HP ProLiant ML350 G6 Server

Not sure if there is a performance enhancement for multiple file groups, but you might find that multiple files on your filegroup(s) will improve performance.

Review my contribution to this question: Why is CPU use so asymmetric on our 8-cpu SQL Server box?

We are careful to set up our biggest most often used tables to be on filegroups with multiple files in them. One of the performance enhancements of this is that SQL will thread requests to each file in the filegroup - so if BigOverUsedTable is on FileGroup1 and FileGroup1 has four files in it and your DB has 8 cores, it will actually use four cores to do "select big number crunching nasty query from BigOverUsedTable" - whereas otherwise, it will only use one CPU. We got this idea from this MSDN article:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms944351.aspx

From TFA:

"Filegroups use parallel threads to improve data access. When a table is accessed sequentially, the system creates a separate thread for each file in parallel. When the system performs a table scan for a table in a filegroup with four files, it uses four separate threads to read the data in parallel. In general, using multiple files on separate disks improves performance. Too many files in a filegroup can cause too many parallel threads and create bottlenecks."

We have four files in our filegroup on an 8 core machine due to this advice. It's working out well.

2003 R2 was not a kernel change. The drivers would be the same as for 2003.

VER on Windows 2003 R2 reports the same as 2003: Microsoft Windows [Version 5.2.3790]

2008 R2 is however very much different from 2008.

If you are not using the HP installation CD, you may need to install using a floppy drive if you want to have the latest storage driver from the start or the Windows media does not recognize the storage controllers. During setup, you would press F6 when prompted, to install a different storage controller driver. Of course with modern hardware, that would be a USB floppy drive.

03/01/2010  02:07 PM            37,576 cp011324.xml
06/29/2009  07:35 AM           233,248 cpqsetup.exe
06/29/2009  07:28 AM           372,736 generic.dll
03/01/2010  05:17 PM             9,330 hpcisss2.cat
02/22/2010  01:01 PM           114,280 hpcisss2.sys
02/22/2010  01:01 PM            12,741 hpcissx2.inf
04/05/2005  09:33 AM               200 install.xml
02/22/2010  01:01 PM             4,030 txtsetup.oem
               8 File(s)        784,141 bytes