Imagine running SQL Server 2008 on a server with 64GB physical RAM, but your SQL process taps out at 3GB. Painful.

Unlike previous versions of Windows Server, It was released exclusively as a 64-bit (x64) operating system.

If you still have legacy 32-bit workloads, you have several paths forward:

If you have been in the IT industry long enough, you remember the tectonic shift that happened between 2008 and 2012. We often talk about Windows Server 2008 R2 (the 64-bit only version) as the gold standard. But today, I want to talk about its often-overlooked, quirky, and now almost extinct sibling: