Windows Vista and Server 2008 Network Transfer Speeds is 60MB/sec+

Now that we have experience with "going native" on the SBS/Server 2008 platform, one of the most pleasant surprises is the improved network data transfer speeds.

We have seen the posts around that indicated "problems" with Vista file transfers across networks since RTM.

We have finished a number of client upgrades and server refreshes to all Vista/SBS 2008/Server 2008 and the change in transfer speeds is mind boggling.

We are now consistently getting 50-80MB/sec across the wire with the bottleneck being the system setup that is transferring data TO the Server 2008 box hosting the data. The higher the horsepower the workstation running Vista, the closer to 80-100MB/sec we are seeing. Yes, Megabytes per second.

Disk subsystem becomes the bottleneck on the workstation. That is where a good RAID 1+0 setup makes a huge difference in system performance and network transfers.

A RAID 1+0 setup is something to keep in mind for your clients that require large file transfers across the network to run their daily business.

With the advent of inexpensive storage, having four 320GB or 500GB Seagate Barracuda drives configured in RAID 1+0 is relatively inexpensive compared against the 40-60% performance increase the RAID setup yields. Many of the current desktop motherboards can even support a hot spare!

Need to step that performance up another notch? Then the Western Digital VelociRaptors would be the drives of choice and an add-in Intel RAID Controller such as the SRCSASRB PCI-E 4x or SRCSASJV PCI-E 8x controllers will really make things fly!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.