This article applies to PRTG Network Monitor 14 or later

Recommended Operating System: Windows Server 2012 R2 or Later

As you can see in section Supported Operating Systems of the detailed system requirements for PRTG, we recommend that you use Windows Server 2012 R2 or later on the computer running the PRTG probe: This is either on the local system or on the system running a remote probe. Windows Server 2012 R2 provides best performance for various sensor types.

This recommendation especially holds for all sensors that execute HTTP web requests via a script. We found out that the performance of these sensors is better by a factor around 10 on Windows Server 2012 R2 or later than on Windows Server 2008 R2.

For example, this affects all VMware sensors using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol): the VMware Datastore (SOAP) sensor, the VMware Host Hardware Status (SOAP) sensor, the VMware Host Performance (SOAP) sensor, and the VMware Virtual Machine (SOAP) sensor.

You can monitor

• up to 300 VMware sensors in a 60 seconds scanning interval if your PRTG server (or remote probe) runs on Windows 2012 R2 or later,
• but only 30 VMware sensors in a 60 seconds scanning interval if your PRTG server (or remote probe) runs on Windows 2008 R2.

See this article for details about performance of VMware sensors.

Other sensor types which show increase in performance by factor 10 are, for example,

• the HTTP XML/REST Value sensor,
• the IP on DNS Blacklist sensor,
• and all other sensor type that execute a script to perform an HTTP web request.

Also keep this performance improvement in mind when creating your own custom sensors, for example, an EXE/Script sensor, and your custom script performs such a request.

If possible, set up the PRTG server and/or remote probes on Windows Server 2012 R2 or later if you use the mentioned sensor types frequently!