SIMS Server sort slowed down to a crawl

[FragglePete]

Got an issue with our SIMS Server; got reports of our AIM High reporting system running really slowly today, and it was. I looked at the CPU Useage, and although a little 'spikey' this morning on the CPU, everything else seemed quite normal. So, I've restarted the firebirdsql service that this uses and that seems to have got things running again.

 

SIMS itself seems to be running ok; I can look up classes, pupils with no noticeable loss in speed (although seemed longer to start SIMS that normal) and I've not had complaints with regard to SIMS.

 

But, things don't seem right with the server. It's a Virtual Server running on XenServer and has been chugging away quite happily for a while now. I noticed that the nightly backup of the server seemed to take an age, a lot longer than normal. I tried emptying out a few backup directories, and this seem to take a long time as well. It feels sluggish on the remote desktop connection.

 

I'm planning on doing a server restart, but thought I'd do a quick and dirty backup with dbattach before doing a restart, however, this seems to be taking an absolute age. It's created the .bak file for the SIMS, but is stuck on Not Responding (for the last 30 minutes now).

 

The XenServer is not reporting any problems, and two other VM on this host are running quite happily, I've been moving around a few large files on these with no issues.. No lights are on the server itself to indicate a disk problem.

 

Any ideas? Tad worried to say the least.

 

Pete

[fiza]

what size are your mdf and ldf files?

[FragglePete]

what size are your mdf and ldf files?

 

SIMS.ldf is at 9,027,840KB !!!!!!

 

SIMS.mid is at 5,761,344 !

 

Pete

[FragglePete]

Ok - Backup of the SIMS database completed, but took about an hour to complete. Pulled across the .bak to another server and that came off at a speed that I would expect.

Just started to pull across the DOCSERVER backup folder to another server and the speed of this is right down (ie. 459 KB/second) !! WTF?

Just going to initiate a backup of FMS, Discover and Solus database files and get them off the server!

 

Pete

[fiza]

Our LDF is 13,632 KB

Our MDF is 3,786,240 KB

 

You may want to run the patch that reduces the size of your LDF. It may be affecting performance.

[FragglePete]

Our LDF is 13,632 KB

Our MDF is 3,786,240 KB

 

You may want to run the patch that reduces the size of your LDF. It may be affecting performance.

 

Got any details? I know I've run a utility before that reduces these sizes, but was a long time ago.

 

I'm going to do a restart of the Server after hours today, something ain't right.

 

Pete

[fiza]

Check if your DB is in simple recovery mode or not. I think it should be in simple to reduce size of the LDF.

[fiza]

Have a look here http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/86996-massive-sim-ldf-file-anyone-else-had-theres-suddenly-grow.html

[FragglePete]

Thanks - I'll look at that; looking at SQL Server Management Studio (which took an age to load), the recovery model is set to Full. So, just set that to Simple ?

 

I'm going to try and get a restart done first.

 

Pete

[fiza]

Thanks - I'll look at that; looking at SQL Server Management Studio (which took an age to load), the recovery model is set to Full. So, just set that to Simple ?

 

I'm going to try and get a restart done first.

 

Pete

 

Yes set it to simple

[Rawns]

Patch 14265 is the SIMS Reindex patch. It will shrink the LDF and reindex the database tables.

[MYK-IT]

Thanks - I'll look at that; looking at SQL Server Management Studio (which took an age to load), the recovery model is set to Full. So, just set that to Simple ?

 

I'm going to try and get a restart done first.

 

Pete

 

I did similar thing earlier in the week to attempt to make SIMS run better...

 

Changed to Simple Mode

Applied 14265 Re-Index Patch

And changed the "Maximum Server Memory" within SQL Server Management Studio from the default maximum (of 2147483647 MB!) to something more suitable (to ~80% of installed RAM)

[Willott]

Check resource monitor/performance monitor on the machine generally, sounds like it may be a high disk load type issue - if not that VM maybe another one is hogging data usage, worth checking in Xencenter

[FragglePete]

Check resource monitor/performance monitor on the machine generally, sounds like it may be a high disk load type issue - if not that VM maybe another one is hogging data usage, worth checking in Xencenter

 

The other VM's are not taking anything excessive in terms of resources and all seem to be working ok. I've managed to do server restart and that went through ok and all seems ok straight after.

 

I'm letting the daily backup run and remote in later to see how it's getting on, if all OK then I'll let a few Server Updates go down that are waiting and look to shrink things down myself.

 

Find out tomorrow.

 

Pete

[Zourous]

I know my boss had trouble with performance on the sims server for a while. In the end it turned out to be where he had taken a number of snapshots on the VM and it started slowing it all down. The answer was to merge them all back in to one I think, which was a slow process. Sorry if this has been suggested already. I don't work on servers so don't fully understand what has been said already.

[FragglePete]

Just an update, managed to do a restart before going home last night and all came back to life. I let all the usual backup routines run and remoted in late last night and processed the waiting Windows Updates; again, restart went ok and so far everything seems to be ok.

 

Most odd. Will keep an eye on things today.

 

I look at shrinking stuff later on today, do a bit of reading up on it first.

 

Again, thanks for help and suggestions thus far, as always; appreciated.

 

Pete