{"id":2646,"date":"2011-10-06T08:29:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T12:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/?p=2646"},"modified":"2021-10-19T06:48:28","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T10:48:28","slug":"improving-performance-of-windows-server-2008-dedicated-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/improving-performance-of-windows-server-2008-dedicated-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Tips for Improving Performance of Your Windows Server 2008 Dedicated Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s common in the web hosting world to compare the relative benefits of operating systems.\u00a0 This masks an important fact, though: in all cases, they are what you make of them.\u00a0 While there are naturally limits to this (no one is running Commodore 64 web hosting), the little improvements you can make to a machine can add up quickly.<\/p>\n

This means that whatever drawbacks there are to hosting a dedicated Windows machine (and some say there aren’t as many these days), they can easily be negated with the right adjustments.\u00a0 Here are some of the most common suggestions for improving performance of Windows Server 2008<\/a> on your dedicated server.<\/p>\n

Put the pagefile on a separate drive<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u201cpagefile\u201d is a memory file that Windows treats as virtual memory (does that make it virtual virtual?\u00a0 Oh, never mind).\u00a0 This file is accessed frequently, and so you’re going to want to make sure that it is able to respond quickly.\u00a0 The best way to do this is to have it setup on its own separate hard drive.\u00a0 This will keep it freed up in case your machine gets bogged down by some memory hog script or complicated request.<\/p>\n

One thing that makes this easy is that you probably won’t need a large drive for this at all.\u00a0 Web hosts usually have a cache of old hard drives that no one wants because their small size makes them effectively deprecated.\u00a0 They might sell you these for cheap or even just give them to you for free.<\/p>\n

Disable unused services<\/strong><\/p>\n

We already suggested this as a way to increase security on your machine.\u00a0 It’s also a good way to increase efficiency.\u00a0 Each one of these services uses up system resources.<\/p>\n

Which ones you’ll want to disable will depend on exactly what you’re trying to do, but there are a lot that are likely candidates for downgrading to \u201cManual\u201d or outright deletion.\u00a0 One example is \u201cBlock Level Backup Engine Service\u201d, which backups data on the block level for restoration.\u00a0 A good web host should have backup procedures already in place, if your web host doesn’t provide it automatically.<\/p>\n

As you go through these, take care not to disable anything that you are going to actually need.\u00a0 There’s lots of information online for each of them to help you double-check.<\/p>\n

Perform the obvious<\/strong><\/p>\n

If your machine even has a sound card, disable it, if not remove it outright.\u00a0 Turn off the screen saver if you can, or set it to \u201cblank\u201d if you can’t.\u00a0 Turn off machine hibernation (not like it’ll probably ever get that far, but constantly checking for it is one more thing your machine doesn’t need to busy itself with).<\/p>\n

Also if you can either spare the downtime or can arrange your data in such a way that you can keep your site up while doing so, see if you can defrag your disk now and then.\u00a0 Your web host might be able to suggest a clean way to do that.\u00a0 If it’s not possible, then at least defrag it once before going live.\u00a0 The less spread out your data is, the faster your machine will be able to access it.<\/p>\n

None of these things by themselves may sound like much.\u00a0 No one of them is.\u00a0 Taken together, they can make a world of difference in how well your Windows 2008 Server machine runs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s common in the web hosting world to compare the relative benefits of operating systems.\u00a0 This masks an important fact, though: in all cases, they are what you make of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2601],"tags":[284,94,3926,376],"class_list":["post-2646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webmaster-resources","tag-backup","tag-dedicated-server","tag-files","tag-virtualization"],"views":117,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}