SBS 2003 Performance

New [about 10 days old] 10 User SBS 2003 R2 Premium, with SQL installed.
Plenty of [SuperMicro] hardware, AMD dual core 2.6Ghz, 4GB memory, 146GB SAS
15K Drives.

Performance is generally excellent, but on occasion, when doing something
[could not isolate any one particular task] on the server, the screen appears
to freeze for a couple of seconds then we can continue to accomplish the task.

On the performance chart, most times [but not all times] the paging/sec will
spike. The Average Disk Queue Time [maximum <.125] and % Processor [maximum
< 4.99] almost remains constant during the same time for the few seconds this
event is happening.

I was looking through some logs and did not see anything that jumps out at
me, but I may be looking in the wrong place.

Where should I be looking?

What should I be looking to see?

Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Ed Podowski

One more note...some times during a remote access the connection to the
server is lost. I get the same symptoms as described above. I will
re-establish a remote session and continue to work.

James
Wed Aug 13 06:58:57 PDT 2008

Ed Podowski wrote:
> New [about 10 days old] 10 User SBS 2003 R2 Premium, with SQL installed.
> Plenty of [SuperMicro] hardware, AMD dual core 2.6Ghz, 4GB memory, 146GB SAS
> 15K Drives.
>
> Performance is generally excellent, but on occasion, when doing something
> [could not isolate any one particular task] on the server, the screen appears
> to freeze for a couple of seconds then we can continue to accomplish the task.
>
> On the performance chart, most times [but not all times] the paging/sec will
> spike. The Average Disk Queue Time [maximum <.125] and % Processor [maximum
> < 4.99] almost remains constant during the same time for the few seconds this
> event is happening.
>
> I was looking through some logs and did not see anything that jumps out at
> me, but I may be looking in the wrong place.
>
> Where should I be looking?
>
> What should I be looking to see?
>
> Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thank you,
> Ed Podowski
>
> One more note...some times during a remote access the connection to the
> server is lost. I get the same symptoms as described above. I will
> re-establish a remote session and continue to work.

I had a similar problem recently. The "System" process would spike every
few minutes. Turned out (after using ProcessExplorer to examine the
process) that it was my real-time AV scan scanning a file that should
have been excluded. Might be worth looking at... is one particular
process spiking when the freeze occurs?

EdPodowski
Wed Aug 13 07:48:11 PDT 2008

James,

Thank you for your thoughts. Good suggestion!

We do not have an anti-virus program installed on the server at the moment,
so unfortunately that is not cause. [I wish we did, so we can fix it and
move on.] We do have AVG installed on each desktop and we have a gateway
anti-virus on a WatchGuard Firewall which is providing protection at the
moment.

I didnâ??t want to throw too many things into the mix, until we can better
isolate the cause. Weâ??ll keep looking.

Thanks,
Ed Podowski

"James Hurrell" wrote:

> Ed Podowski wrote:
> > New [about 10 days old] 10 User SBS 2003 R2 Premium, with SQL installed.
> > Plenty of [SuperMicro] hardware, AMD dual core 2.6Ghz, 4GB memory, 146GB SAS
> > 15K Drives.
> >
> > Performance is generally excellent, but on occasion, when doing something
> > [could not isolate any one particular task] on the server, the screen appears
> > to freeze for a couple of seconds then we can continue to accomplish the task.
> >
> > On the performance chart, most times [but not all times] the paging/sec will
> > spike. The Average Disk Queue Time [maximum <.125] and % Processor [maximum
> > < 4.99] almost remains constant during the same time for the few seconds this
> > event is happening.
> >
> > I was looking through some logs and did not see anything that jumps out at
> > me, but I may be looking in the wrong place.
> >
> > Where should I be looking?
> >
> > What should I be looking to see?
> >
> > Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > Thank you,
> > Ed Podowski
> >
> > One more note...some times during a remote access the connection to the
> > server is lost. I get the same symptoms as described above. I will
> > re-establish a remote session and continue to work.
>
> I had a similar problem recently. The "System" process would spike every
> few minutes. Turned out (after using ProcessExplorer to examine the
> process) that it was my real-time AV scan scanning a file that should
> have been excluded. Might be worth looking at... is one particular
> process spiking when the freeze occurs?
>

stephen
Wed Aug 13 08:36:24 PDT 2008

Have a look for disk related issues. Try low level scanning with
manufacturer tools etc.

--
stephen

Ed Podowski wrote:
> James,
>
> Thank you for your thoughts. Good suggestion!
>
> We do not have an anti-virus program installed on the server at the moment,
> so unfortunately that is not cause. [I wish we did, so we can fix it and
> move on.] We do have AVG installed on each desktop and we have a gateway
> anti-virus on a WatchGuard Firewall which is providing protection at the
> moment.
>
> I didnâ??t want to throw too many things into the mix, until we can better
> isolate the cause. Weâ??ll keep looking.
>
> Thanks,
> Ed Podowski
>
> "James Hurrell" wrote:
>
>> Ed Podowski wrote:
>>> New [about 10 days old] 10 User SBS 2003 R2 Premium, with SQL installed.
>>> Plenty of [SuperMicro] hardware, AMD dual core 2.6Ghz, 4GB memory, 146GB SAS
>>> 15K Drives.
>>>
>>> Performance is generally excellent, but on occasion, when doing something
>>> [could not isolate any one particular task] on the server, the screen appears
>>> to freeze for a couple of seconds then we can continue to accomplish the task.
>>>
>>> On the performance chart, most times [but not all times] the paging/sec will
>>> spike. The Average Disk Queue Time [maximum <.125] and % Processor [maximum
>>> < 4.99] almost remains constant during the same time for the few seconds this
>>> event is happening.
>>>
>>> I was looking through some logs and did not see anything that jumps out at
>>> me, but I may be looking in the wrong place.
>>>
>>> Where should I be looking?
>>>
>>> What should I be looking to see?
>>>
>>> Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Thank you,
>>> Ed Podowski
>>>
>>> One more note...some times during a remote access the connection to the
>>> server is lost. I get the same symptoms as described above. I will
>>> re-establish a remote session and continue to work.
>> I had a similar problem recently. The "System" process would spike every
>> few minutes. Turned out (after using ProcessExplorer to examine the
>> process) that it was my real-time AV scan scanning a file that should
>> have been excluded. Might be worth looking at... is one particular
>> process spiking when the freeze occurs?
>>