Related Factors

Performance can be affected by other applications running on the server. Typically, a dedicated server running Microsoft Exchange Server and no other applications, or a server with few other applications running, has greater performance potential than a server servicing additional applications. For example, simultaneously providing services that aren't resource-intensive because they don't require the server to respond to client requests (such as the server acting as a domain controller, Windows Internet Naming Service [WINS] server, or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol [DHCP] server), won't decrease performance. However, simultaneously running resource-intensive applications, such as Microsoft Systems Management (SMS) Server, SQL Server(tm), or SNA Server, may have a large effect on performance.