Network File Access Freezes

[JezEling]

Hi All,

I've recently brought online a new file server for my LAN, from the local machine all is well but during the working day people call me up telling me that things have frozen when accessing files, open files hang or everything just comes to a halt. After about 10 seconds everything comes back to normal.

The issue affects all users, not just my thin client users or just my fat client users.

The machine is running W2K Sp4 and NAI AV 8.0. Usage is 0% and memory usage is nill, it was running with dual nics in an FEC but i've stripped this and dropped to a single nic config.

Anyone got any other ideas as to what might cause this?

Thanks in advance for any info as it is driving me and all the users around the twist.

 

[porkchopexpress]

Do you have thin client running off this server as well as i serving files?

Do they all ahare a common network switch?





When you are the IT director, it's your job to make sure the IT works. If it does work they know already and if it doesn't, they don't want to hear your pathetic excuses.

 

[JezEling]

The thin clients are spread across 4 dedicated servers.

As for the switch they are all connected to the same one and it's a Cisco 4500.

 

[porkchopexpress]

So all users that report the problem are on this one server and report the issue at the same time?





When you are the IT director, it's your job to make sure the IT works. If it does work they know already and if it doesn't, they don't want to hear your pathetic excuses.

 

[JezEling]

Not quite, the users report it in small groups and it might not be the same prople everytime. The only server which is shared is the file server, the thin client users could be on anyone of the 4 citrix servers, the remaining users are XP Pro users.

 

[tomvear]

try a different NIC in the file server, also check for any databases file stored there as really best practice is to only have flat files on a file server. maybe worth checking network traffic from the file server, ethereal is good for that. also if its groups of users then it maybe a couple of directories causing the issue so check what data the users are accessing not to mention any thing the users have in common (hardware, OS, SP, Mappings done by ip)

 

[JezEling]

The NIC is a brand new one, and i've swapped it between the two onboard ones which came with the machine. There are some DB's on the server but these are small Access databases.

The issue has got very strange as the day has gone on, users are reporting now that shortcuts don't work and when I look at the properties of the items the path is blank, the only way to fix this issue is to delete the item and recreate it.

As for the traffic i've had perfmon running most of the day and the server is hardly working at all, just minor peaks when users access stuff, which isn't bad considering there are 140+ people connected to it.

The data that is been accessed is anything from DOC files to XLS pretty much any type of file type you can think of. And the hardware is a cross section of kit which is all suffering.

 

[JezEling]

Not sure if anyone has got any other suggestions about this one. I've continued to have problems, although it has improved a little since tweaking the MAXCMDS etc. in the registry.

Any other pointers or ideas would be much appreciated as I am fast running out of options.

Thanks in advance

 

[robdog09]

Jezeling,

same problems. What OS are you running?? SBS 2k,2k3,2k3 r2, Windows Server 2k,2k3,2k3 r2? The problem i am having is i go to \\compname\C$. I can refresh that a million times but when i click on a dir, freezetime. I run SBS 2k3 r2 and I have heard rumors when you have 2 SBS machines on the same network (not same domain, but physical network), crap happens (like this). We have our old and new SBS machines running...two domains though, old one is around just for file retrieval

Thoughts...