Server Sizing for Windows Deployment Services


How many images can you simultaneously deploy from a single Windows Server 2008 R2 WDS server? Obviously that depends a lot on a lot of things, but here's some real-world advice from a colleague who uses WDS to deploy hundreds of images in a test lab every day. The hardware he uses for his WDS server is a dual-proc Pentium Xeon 2.8 HT with 4GB RAM and it has two gigabit Etherhet network cards in it and a RAID 5 storage array. He reports that his WDS server can easily handle around 500 simultaneous image downloads without maxing out performance or bandwidth. He also estimates that if he ever needed to simultaneously reimage all 6000 clients on his network that he would probably need three of these WDS servers to do this efficiently.  You can take that and run with it if you like, but always remember what Ronald Reagan said: "Trust but verify!"

Mitch Tulloch is a seven-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award and widely recognized expert on Windows administration, deployment and virtualization. For more tips by Mitch you can follow him on Twitter or friend him on Facebook.

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