32 or 64 bit OS

[BridgeRE]

This would be for 3 terminal servers in a NLB Farm. Each Terminal Server is a Dell 1950, 2 dual core 2.0/ 4GB Ram. Our customers run a home grown 32 bit app and nothing else. The app is 23MB exe, which resides on a partition, that gets executed via their profile, when the user logs in.

Is there any advantage/disadvantage to installing Server 2008 64Bit?

 

[porkchopexpress]

Make sure that there are no DOS/16Bit components to the application, i've come across applications that are 32 bit and run 16 bit installers or have small parts that are still 16bit. These will not run.
Printer drivers can be a pain as well use the build in windows 64 ones if you can.

Test their home grown app on x64 is you can first.

Other than that go for the 64-bit version you generally see a performance gain and you will be able to scale to more users per box.

 

[BridgeRE]

Yes, I actually have 1 x64 2008 server running in production, with about 20 users connected and using the app with out issues. Before I deployed it, I did test it for a few weeks. As far as printing goes, Terminal Server 2008 has the "TS Easy Print Driver" which is much like Citrix, as I have to install 0 printer drivers. This is the main reason, I'm making the move. All the client needs is WinXP sp3 OR WinVista sp1 AND .NET Framework 3.0 sp1 or higher. My 2003 Terminal Servers have just over 250 print drivers installed and is getting to be a real admin headache. (I inherited this) Thanks for the reply, anyone else have an opinion?

 

[kmcferrin]

There are only a few differences between 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 2008.

1. 64-bit versions will not run 16-bit code, where 32-bit versions will.

2. 32-bit versions are limited to only 4GB of RAM (of which only around 3.5 is available) unless you pay for the Enterprise edition.

3. Hyper-V is only available on the 64-bit versions.

Speed-wise, I haven't seen an appreciable difference under normal loads, except in cases where having large amounts of memory available helps performance.

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