what's the difference between the server and workstation versions?

[Astara]

I was hoping to find a comparison chart...or is the only difference on the licensing?

At servers have the windows-resource-control manager -- which, if it worked on win7
would be sufficient for my needs.  I thought that was such a ripoff -- they made it a
free download for server edition, but made it not work on consumer editions.  What,
we aren't allowed to control our resources? 

What's up with that?  I have a computer science background, so I always end up being
more picky about how things should run... also usually means a never-ending self-generated
workload....like I'll ever be satisfied....sigh...

Even linux is going toward MS-designs, with a 'systemd' that will control process
and service start/restart as well as (it's a continually growing list) power, device management,
resource management, system log (which now gets encoded in binary -- no more plain
text logs -- even core dumps get rolled into the system log (doesn't this sound brilliant?))...
Oh well...

Thanks much!

[Jeremy Collake]

The difference is basically in licensing, though there are also real differences to the code - but nothing worth mentioning other than to say the Server Edition is tuned for Servers.

Of course, Process Lasso is much more than yet another task manager or resource monitor. And, in fact, if that's all you need, then there are better things built into Windows, like resmon.exe, as you mentioned. Process Lasso is useful due to it's unique algorithms like ProBalance and it's ability to automate various process settings.

[Astara]

Of course, Process Lasso is much more than yet another task manager or resource monitor.
And, in fact, if that's all you need, then there are better things built into Windows, like resmon.exe, as you mentioned.

I mentioned that the resource control manager available only for servers would likely meet my needs if it was available in win7.  But it isn't.  resmon, besides having a noticeable overhead, missed the "control" aspect of what I need.

Ex.  rarely, (problem went from appearing nearly daily to now -- last time was maybe a  month ago or more)... was Explorer growing out of control  searching my remote filesystems.  Dunno what it was searching for or what other process invoked it as a surrogate, but it seemed to be enumerating or inspecting my "Docs"  dir, which tallies about 462G.  On the server, if I tell it to follow symlinks (which windows sees as normal files or directories), then it would be tallying about 8.2T!  However, even there, I think
that the "du" recognizes and prunes file-system loops -- that explorer doesn't.

So it start out usually doing hi I/O.... when I notice it .. 80-120MB/s... But most of it ends up going through the system process now -- so its hard to "know" that explorer is the "culprit" (not really, as something else -- maybe windows search seems to be calling explorer threads via RPC/DCOM calls).  But things start to slow down when explorer gets up to around 2-3G in Virtual size -- w/working usually >1G.  Usually at that point, the network I/O -- (being handled in 'System', therefore not touchable) causing the problem indirectly through Deferred Procedure Calls ... the Soft-Interrupt % will be using about 100% of 1 core (~16.6% overall). 

It's always the desktop instance of Explorer.  If I catch it in time, I can just restart Explorer using a ProcessHacker (PH) restart  function.  But if there are too many pending I/O's , I sometimes have to unplug the network cable -- which will bring a quick halt to the interrupt storm and allow Explorer to restart (i.e. I can _try_ to restart it -- and PH starts the new process, but the old process won't die until some "queue" is emptied... that can be expedited by pulling the network cord.  ;-)

That's been my main "troublemaker"... though Sometimes search and MS malware scanner take a toll -- they usually require (and accept) manual adjustment of affinity (already have their process priority and I/O priorities set to "low" via PH, but PH doesn't have an auto-affinity setting).   So those are "annoying" as I have to reset them w/each system boot -- but I can't set limits on the Desktop-displaying copy of explorer or every process I launch from it will get the same limits.... Not good.

Process Lasso is useful due to it's unique algorithms like ProBalance and it's ability to automate various process settings.

---
My need for automation is generally low -- if PH had affinity setting, that'd solve all but the "out-of-control- explorer" thing which rarely happens these days. 

It would be very nice if MS hadn't bundled large I/O of programs into 'system' including network I/O... as I can't really adjust much on 'System' (even it it let me -- which, on things like Priority change -- it usually will blue-screen your system) -- but even if it didn't it would affect everything else in the system.  Bleh!

I'm a bit nervous about having an automated adjuster running in BG, only because it is so often done wrong -- taking more resources than it saves.  W/6 cores, I can usually limit system cpu-abusers to 1 core  -- things like letting search and MSMPEng (Home Essentials malware protection) run and compete w/each other on 1 core -- not a great solution, as each of them are more I/O bound than cpu bound.   

Another thing at the "annoyance level" are background processes that consume cpu when not doing anything. Ex: DisplayFusion -- handles changing wallpaper on my 2 monitors every 30 minutes or so --- but that doesn't explain why it is always using cpu (0.25-1%) when it should be asleep -- it ends up unnecessarily flushing the cache of whatever cpu it is running on, which is not really noticeable, so it's really a matter of "principle"... I.e. if you don't have work to do for 30 minutes, SLEEP!.  don't spin using bits of cpu and constantly flushing other programs out of the cpu caches.  (anal retentive, me?!)... ;-)

So most of my problems wouldn't even be noticed by 'normal users'.... I just pay too much attention to what's going on.  ;-)

[BenYeeHua]

It would be very nice if MS hadn't bundled large I/O of programs into 'system' including network I/O... as I can't really adjust much on 'System' (even it it let me -- which, on things like Priority change -- it usually will blue-screen your system) -- but even if it didn't it would affect everything else in the system.  Bleh!

Well, as a Normal Windows 10 users, I saw many driver like to leak the data after they loaded into system process, like now, it has used 79,544 K of Private Memory, but lucky it is just a virtual memory, so at least it will be pushed into the Page File when I need that part of memory.

And most normal user do not have time to understand about how computer works(or their brain don't works that ways), so they will not know did there is any problems or not, unless it is BSoD, they also like blame their RAM when the computer is weak, not their CPU.

Playing game lag? Must be my graphic card has a small graphic memory.

[Jeremy Collake]

Resource Monitor may not be there, but perfmon.exe is --- since NT4. You can set it to 'watch' any of hundreds of system metrics. It just doesn't have the snazzy interface of Resource Monitor (resmon.exe).

Do NOT be nervous about running Process Lasso in the background. It is designed to be conservative in the actions it takes and it's ProBalance algorithm is very safe, which I can say with certitude after over a decade of real-world use. It's only when users go and try to fine-tune further that they run the possibility of having any problems really.

As for background processes doing things even when they're not seemingly awake. Well, they are doing something, OR a module injected into them is doing something, OR there is some 'cleanup' going on. In any event, ProBalance will handle these great.

In short, it's a great, safe, conservative compliment to your own CPU affinity adjustments.