Windows Server 2022 V.S. 2019 Performance – All You Need to Know!

Windows Server is another operating system for Server devices developed by Microsoft to supplement the regular Windows OS, usually used by companies or organizations to execute programs or network infrastructures on a single PC. So far, Windows Server has released multiple versions. The latest Windows Server 2022 was released in September 2021, and Windows Server 2019 was released two years ago in October 2018.

So, after 2 years of working, what’s the new development in Server 2022 compared with Server 2019? In this post, we’ll analyze features and performance to help you learn more about Server 2022.

Windows Server 2022 V.S 2019 performance

 Section 1. Features

Although Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022 may look similar, the two are quite different in terms of features and performance.

On the whole, the improvement in function is more intuitive than performance. Therefore, in the following content, we will first compare the functions of Windows Server 2019 and 2022, and visually show the difference between them in a table.

The above is the functional difference between Windows Server 2022 and 2019. Next, we will introduce the differences between the two in terms of storage performance and network performance.

Section 2. Improved storage performance

▶ 1. Storage bus cache
Compared with Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022 has enhanced storage performance, the most practical of which is the storage bus cache function.

Storage bus cache is a read-write caching technology for a single server that allows a tiered system to use faster disks (such as SSDs) as caches on the servers to speed up data transfers. In short, it is a technology that makes more efficient use of existing hardware and increases the transfer speed, giving a significant boost to storage performance.

▶ 2. Adjust the speed of storage recovery
When you construct a redundant array of independent disks in Windows Server 2019, it tends to impose tremendous demand on the hardware and significantly slow down the system, which lasts until the repair is complete. However, with this new capability in Server 2022, administrators may move system priority from the repair process to ongoing workloads, minimizing the impact on the OS and speeding up the repair process.

▶ 3. SMB compression
This feature can compress data before it enters the network and decompresses it when it reaches its assigned location, which can shorten the transfer time of 20GB of data from 3 minutes to 30 seconds. Although SMB compression affects server CPU performance, the effect has been minimized by the growth in the number of cores in Windows Server 2022.

Section 3. Enhanced network performance

In addition to storage performance, Windows Server 2022 also has improvements in network performance compared to Server 2019. There are two main protocols in network communication, Communication Control Protocol (TCP) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol), and Microsoft has significantly improved both in Windows Server 2022.

New features in Windows Server 2022 for UDP include UDP segmentation offload and UDP receiver coalescing.

▶ 1. UDP segmentation offload & UDP receiver coalescing
UDP segmentation offload can offload most of the work required to send packets from the CPU to UDP to dedicated hardware to reduce CPU load.

UDP receiver coalescing can help improve network performance by merging packets to reduce CPU usage for UDP processing.

▶ 2. TCP performance improvements
Windows Server 2022 newly adds the TCP HyStart++ function, which can reduce packet loss during connection startup (especially on high-speed networks), and reduce retransmission timeouts through rack servers. Typically, these features are turned on in the transport stack and provide smoother network traffic.

▶ 3. Hyper-V virtual switch improvements
After enhanced Virtual switches in Hyper-V, the performance of network traffic from external hosts and from a virtual network interface controller to another virtual network interface controller on the same host is greatly improved.

And new QUIC (Quick UDP Internet connection) function overcomes a variety of transport-layer and application-layer difficulties encountered by modern online applications, with little or no modification required from application developers.

It can help professional IT personnel to easily copy files remotely without going through an advanced SMB VPN, which can also be seen as the performance of Windows Server 2022 network performance enhancements.

Through the above content, you must be able to fully understand the advantages of Windows Server 2022 compared to Windows Server 2019. In addition to the new features, storage performance and network performance have also been significantly improved.

How to upgrade to Windows Server 2022

Therefore, as long as there are no other special needs, whether you are doing a fresh installation or upgrading from Windows Server 2019, it is recommended to choose Windows Server 2022. Since there're more exciting enhancements in Windows Server 2022, the requirements for hardware also have something new.

Now, if your devices meet all necessary requirements, you can try to upgrade from Windows Server 2019 to 2022, but before that, you should choose a suitable version according to the actual situation.

How to select the right version of Windows Server 2022

According to Microsoft, Windows Server 2022 is available in 4 different editions: Standard, Essential, Data Center Edition, and Data Center Azure.

▶ Windows Server 2022 Standard
This version is specifically designed by Microsoft for small businesses or organizations and supports up to 10-core CPUs. Its retail price is $50. In addition, this version can only support up to 25 users and 50 devices, and lacks features such as a dashboard, client backup, anywhere access, etc.

▶ Windows Server 2022 Essential
Windows Server 2022 Standard Edition retails for $1069, supports up to 16 cores, and is licensed for only two virtual machines and one Hyper-V host. Note that every client that needs to access a Standard Edition server requires a Client Access License (CAL), and this edition lacks features like hotfix, software-defined networking, and storage.

▶ Windows Server 2022 Data Center
Windows Server 2022 Data Center Edition retails for $6155 and supports up to 16 cores. Compared to the standard edition, this edition adds unlimited Hyper-V virtual machines and protected virtual machines, as well as integrated software-defined storage, storage replication, and Storage Spaces Direct.

▶ Windows Server 2022 Data Center Azure
Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Azure Edition can execute virtual machines on hyper-converged infrastructure operating systems, and has hot patching capabilities not available in previous versions, allowing servers to install updates without rebooting and without using the Internet VPN.

Extend system partition before upgrading to Windows Server 2022

If your device has Server 2019, you can directly upgrade to Server 2022. However, it should be noted that during the upgrade, you may encounter the problem of insufficient storage space on the system partition, which will affect the entire upgrade process.

Therefore, it is recommended that you use AOMEI Partition Assistant Server to expand the system partition before upgrading to ensure that the server can be upgraded to Windows Server 2022 successfully.

It has a clear interface and simple operations. It can provide you with professional server partition management services, allowing you to easily expand the existing system partition in Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019/2022 and other versions.

Step 1. Install and run the tool, select and right-click on the partition where you want to extract some free space, and then, select “Allocate Free Space”.

Step 2. In the “Allocate Free Space” window, you can adjust how much space you want to allocate and choose the destination drive (here, we need to select C drive) to add the space to. After that, click “OK”.

Step 3. Follow “Apply” > “Proceed” to commit the operation.

In addition to allocating available storage space, the software also allows you to move apps to another drive so you can free up more space on the original partition.

Additionally, you can use the Merge Partition feature to merge two adjacent partitions on a hard drive together and merge (adjacent or non-adjacent unallocated space) to an existing partition to maximize disk utilization space and allow you to better manage these partitions.

If you've replaced your computer with a stronger SSD, you can migrate OS to the SSD and make sure it boots correctly. In addition, you can clone all data from the original disk to a new disk with the disk cloning function, and resize the partitions on the disk during the cloning process.

Summary

After all details we show you about Windows Server 2022 V.S. 2019 performance, believe you know more about Server 2022.

If you decide to use 2022, to avoid the problem of insufficient system partition storage space during the upgrade process, it is recommended that you use AOMEI Partition Assistant to expand your system partition to ensure Windows Server 2022 performance is maximized.

Besides extending partition, this tool can also convert dynamic disks to basic disks without losing data, rebuilding the MBR, and wiping the system disk.