Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008

The interesting link that justifies the post (see physical disk tips on page 73 of this document)...
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/5/9c5b2167-8017-4bae-9fde-d599bac8184a/Perf-tun-srv.docx

Physical disks
...
• If applicable, select Enable write caching on the disk through the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) disk management snap-in (diskmgmt.msc).
• If applicable, select Enable Advanced Performance through the MMC disk management snap-in (diskmgmt.msc).


How I got here...
I was defragging and browsing in Comp_Mgmt MMC on my Vista x64 box and noticed that all my discs were GPT which was new to me.

For info on GPT see this...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302873
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738081.aspx

So, right click "Computer" and choose manage... OK the admin privs... Click on Storage > Disk Management
In the pane in the lower right, you should see your hard drives...
Right click the square to the left of the drive... Mine reads "Disk 0 Basic 149.05 Online"... and choose properties...
Select the Policies Tab...
Notice the Enable Advanced Performance checkbox...

Ok, this is disk write caching which is separate from the hardware specific caching you can get from opening windows explorer, click proprites, hardware, properties, policies tab... optimize for performance. On my computer, this optimize for performance radio button is selected and the controls are disabled (grayed out) so it cannot be changed.

So, what's the point?
It appears that on NTFS disks that there is an additional level of write caching that can be achieved to get top through put to your drives.

For some of us, writing to our hard drives is a bottle neck.

Now, you will get a warning when you select this check box that in the event of a power failure data could be lost. For me this is no risk. In the event of a power failure, that take will be worthless anyway and if I was just bouncing, then who cares.

I did attempt some searches on our forum for this setting and didn't bump into any.

I have changed this setting on both of my drives and will report successes or failures as I experience them.

Also, for those on OSs before Vista... Note this on page 67
Disabling File Last Access Time Check
Windows Server 2003 and earlier Windows operating systems update the last-accessed time of a file when applications open, read, or write to the file. This increases the number of disk I/Os, which further increases the CPU overhead of virtualization. If applications do not use the last-accessed time on a server, system administrators should consider setting this registry key to disable these updates.
NTFSDisableLastAccessUpdate
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\ (REG_DWORD)

By default, both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 disable the last-access time updates.

And, I'm not sure if it is useful to consider our machines like file servers... but
The following registry tuning parameters can affect the performance of file servers:
• NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\ (REG_DWORD)

The default is 0. This parameter determines whether NTFS generates a short name in the 8.3 (MS DOS) naming convention for long file names and for file names that contain characters from the extended character set. If the value of this entry is 0, files can have two names: the name that the user specifies and the short name that NTFS generates. If the name that the user specifies follows the 8.3 naming convention, NTFS does not generate a short name.
Changing this value does not change the contents of a file, but it avoids the short-name attribute creation for the file and also changes how NTFS displays and manages the file. For most file servers, the recommended setting is 1.



Thanks,

Geoff