Using Windows 7 for "Server-like" loads

I'm studying for a SQL 2008 exam and found that you can mirror up to 3 backups to different devices, so when a client had some new Windows 7 machines delivered with loads of spare hard drive, I thought this would be an excellent location to backup an additioanal copy of SQL to overnight.

However after about a 15Gb backup from SQL 2005 server onto a Windows 7 share, the Windows 7 workstation seemed to loose its visibility from any of the Windows 2003 servers. (The other Windows 7 machines could still see the share).

A reboot solved the issue, until I tried to backup again!

Looking in the event log, I found memory errors showing as Non-Paged pool problems.

After a lot of searching, I came across the article below - it would appear that from the old SysInternals Site there used to be an article called "Tunining Workstations for Server-Like Loads". Microsoft seem to have "tidied up" these old articles and I couldnt find any links to the references shown on Technet, however if you make the registry changes to a Windows 7 machine, it seems a lot happier pretending to be a backup file server overnight.

Set the following registry to key to 1

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache

and set the following registry key to ‘3′:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters\Size

Reboot and enjoy!


References:
http://alan.lamielle.net/2009/09/03/windows-7-nonpaged-pool-srv-error-2017
Event ID 2017 and 2021 - microsoft.public.windows.vista.networking_sharing Google Groups