Windows 2012 Server Performance Sensitive Configuration Parameters

When you run a server system, default settings might not meet the performance requirements of business needs.  For example, for some business needs lowest energy consumption is preferred and for others it could be low latency and high throughput.  This article will provide pointer to some of the common configuration parameters associated with processor & network of the Windows 2012 server.

Processor Power Management
Performance Boost Mode	»        The default value for Boost mode is 3 i.e. Efficient Enabled »        Turbo is enabled for High Performance power plans on all Intel and AMD processors and it is disabled for Power Saver plans
Minimum and Maximum Performance State	»        Processors change between performance states (“P-states”) very quickly to match supply to demand, delivering performance where necessary and saving energy when possible »        Alter this setting if your server has specific high-performance or minimum power-consumptions requirements »        If your server requires ultra-low latency, invariant CPU frequency, or the highest performance levels, you might not want the processors switching to lower-performance states, and for such server, you can cap the minimum processor performance state at 100 percent
Performance Core Parking Maximum and Minimum Cores	»        Cores that are chosen to “park” generally do not have any threads scheduled, and they will drop into very low power states when they are not processing interrupts, DPCs, or other strictly affinities work »        Core parking can potentially increase energy efficiency during lower usage periods on the server because parked cores can drop into deep low-power states »        The Processor Performance Core Parking Maximum Cores parameter controls the maximum percentage of cores that can be unparked (available to run threads) at any time, while the Processor Performance Core Parking Minimum Cores parameter controls the minimum percentage of cores that can be unparked
Performance Core Parking Utility Distribution	»        Utility Distribution is an algorithmic optimization in Windows Server 2012 that is designed to improve power efficiency for some workloads »        Utility Distribution is enabled by default for the balanced power plans for some processors. It can reduce processor power consumption by lowering the requested CPU frequencies of workloads that are in a reasonably steady state »        Utility Distribution is not necessarily a good algorithmic choice for workloads that are subject to high activity bursts or for programs where the workload quickly and randomly shifts across processors. For such workloads, it is recommended to disable the Utility Distribution
Networking Subsytem
Enabling Offload Features	»        Turning on network adapter offload features is usually beneficial »        You should enable offload capabilities, if the reduced throughput is not expected to be a limitation »        Some network adapters require offload features to be independently enabled for send and receive paths
Enabling RSS for Web Scenarios	»        RSS can improve web scalability and performance when there are fewer network adapters than logical processors on the server »        When all the web traffic is going through the RSS-capable network adapters, incoming web requests from different connections can be simultaneously processed across different CPUs »        Performance can be severely degraded if a non-RSS-capable network adapter accepts web traffic on a server that has one or more RSS-capable network adapters
RSS Profiles and RSS Queues	»        If logical processors seem to be underutilized for receive traffic, try increasing the number of RSS queues from the default of 2 to the maximum that is supported by your network adapter »        The default profile is NUMA Static
Increasing Network Adapter Resources	»        Some network adapters set their receive buffers low to conserve allocated memory from the host. The low value results in dropped packets and decreased performance. Therefore, for receive-intensive scenarios, it is recommended to increase the receive buffer value to the maximum
Enabling Interrupt Moderation	»        Consider interrupt moderation for CPU-bound workloads, and consider the trade-off between the host CPU savings and latency versus the increased host CPU savings because of more interrupts and less latency »        If the network adapter does not perform interrupt moderation, but it does expose buffer coalescing, increasing the number of coalesced buffers allows more buffers per send or receive, which improves performance