Provided you have all of the drivers and the right SKU of Windows 7, yes. The max memory Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, Enterprise will see is 192GB. Therefore, if your server has 256GB or more of RAM, you will not be able to take advantage of all available memory. Do be aware that some server vendors sometimes release drivers only for the server versions and they won't install on client versions of Windows. If, for whatever reason, you are looking to use your server as a interactive client, you can make Server 2008/2008 R2 act and appear just like Windows 7--with Aero effects and all. I have used Server 2008 R2 (180 day trial) as a client OS mimicking all end-user capabilities of Windows 7 on Dell Precision 690 workstations with great success.

If I used Windows 7 as the OS on a genuine server i.e. DELL Poweredge will Win7 take advantage of the server architecture?

1. What do you expect from installing Windows 7 on server hardware? Remember that Windows 7 is aimed at ONE user and no more that one user can login. 2. I expect that you can install Windows 7 in server hardware, but desktop operating system is NOT officially supported by hardware vendor. Regards Milos

Hi, Regarding the hardware compatibility issue, you can contact DELL to check whether the Poweredge could install Windows 7. In addition, I would like to tell you that Windows 7 will only use up to the maximum value. So a 32-bit installation of Windows 7 on a 8 GB RAM system will only show 4 GB available for use. In this particular case it will actually show less than 4 GB, due to limitations in the x86 architecture. Note: For the purposes of Windows licensing, physical processors are counted. For example, a processor with 2 cores, with Hyperthreading enabled on each core still counts as only one physical processor You can refer to the following table: Edition: Starter Home Basic and Home Premium Professional Ultimate Processors 1 Physical 1 Physical 2 Physical 2 Physical Memory 2 GB for 32-bit (no 64-bit) 4 GB for 32-bit 16 GB on 64-bit 4 GB for 32-bit 128 GB on 64-bit 4 GB for 32-bit 128 GB on 64-bit Hope this helps. Vincent Wang TechNet Community Support