Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 Inside Out

Resolving Performance Bottlenecks

Generally, a bottleneck is any condition that keeps a computer from performing at its best. Bottlenecks can also apply to situations in which one resource is preventing another resource from performing optimally. For example, if a system doesn't have enough physical memory, it doesn't matter whether it has a fast processor or a slow processor. The system will still perform poorly because it doesn't have enough physical memory available and must rely heavily on the paging file, reading and writing to disk frequently.

Memory is usually the main bottleneck on both workstations and servers. It is the resource you should examine first to try to determine why a system isn't performing as expected. But memory isn't the ...