Why Windows Server 2022 Very Slow and How to Speed Up

Although Windows Server 2022 innovates a lot compared to Windows Server 2019, users also find that Server 2022 might be slow in daily use. The server is famous for its high efficiency, reliability, and safety, if the running speed slows down, it will affect your work efficiency and the result your work plan asks for.

In this article, we’ll help you improve the performance of your Windows Server 2022 in two parts:  the hardware configuration and other tricks.

Why is Windows Server 2022 very slow?

Server 2022 has higher hardware requirements to realize the higher performance; if your Windows Server has poor performance, it’s can be related to the hardware and something else.

How to fix “Windows Server 2022 Slow Performance”

In this section, we will give you some advice to speed up your Server 2022, you can choose one or some to have a try based on your conditions.

Part 1. Upgrade hardware configuration

Way 1. Choose Higher-performance power

Generally, every system or server has its specific set of power settings. The consumption of power should match the processor's clock speed. Even tiny changes to the power supply can drag the speed. If the power supply performs defectively, other components might also not perform at their best.

You can follow the path as the picture shows to change the power settings.

Way 2. Use dedicated server memory

The requirement of Windows Server 2022 for RAM is 8GB, however, 8GB might be insufficient when you're running VM, or testing the programs you created by yourself, and don't forget SQL database, it also devours your RAM.

If it’s possible, you can change the RAM to 64GB or more with ECC (Error Correcting Code).

Way 3. Employ multi-core CPU

A multi-core CPU refers to the integration of two or more complete computing engines (cores) in one processor, at which point the processor can support multiple processors on the system bus. When running multiple single-threaded programs on a multi-core processor at the same time, the operating system will send the instructions of multiple programs to multiple cores respectively, so that the speed of completing multiple programs at the same time is greatly accelerated.

Generally, the CPU of a PC has 4 cores, while the requirement of a server will reach 32 cores at least. Thus, it can be said that the more cores, the better.

Way 4. Utilize RAID-5/10 (Redundant Array of Independent Disks)

RAID refers to the usage of numerous independent disks to construct a big disk system to obtain greater storage performance and reliability than a single disk. So, a program can be analyzed on more than one physical disk at the same time, then the responding speed will be faster.

Common RAID schemes can be divided into: RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-5, RAID-6, RAID-10.

RAID-0 is the quickest RAID kind and has the most capacity, however, it does not guarantee reliability.

RAID-6 has slower performance than RAID-0 and RAID-10, but it has a larger capacity.

RAID-10 is regarded as the quickest and most dependable at the same time, although it only makes half of all drives available for active use.

RAID-5 is the most used method that takes into account storage performance, data security, and storage cost.

In RAID-5 mode, the checksum information will be distributed to each disk. There are a total of N disks, then the data to be written will be divided into N parts, and written to the N disks concurrently, and the check code information of the data will also be written to the N disks (the data and the corresponding checksum information must be stored separately on different disks). Once a certain disk is damaged, the remaining data and the corresponding parity code information can be used to restore the damaged data.

Although RAID-5 is nice, we suggest you select one mode that’s the best for your devices.

Part 2. More tricks after the upgrade of hardware

If the above methods are already inspired you with some ideas to improve your Server 2022, then, this part is about some tricks that can make the improvement easier.

Before you start to upgrade your hardware, you should have a detailed plan about how to safely and quickly transfer your data to your new disks, reinstall install OS, etc. Thinking of these things, many people start to worry, that they can be simply solved by AOMEI Partition Assistant Server, a professional Server manager with various powerful features. It can help you clone all data you need to a new disk (MBR to GPT or GPT to MBR); migrate OS to the target disk to avoid bothering reinstallation, and only move some needed installed programs to another location… With one program, you can do lots of things.

Next, we’ll show all the details about these three features that might be helpful to upgrade your Windows Server 2022.

Way 1. Clone to SSD

No matter whether you’re going to change your HDD to a nice SSD or replace an old, small SSD with a larger one, the “Clone Disk” feature can offer you help. You can select the clone method during the process, and after cloning, you just need to install your new disk to your machine and change the boot mode if the original disk is a system disk.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, click "Clone" in the main interface and select "Clone Disk".

Step 2. Choose the hard disk that you need to clone as the source disk and click "Next".

Step 3. Select the destination disk to store the data on the source disk, and then click "Next".

Step 4. Then, you can check the source and destination disk in the next window or change to “Sector to Sector clone”, and click the "Confirm" button to continue if there is no problem.

Here, you can also click the "Settings" button to adjust the partition size on the destination disk or tick "4k alignment" to improve the reading and writing speed of SSD if the target disk is an SSD drive.

Step 5. At last, click "Apply" and "Proceed" in the main interface to start cloning the hard drive.

Way 2. Migrate OS to SSD

If you only wish to keep the OS and your personal settings, “Migrate OS to SSD” is the feature we recommend. It will only clone OS-related partitions on the original disk, so you don’t need to reinstall your Server after you upgrade your hardware.

Step 1. Click “Clone” in the top toolbar, and choose “Migrate OS”. Then, click "Next".

Step 2. Choose an unallocated space on the new disk and click the “Next” button.

Step 3. Now, you can adjust the system partition on the SSD. Then, click the “Next” button.

Read the note about how to boot from the cloned disk and click “Next”.

Step 4. After confirming the operation, click “Apply”>“Proceed” to execute it.

After confirming and booting successfully from the cloned hard drive, you can wipe the original hard drive or delete the C drive on it to free up disk space.

Way 3. Optimize storage structure

If there’s someone who wishes to only keep the OS, then there must be another who might need to run old programs on a new OS. To satisfy this requirement, AOMEI Partition Assistant offers the “App Mover” function. It can move the installed programs to another drive or another disk, all related files and data will be transferred together to the destination place to ensure it can run as before without wasting time to reinstall all.

Step 1. Click “Free up” on in the top toolbar, and choose “App Mover”.

Step 2. You will see all partitions, the number and size of installed programs on every partition will also be displayed. Select the disk and one partition that you want to move applications from and click "Next".

Step 3. Choose applications you want to move and select the target location, then click "Move"

Step 4. Confirm forcibly closing running applications when moving starts. Click "OK" to begin the process. To ensure the apps run properly, please don't move or delete files in the source and target directory.

Step 5. Click “Finish” to over the task.

When you plug the target disk into your upgraded device, you can use your programs directly.

This tool is also compatible with Windows Server 2025/2022/2019/2016/2012(R2)/2008(R2) and Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP, you can use it to “Convert to GPT/MBR”, “Convert to NTFS”, “Rebuild MBR”… If you need to run this tool on other machines without limitation of number and location, you can also choose the Technician edition.

Conclusion

If your Windows Server 2022 is very slow, then read this post carefully, you might know the most possible reasons for it and find the best solution for your machine to optimize the performance, fix Windows Server slow boot, and release disk free space…