There have been some rumors and rumblings implicating SQL Server in the recent Windows 7 RC download problem. As the SQL Server team, we’d like to reassure everyone that SQL Server is up to the task of handling the Windows 7 RC demand and much more. Just as a point of reference, Windows Live Hotmail, the Windows Live Messenger contact list, and many other Windows Live properties are running on Microsoft SQL Server. LiveID has 1.2 billion authentications / day, and ABCH, a common service supporting several of Microsoft’s Live applications, has over 50 billion contacts and serves more than 200,000 requests / second at peak load. Obviously, these systems have been tested, tuned and run on hardware designed to take the load. When the actual load greatly exceeds the anticipated and tested load, things can get interesting….

Lubor met with MSDN/TechNet Subscription team who developed and tested the application handling Windows 7 RC download registration. We have analyzed the post-mortem data of the “glitch” with SQL Server developers and performance engineers and we came to a simple conclusion: MSDN/TechNet Subscription team expected 20% and was prepared to handle 100% increase in traffic over the Windows 7 Beta release. In actuality there was a 500% increase in traffic to MSDN/TechNet Subscriptions sites the first 6 hours of the launch on April 30th. During this time, the Subscription platform exhausted all hardware resources. The operations team replaced the server and adjusted operational procedures to handle the unexpectedly high load. Since then downloads of Windows 7 RC are running smoothly at a very high rate. Download Windows 2008 R2 RC from here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/R2-Download.aspx