#1, we are having the opposite experience. We are rolling out a streaming real-time stockmarket tracker and decided to use Windows Server 2003 Web Edition vice Windows 2000 Advanced Server in a network load balance configuration. First of all, the savings between the two versions of the operating system are significant. And, although, we are not yet done tweaking the code, we are getting, when conducting stress tests against a single IBM 4500R (2 CPU 900MHz PIII, 512MB ECC PC-100 RAM and a single 9.1GB 10000RPM drive), over 12,000 hits per minute and 200+ / second with zero bad returns. That translates to the plus side of 40 million hits a day. Before going into production, we will configure an addtional four identical servers using network load balancing and we should be able to handle our entire customer load even if they were all on it at once!
On an identically configured box, as described above, but running Windows 2000 Advanced Server, the same streamer code against the stress test suite, it was only capable of half the hits.
I'd say its a keeper.
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