RE: [Declude.JunkMail] OT: Windows 2003 Web Edition for a mail server

[Keith Johnson]

Title: Message

Andrew,     Not sure if this applies here, but here is Microsoft stance on Hyperthreading CPU's...   Microsoft says... Per Processor Licensing For currently available Microsoft servers products licensed on a per processor basis (e.g., Microsoft SQL Server™, Microsoft BizTalk Server™, Microsoft Content Management Server™, etc.), one processor license for each physical processor on the server is required. Therefore, customers only need to acquire one processor license for each physical HTT even though the software may count one HTT as two logical processors. See the full deal at: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/downloads/hyper_threading.doc     Keith From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Colbeck, Andrew Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 3:16 PM To: Declude.JunkMail@declude.com Subject: RE: [Declude.JunkMail] OT: Windows 2003 Web Edition for a mail server I've no comment to offer on the suitability of flavour of Windows 2003 for IMail, but I can comment on how the Hyperthreading is treated.   On all Windows 2003 servers with hyperthreading enabled, you will see double the number of physical CPUs in the Task Manager, in the Device Manager, and in WinMSD.  This lets applications see 4 CPUs on a dual server.  However for thread scheduling and for licencing the OS, the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) knows which ones are the physical CPUs and which are the virtual CPUs.   Windows 2000 servers do not have that distinction, and Microsoft will not back-port the logic from W2K3 to W2K.  W2K sees hyperthreading virtual CPUs as physical CPUs, so you would get into licencing issues if the number of CPUs exceeds your licence.   You would also get into performance issues because Microsoft simply uses the first CPUs it sees and ignores the ones that exceed your licence; as the order of discovery is physical, virtual, physical, virtual... you end up using half physical and half virtual CPUs, when what you want are only the CPUs that are physical to fit in your licence constraint.  Therefore, if you have a licencing problem with W2K, either upgrade to W2K3 or turn off hyperthreading.   Andrew 8) -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 11:17 AM To: Declude.JunkMail@declude.com Subject: [Declude.JunkMail] OT: Windows 2003 Web Edition for a mail server After watching things run for a couple of weeks on Windows 2003 Server, I have concluded that my IMail/Declude setup is running +30% more efficiently than it did on Windows 2000.  Because of this, I am thinking of getting rid of my Windows 2000 installations and replacing them with Windows 2003. I haven't noted much discussion around here regarding Windows 2003 Web Edition as a suitable host for IMail/Declude.  From what I have read, I don't believe there are any limitations that would prevent this setup from running properly, though I'm not yet positive at this point.  Here is a link to the matrix that Microsoft has published:     http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/features/compareeditions.mspx The only thing that stands out is the limitations to 2-Way SMP whereas Standard Edition supports 4-Way SMP.  I'm not sure if dual hyperthreaded processors are the equivalent of 2- or 4-Way SMP.  Maybe someone could offer up some knowledge there.  Even if so, the hyperthreading can be disabled, and I'm not convinced that having 4 processors/instances is beneficial to the environment. I also know that MS SQL server can't be run on Web Edition, but that isn't an issue here.  All of the other things that it says it won't support are things that I would have disabled anyway. So does anyone here have any experience with Web Edition and the limitations, and have an opinion about whether or not this would work with an IMail/Declude setup (or for that matter another E-mail platform since IMail will soon enough be 86'd). Thanks, Matt -- ===================================================== MailPure custom filters for Declude JunkMail Pro. http://www.mailpure.com/software/ =====================================================