Server 2003 Standard Sluggish Performance?

[Guest Chris LeFebvre]

I have a Compaq Proliant series server with 4 - 900Mhz Pentium 3

Xeon Cpu's and a gig of ram with dual 10/100 ethernet adapters set up as

a team. This server is running Server 2003 Standard with all available

service packs and updates and it's used as our mail server. The overall

performance of this server seems very slow and sluggish and I haven't

been able to find a reason for this.

 

I've been doing some testing on a couple of desktop computers setup

with Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Server 2003 Standard and I believe

that I've been able to duplicate the problem so as to be able to

illustrate the severity of the performance problem. Of the two systems

that I'm using these are the hardware configurations:

Server2000: Server2003:

Pentium III Tualatin 1.1ghz Pentium IV Prescott 3.2ghz

1 gig of ram 2 gig of ram

3Com 3C905BTX Marvell Yukon 88E8053 Gigabit

Adapter

 

Both are connected to a Cisco 3524 workgroup switch, all ports of which

are set to auto negotiate. The workstation that I've been testing with

is a CoreDuo 2 E6750 based system running Xp Pro. The test that I ran

was a program that I wrote to copy a file from the workstation to a

shared drive on the server, noting the start and end times and

calculating the exact amount of time the transfer took. I used the

biggest file I could find which was a 7gb mpeg file (exactly

7,145,125,914 bytes) and this was the result:

From client to server on the Server2000/PIII: 24 miutes and 43

seconds

From client to server on the Server2003/PIV: 1 Hour, 49 minutes and

12 seconds

 

You can see that that transfer on the Server 2003 system took more than

4 times as long as the slower Server 2000 system.

 

There was a thread here regarding something similar but the problem was

between Vista workstations and Server 2003 and I don't think that the

solution is applicable here. Also in case the problem may have something

to do with a cable or port configuration I swapped cables between the

Server 2000 / Server 2003 systems and reran the test and the results

were about the same plus or minus a couple of minutes.

 

So I don't think this is a cable or switch issue, does anyone have an

idea what could be the problem here?

 

Thanks,

 

Chris LeFebvre

[Guest Leythos]

Re: Server 2003 Standard Sluggish Performance?

 

In article <472CA56F.ACD742F7@Comcast.Net>, LeFebvreC@Comcast.Net

says...

> I have a Compaq Proliant series server with 4 - 900Mhz Pentium 3

> Xeon Cpu's and a gig of ram with dual 10/100 ethernet adapters set up as

> a team. This server is running Server 2003 Standard with all available

> service packs and updates and it's used as our mail server. The overall

> performance of this server seems very slow and sluggish and I haven't

> been able to find a reason for this.

 

I've seen a Dual P3/1ghz server with 3GB RAM run SBS 2003 Premium with a

dedicated RAID controller with 4xSATA drives setup as reasonably fast,

certainly fast enough.

 

1GB RAM is way to little - since you're also running some AV solution on

the server (and you better be).

 

Take your server up to 2 or 3 GB ram and you'll get a LOT better

performance.

 

Also, teamed NICs can cause problems if there is the slightest issue

with their drivers, in general I only use Intel Server NIC's when I team

them.

 

--

 

Leythos

- Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.

- Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented worker" is like calling a

drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist"

spam999free@rrohio.com (remove 999 for proper email address)

[Guest Chris LeFebvre]

Re: Server 2003 Standard Sluggish Performance?

 

Leythos:

I won't dismiss memory as a possible issue but based on what task

manager is telling me about current and peak memory usage I doubt that's

the heart of the problem. As far as the teamed ethernet ports, I'm using

the latest Compaq / HP Softpaq with the latest drivers and based on my

two test machines which have a single network adapter each the network

driver is not the problem, it must be some other configuration issue

specific to Server 2003.

 

Thanks,

 

- Chris LeFebvre

[Guest Leythos]

Re: Server 2003 Standard Sluggish Performance?

 

In article <472D52A0.EC3778BB@Comcast.Net>, LeFebvreC@Comcast.Net

says...

> Leythos:

> I won't dismiss memory as a possible issue but based on what task

> manager is telling me about current and peak memory usage I doubt that's

> the heart of the problem. As far as the teamed ethernet ports, I'm using

> the latest Compaq / HP Softpaq with the latest drivers and based on my

> two test machines which have a single network adapter each the network

> driver is not the problem, it must be some other configuration issue

> specific to Server 2003.

 

Yep, I got your post details confused with something else I was reading

that the time and screwed up the response, sorry.

 

So, the 2003 server takes longer to move files across the network than

does the 2000 server.

 

How about this:

 

COPY 7gb file to another folder on same machine. This will give us an

idea of how fast the drive subsystem is on each machine - yea, crude,

but it's still going to tell how long it takes on each.

 

Now, I don't have a Marvel NIC handy, but, what about RX/TX buffers and

are they set for large packets or what? In a lot of cases the default

RX/TX buffers are not optimal and you can change them to get better

performance - increase them and try your test again.

 

One other thing, CISCO switches are sometimes a PITA, the auto-detect

can chatter causing performance issues - set the NIC to 1GB FD and not

Auto - if the switch doesn't do 1GB then set it to 100MB/FD and if you

can set the switch, do the same on the switch.

 

As for "don't think this is a cable...", well, it's cheap to change

cables and unless you're cables were tested and CERTIFIED, you could

well have a cable issue. The cable in the wall doesn't normally go bad,

so change the 2003 server patch cable first.

 

--

 

Leythos

- Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.

- Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented worker" is like calling a

drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist"

spam999free@rrohio.com (remove 999 for proper email address)

[Guest Chris LeFebvre]

Re: Server 2003 Standard Sluggish Performance?

 

Leythos:

This is what I tried, on the test server running Server 2003 I tried

copying the 7gb file from the shared "F:" drive to a folder on the "C:"

boot drive and it clocked at 2 minutes and 56 seconds, on the server

running Server 2000 it took 30 minutes and 7 seconds to copy from the

"F:" drive to the "C:" drive.

 

So to recap, the Server 2000 machine took 24 minutes 43 seconds from

client to shared drive, then 30 minutes 7 seconds from that shared drive

to the boot drive. Then the Server 2003 machine took 1 hour 49 minutes

and 12 seconds from the client to the shared drive, then 2 minutes 56

seconds from the shared drive to the boot drive. If anything I think

that this illustrates that the Pentium 4 system has greatly superior

hardware and Disk / IO throughput but that something is causing network

IO to be extremely slow.

 

Just to address a couple of questions that I know that you'll ask:

 

First the mail server that I taked about is on one network with a

Cisco 3524XL switch, the two test servers that I've been talking about

are on a totally separate test network also using a Cisco 3524XL switch.

 

Second, in regards to the cable question: Although I have swapped the

cables on the mail server for new cables, what I did on the two test

servers was to remove the cables from the back of each server and swap

them, so on the second set of tests copying the 7gb file from the client

to each server where the tests came out within seconds / minutes of the

original test the Server 2000 machine was using the cable / port that

the Server 2003 machine was (and visa versa) on the initial test and as

I said this made to real difference in the amount of time the test took.

 

I know from the work that I've done trying to fix this on the mail

server that the teamed ethernet ports (a pair of Compaq / HP NC3134 Fast

ethernet ports) are manually set to 100mb full duplex and the Cisco

switch is manually configured on those ports to be the same. As far the

the two test servers go everything on the two machines and the switch is

set to auto and so should be negotiating 100mb full duplex but if you

really think this is still possibly a switch / auto negotiate problem I

can force the configuration of the Marvell nic to 100mb full duplex, btw

the status lights on the nic and switch do indicate that 100mb is

enabled of course it also doesn't indicate if full duplex is enabled.

 

I don't know if this makes any difference (but just as an fyi) on the

test servers I have setup they are using simple workgroup file sharing

and neither is setup as an active directory domain controller. In the

case of the mail server there's no shared drive and of course all

communications from the clients Outlook to the server takes place via

tcp.

 

Thanks,

 

Chris LeFebvre