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Hey guys I was wanting to know what are the possible effects of running Windows Server 2003 (32bit) on a 64bit platform. I am running load tests in which I have two high performance servers that are being beaten by a Dell Dimension 830 (same setup, half amount of RAM , and not being 64bit)
Itaniums can't run 32-bit OS's. Intel CPU's with EM64T or AMD Athlon 64's/Opterons however can.
The possible effects of running a 32-bit OS on either of the above that can run it are none.
Make sure all drivers and firmware are updated, and you are comparing apples to apples. For example, if the Dell 830 has faster disk i/o, that could explain it.
Without further information about the specs of your computers, there's not much else I can suggest.
"Enough, enough bowing down to disillusion!
Hats off & applause to rogues & evolution!
The ripple effect is too good not to mention.
If you’re not affected, you’re not paying attention!"
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Thank you for the speedy reply! The blade server is a Dell 1855, 2GB RAM, Single 10k SCSI disk, the Dimension has 1GB Ram, Single 7200 IDE Disk.
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Have you updated all the firmware and drivers?
"Enough, enough bowing down to disillusion!
Hats off & applause to rogues & evolution!
The ripple effect is too good not to mention.
If you’re not affected, you’re not paying attention!"
0
After doing much research I've came across a few things but I’m not sure how applicable they are to my actual situation. Here is an excerpt from one of IBM’s references on this subject (http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/library/techarticle/dm-0410evans/)
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Enable 32-bit applications to run in 64-bit environments
If you upgrade your database client or server to a 64-bit platform and want to port your existing compiled and linked applications to the new DB2 instance, depending on the platform, you might have to rebuild the application in the new DB2 instance or rebind the application and override the run-time library path specification. As we discussed earlier, the reason for this is that in the 64-bit DB2 instance the default DB2 library path may not contain the run-time libraries that your application was linked with and is required to run properly.
Rebuilding and testing your applications in a test environment that mimics your production environment before deploying them is still your best bet, but if time constraints or lack of access to the original application source code are obstacles to doing this, you can use the techniques described below.
Deployment of Windows 32-bit applications to Windows IA 64-bit platforms
Luckily, Windows 32-bit client applications and routines can run on Windows IA 64-bit servers without any changes to the 64-bit environment. There is no need to rebuild to override the run-time library path to enable these applications. However, 32-bit Windows applications will not perform well on Windows IA 64 platforms, so if performance is a concern, it is highly recommended that you rebuild your applications as 64-bit Windows applications.
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I am unsure how this applies in my case as the platform is 64-bit but the environment is Windows Server 2003 32-bit. Any suggestion or clarification of how my system would be correctly described?
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"I am unsure how this applies in my case as the platform is 64-bit but the environment is Windows Server 2003 32-bit."
You answered your own question. This doesn't apply.
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Well from what I've read I've come to the conclusion that the performance problems is due to the os being 32-bit ontop of a 64-bit platform. The processor is having to do extra work to emulate a 32-bit processor while not gaining any of the advantages of being able to address more than memeory due to the small amount of memory on the systems (2Gig). The applications also (in theory) have a larger footprint due to the 64-bit addressing...so together this is degrading the system enough to be beaten by a optimized 32-bit system.
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"The processor is having to do extra work to emulate a 32-bit processor while not gaining any of the advantages of being able to address more than memeory due to the small amount of memory on the systems (2Gig)."
Aside from the Itanium, which is a true 64-bit architecture through and through, "64-bit processors" from AMD and Intel are actually 32-bit processors with 64-bit extensions. This conclusion is fundamentally flawed, and I'd love to know where you got that information.
Also, your statement contains fundamental misunderstandings. 64-bit OS's can benefit machines with 2gigs of physical memory as well, since applications occupy both physical and virtual memory cached on the hard drive.
"The applications also (in theory) have a larger footprint due to the 64-bit addressing"
A 64-bit application does not have a larger memory footprint than a 32-bit application inherently. It can and often does because the app developer can actually utilize more RAM than they could in a 32-bit platform, but that implies the app could benefit from additional RAM but was limited because of a handicapped 32-bit environment.
"Enough, enough bowing down to disillusion!
Hats off & applause to rogues & evolution!
The ripple effect is too good not to mention.
If you’re not affected, you’re not paying attention!"
0
Sorry for the huge delay in my response, had other tasks that took priority...
I will have to go back through my research but I believe I found information related to the benefits of a 64 bit processor and OS somewhere on the intel site and I have found numerous statements talking about the 4Gig barrier in physical memory for 32bit systems. I did not assume that there would be no benefit of the larger addressing capabilities of a 64 bit platform without surpassing the 32bit barrier but only that the hardware was not being optimized since physical memory is dramaticly faster than having to read from disk. The ability to cache and quickly retreive huge chunks of regularly accessed data in physical memory is lost when you have to read from disk. Please if I'm wrong inform me correctly, any documentation on such is very much appreciated.
I did not think in detail on how AMD and Intel build their proccessors, each staying backwards campatable, thus being able to run 8/16/32/64 instructions natively. With that said there should be no emulation at all, only the added task of working with a larger address. As I understand it whether the OS is 32bit or 64bit if the platform is 64bit then addresses being used by the platform will have to be 64bit...
The idea of a larger footprint is partially form exactly what you said, and a small portion would be from having to work with the larger addresses, is there no overhead to the larger size of the addresses?
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