A Real Technical Challenge for Experts - Windows SBS 2003 Se

Hello Everybody,


I have a Windows SBS 2003, which is primarily used as a file server. Shared folders with plain ascii text files are accessed by users to read and write through a DOS 16 bit application. Users also use the shared folder to view "images" in the DOS application.

My challenge is

(a) The Page/Sec is peaking to 100% every 10 seconds and the result is erratic performance - delays experienced by user.

(b) The disk queue also peaks to 70-100% once in 10 seconds.

The server is a Dell PowerEdge 2800 with 4 GB RAM and a Raid 5 System. Approx 30-50 users connect to the Server at a time. The primary is a PDC for the domain. All possible services are stopped on this server and DNS, WINS etc is load balanced to a secondary server.


Any help to improve the performance of the server will be sincerely appreciated. Please let me know if I can offer any more stats to diagonize this further.

Thanks.



- Santy Balan
san.rely@gmail.com

================================================== ================================================== ===============

Here are few statistics of the Server :-





TOtal Memory : 4 GIG
Raid 5
C Drive : 12 GB {paging file : 2 - 2 GB}
D Drve : 240 GB {paging file : 8 - 20 GB}

Acting as File Server for shared folders. Accessed by 30-50 users to read/write text files into the shared fodler.

Pages per sec... peaks to 100% about every 10 seconds
Average Disk Queue peaks to 70-80% about every 10 seconds

Process Stats
% of User Time = 5-10%
% of Processor Time = 100%
% of Privileged Time = 100%

Memory
Available Bytes = 100%
Free System Page Table Entries = 100%
Commit Limit = 100%
Page Reads = Spikes in 10 sec upto 100%
Page writes < 5%
Transition faults/sec = spikes in 10 sec upto 100%

Physical Disk
Average Disk Queue = Spikes in 10 sec upto 100%

Paging File
% of paying file usage < 1 % constant

Commit Charge (K)
Total : 2490632
Limit : 14409488
Peak : 2544516

Physical Memory (K)
Total : 4193360
Available : 1663572
System Cache : 1854808

Kernel Memory (K)
Total : 124652
Paged : 73828
NonPaged : 50824

Totals :
Handles : 25707
Threads : 1090
Processes : 74

CPU Usage = 2%

Commit Charge : 2431M/14071M

PF Usage : 2.37 GB

I'm not sure anyone is going to be able to suggest much unless we know what sort of quantities of data and files this application is using. I do hope you aren't running the client application on 2000 or XP workstations as their 16 bit performance will not be, hmm whats a good word, 'optimal'.

What about AV scanning? If AV clients and the server are 'reading' the file on every request it would account for increased HD activity and potentially the server CPU useage.
Ideally the server AV should be set to run scheduled 'quiet hours' scans only and not every time a file is accessed. Clients should also have their remote file scanning facility disabled.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dos_Box

What about AV scanning? If AV clients and the server are 'reading' the file on every request it would account for increased HD activity and potentially the server CPU useage.
Ideally the server AV should be set to run scheduled 'quiet hours' scans only and not every time a file is accessed. Clients should also have their remote file scanning facility disabled.

---

8O

Not wishing to derail the thread, but I am of the opinion that file access scan on servers should be on all the time. If the antivirus causes too much utilisation then either it or the server is not good enough for the task.

Servers should be optimised for 'serving. it is the client which should be scanning for viruses. if however you do get that paranoid than scanning the OS area only would be an option.

What sort of processor is in the server?

I agree with Dos_Box on the AV front. No need to be scanning the same file at the server side and then at the client side surely.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SYSMAN_MK

I agree with Dos_Box on the AV front. No need to be scanning the same file at the server side and then at the client side surely.

---

but if you have remote file scanning turned off on the clients then it doesn't get scanned at all!

If your paranoid about this I'd set it to scan on "write" rather than read. But personally I find running a scheduled scan once a day is sufficent.