I want to set up a Linux host, and install window server 2008. How do I optimise Linux as the host for better performance of window server services. And which of Linux distribution will be ideal to work on.?

The whole idea is I want to deploy and manage services of a windows server version in a Linux environment. but in order to achieve that I know I need to optimise Linux(host) for performance of the windows server, also to configure a virtual set up to test and monitor the full range of the windows server services.

The main focus is to compare the windows server that runs within the virtual environment to the one on a standalone system.

i dont think linux is able to run windows iis and related services ?
(unless you mean visualization which is really windows os running in a vm).

Thanks for your prompt response, yes on virtual environment. The whole idea is I want to deploy and manage services of a windows server version in a Linux environment. but in order to achieve that I know I need to optimise Linux(host) for performance of the windows server, also to configure a virtual set up to test and monitor the full range of the windows server services.

The main focus is to compare the windows server that runs within the virtual environment to the one on a standalone system.

i dont know much about vm's but i assume that a system running 1 os will perform better than a system running 2 os's.

i think the hardware is more important than the software. i think any reasonably recent distro version would run vmware virtualbox qemu ... pretty fast. i've seen post on this forum about the guest os not seeing the network card. maybe you can search for them (i'll post a url if i find any).

Thank you very much, I will be awaiting the urls any idea that could point me in the right direction.

this seems up your alley. i peeped this on lq-spy; unfortunately, no answer yet:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...9/#post4970265

That seems like a pointless test. Any time you add more layers (and use more resources), you're going to slow a system down. A dedicated Windows-only box will run Windows faster than it will run on a virtual system, unless you spend a LOT of money on a system designed for it. If you're going to do this, you need to just run VMware ESX, which is designed from the ground up to do nothing BUT virtual systems.

@TbOne, Thanks your comment I understand the performance can not be compared to the dedicated machine. In my research I found out that Linux kernel can be modified(But How?) to improve the performance of the windows server in virtual environment.

Since you did 'research', I'm surprised you didn't run across one of the over 800,000 hits in Google for "how to tune linux for virtualization", like this one:
https://access.redhat.com/site/docum...ization_Guide/

You don't say what version/distro of Linux you're after, but again, running a stand-alone OS, then running Windows on top of it is going to be slow, period. You're not using the right tool for the job, and that's going to make things more difficult. VMware ESX was designed to do what you're wanting to do, and it provides the tools to do it easily, with minimal overhead.

If you're only talking about ONE user, and ONE Windows server, then yes...virtualbox is a good idea. If you're talking about ten Windows servers and lots of users of their services, then it is time to go with a more robust solution.