Windows Server 2019 Performance Benchmarked Against Linux On An Intel Xeon Server

There wasn't too much variation on the dual Xeon Gold server with the JPEG library tests.

Clear Linux managed to run the fastest with the proprietary IndigoBench renderer for the bedroom scene.

But with the supercar scene, Windows Server 2019 edged past the Linux distributions.

Clear Linux (and one win each for CentOS and Fedora) were the fastest with the Blender modeling software while Windows Server continued lagging behind the Linux distributions.

Clear Linux continues offering noticeably better performance for PHP than the other operating systems we routinely benchmark.

Additional benchmark data can be found via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file.

With the 2P EPYC tests, which granted had some slightly different OS variations due to hardware compatibility and a few less tests, Clear Linux won 26% of the time followed by Ubuntu 18.10 with wins 17% of the time and then CentOS and openSUSE each had wins 15% of the time. Windows Server 2019 ended up only winning tests about 9% of the time.

Under these tests with the dual Xeon Gold 6138 Tyan server, Intel's own performance-optimized Clear Linux was out in front 46% of the time. This operating system out of their Open-Source Technology Center was able to take on the various enterprise Linux distributions as well as Windows Server and come out in first place about half the time, though frankly that really isn't surprising given our past benchmarks of the insanely-tuned platform over the years, and in some tests is the winner ~60%+ of the time.

Coming in second place for this OS testing was Debian 9.6, which was out in front just 16% of the time.... Clear Linux had nearly three times as many wins. While following Debian was CentOS 7 with wins 11% of the time and then Windows Server 2019 came in fourth with winning 10% of the time.

With this Tyan server playing fine with the Windows Server 2016 installer, we were able to see how the Windows Server 2016 performance compares to Windows Server 2019. While there were some cases to the contrary, Windows Server 2019 in a number of benchmarks was delivering up to a few percent better performance than its predecessor. Windows Server 2019 also has the WSL support, initial support for Kubernetes, various cloud and security improvements, and other additions.

Coming up next in this benchmarking quest will be seeing how the BSDs compare to Windows Server 2019 and these Linux distributions from this dual Xeon Gold Tyan server.