We tested hardware-platform compatibility by testing the 64-bit Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition on four platforms. We had no issues running the 64-bit code on our primary test platform, an HP DL585 server with four AMD Opteron 2.4-GHz CPUs and 12G bytes of dynamic RAM (DRAM). Nor did we have issues with the 64-bit code on our Polywell 2200S server with its dual AMD Opteron 2.8-GHz processors and 4G bytes of DRAM. However, we had serious compatibility issues when we tried to run the code on an MSI motherboard-based white box system with one AMD Opteron 2.8-GHz processor and 1G byte of DRAM, and on an Asus K8N motherboard-based server with one AMD Opteron 2.0-GHz CPU and 1G byte of DRAM.

The official performance tests of Windows Server 2003 x64 were conducted on the HP DL585. We conducted tests in both its native mode and with its SSL-enhancements activated.

No other optimizations were used. The Windows server was both an Active Directory Domain Controller (and therefore DNS server), and a Certificate Authority. It was running Internet Information Server Version 6. A single, anonymous Web user was configured for all Web tests where applicable. No load balancing of any kind was used in any of the above tests.

We used the same HP DL585 server to test Solaris 10, Red Hat Advanced Server 4 and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9; all with default settings, and Apache 2.0.3 with OpenSSL (for SSL certificate services). DNS was deployed, but LDAP, SAMBA and SQUID proxy were not used.

We tested performance with two Spirent Web Avalanche systems running in parallel.

The SSL tests were connected to the Web Avalanche systems by three Gigabit Ethernet connections; two from one Web Avalanche system, and one from the other.

The SSL test builds a set of user SSL sessions, via HTTPS reads from the server under test, until the number of concurrent users reaches a saturation point (generating 1% errors), which we term Maximum Concurrent Sessions. This test severely exercises the CPUs in the system and requires management of the user session throughout the duration of the tests through "keep-alive" connection status "tickles" from the Web Avalanche boxes. The test is designed to exercise the Web services and operating system efficiencies until saturation. The duration of the test is 10 minutes, but saturation for all results arrived earlier.