating system you choose for your dual-core boxes, especially if they are 4-ways.  For example, Windows 2000 will think that a 4-way dual core server is actually an 8-way.  This makes it necessary to run either Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.  This is because, Windows 2000 Server (standard) will only utilize 4 processors (in this case, 4 of the 8 cores).
(By the way, I wouldn't suggest choosing Windows 2000 from the simple standpoint that it is reaching the end of it's support life).

Here is more information on what OS's support:

Number of processors supported	2	4	8	32	64
Windows 2003 Server Web Edition
Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition
Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition
Windows 2003 Server Datacenter Edition
Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition IA64 (Note 1)
Windows 2003 Server Datacenter Edition IA64 (Note 1)
Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition x64 (Note 2)
Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition x64 (Note 2)
Windows 2003 Server Datacenter Edition x64 (Note 2)
Windows 2000 Server
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server

Memory Supported	128 MB	256 MB	512 MB	1 GB	2 GB	4 GB	8 GB	32 GB	128 GB	2 TB
Windows 2003 Server Web Edition
Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition
Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition
Windows 2003 Server Datacenter Edition
Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition IA64 (Note 1)
Windows 2003 Server Datacenter Edition IA64 (Note 1)
Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition x64 (Note 2)
Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition x64 (Note 2)
Windows 2003 Server Datacenter Edition x64 (Note 2)
Windows 2000 Server
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server

(Note 1) - Requires Intel Itanium based processors

(Note 2) - Requires AMD Opteron, AMD Athlon 64, Intel Xeon with Intel EM64T, or Intel Pentium with Intel EM64T processors

Hope this helps.

Ciao,

- Marcus

Contact your TAM, ADC, MCS Consultant or other Microsoft Representative to find out how you can use our facilities

Unfortunately, I have found that using a "numprocs" boot.ini switch doesn't suffice for testing the correct number.

For example, we have a customer that would like to test on a couple of our 4-way servers (because it is what they have in production).  However, they wanted two physical, hyperthreaded processors.  If I left all four physical processors in the box, and rebooted using a numprocs=2 boot.ini switch, only two processors would show up (two physical, not hyperthreaded).  Therefore, I had to physically remove 2 of the four processors in order to get the combination they wanted.

 
Click on the image for a larger view

- Marcus

Contact your TAM, ADC, MCS Consultant or other Microsoft Representative to find out how you can use our facilities

HP ProLiant DL585,
Four 2.4ghz AMD Opteron 64bit DUAL CORE processors,
32GB of RAM,
Four 32gb 2.5 inch SAS drives

If you are not familiar with what multiple core processors can do for you, visit AMD's website where they have a great overview.  Here's a direct link to their multi core information.

If you want more information on this particular server, here's a link to HP's website on the 585.

I can post more pictures and detail photos of the guts of these beasts if you'd like.  Just drop me a comment below.

Here are some teasers (click on the pictures for larger versions):

The drive on the left is a normal Ultra3 drive.  The drive on the right is the new 2.5 inch SAS drive

-- Marcus

Contact your TAM, ADC, MCS Consultant or other Microsoft Representative to find out how you can use our facilities

Speaking of holidays, I'm sure you've seen the OUTSTANDING video that Carson Williams put together with sync'ing thousands of lights with music.

Great job, Carson!!!  Here's a couple of his masterpieces:

Wizards in Winter

Jingle Bells

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Hyper-Threading

“If I enable Hyper-Threading on a dual-processor server, I’m really getting a 4–way, right?”

Not exactly.  Even though 4 processors show up in Task Manager, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have four proc’s.  Instead, you have 2 physical processors and 2 virtual processors.  Intel's Hyper-Threading Technology allows a single physical processor to execute multiple threads (instruction streams) simultaneously, potentially providing greater throughput and improved performance.  But 2 hyper-threaded enabled processors are not the same as 4 physical.

Yaniv Pessach, said it best in a June 2005 article in MSDN Magazine:

“Hyper-threading can result in better utilization of CPU resources and therefore better performance. The flip side is that those CPU resources are indeed shared, so when both streams of instructions require the same shared resource, performance can suffer.”

This means that different applications will behave differently depending on how they were written. 
(This is yet another example why customers come to the Microsoft Services Labs for testing). 

Multi-Core

And then comes Multi-Core processors.

Unlike hyper-threading, the multi-core design puts multiple processor cores on the same die. 

As Intel puts it:

“Like other hardware-enhanced threaded capabilities advanced at Intel, multi-core capability reflects a shift to parallel processing - a concept originally conceived in the supercomputing world. For example, Hyper-Threading (HT) Technology, introduced by Intel in 2002 enables processors to execute tasks in parallel by weaving together multiple "threads" in a single-core processor. But whereas HT Technology is limited to a single core's using existing execution resources more efficiently to better enable threading, multi-core capability provides two or more complete sets of execution resources to increase overall compute throughput.”
https://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/partners/intel05_multicore.mspx

Here’s a cool video from Intel that does a great job in explaining the differences:

https://intel.com/technology/computing/dual-core/demo/popup/demo.htm

Hope this helps clear up the fog on some very interesting technology.

-Marcus

Related Article:
Performance Benchmarks for Computers Running Exchange Server 2003

Contact your TAM, ADC, MCS Consultant or other Microsoft Representative to find out how you can use our facilities

My answer: It depends.

Many folks will ask if we can share the results of tests that we’ve performed with other customers.  I’m sorry, but we can’t.  The vast majority of the testing that we do is specific to that customer (many times, applications that they have written), so results vary.  And they should.  Different customers utilize our OS in different ways, so testing what each customer is doing is a very specific thing.  Yes, we do run into a lot of the same issues and implement some of the same solutions, but the results of one customer will be different than another.

Also, when speaking with any customer about performance, I am always careful with making general statements about performance (networking or otherwise) as with any customer there are many, many variables that should be taken into consideration, including, but not limited to:

• What type of traffic
• Characteristics of that traffic
• Number of *concurrent* connections

Begin Sidebar
Many customers don't truly know the correct definition of a "concurrent" user. When it comes to the way we perform testing, two concurrent users are “users that are actively transferring data at the same time”. If you have a server that has two users connected (via viewing a web page for example), they are not concurrent unless they are actively transferring data at the same time. Even though a customer may have 5000 users, how many of those users are *concurrently* using the the system will usually be a lot smaller. However, most customers when discussing network connectivity and performance usually don't think concurrency in this manner. Instead, they think of concurrency as the total number of simultaneous TCP connections.
End Sidebar

You may want to take a look at this webcast which does a good job explaining the different areas of Windows 2003 Server performance improvements. The speaker does a great job of discussing the different areas such as networking, windows media server, web, sql, etc.

https://www.microsoft.com/seminar/shared/asp/view.asp?url=/seminar/en/20030424vcon02/manifest.xml

As the speaker states, "On x86 we can support around 100,000 simultaneous tcp connections on any given system." He further mentions that with ia64, we can support over 1 million connections.

Also, here's a handy tool if you need a little help with some of your performance related tasks.  It does a fairly good job on making suggestions on how to improve performance:

https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=09115420-8c9d-46b9-a9a5-9bffcd237da2&DisplayLang=en

Microsoft ® Windows Server ™ 2003 Performance Advisor is the latest version of Server Performance Advisor, which is a simple but robust tool that helps you diagnose the root causes of performance problems in a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 deployment. Server Performance Advisor collects performance data and generates comprehensive diagnostic reports that give you the data to easily analyze problems and develop corrective actions

Microsoft ® Windows Server ™ 2003 Performance Advisor provides several specialized reports, including a System Overview (focusing on CPU usage, Memory usage, busy files, busy TCP clients, top CPU consumers) and reports for server roles such as Active Directory, Internet Information System (IIS), DNS, Terminal Services, SQL, print spooler, and others.

 

Contact your TAM, ADC, MCS Consultant or other Microsoft Representative to find out how you can use our facilities