Hi,
The software development company I am working for delivers a server environment consisting of Windows 2003, SQL Server 2000, IIS 5 and our developed application. We are experiencing bad performance and delays in our system that probably is caused by factors other than our application. I am going to describe our environment and our problem and I am desperately hoping for any kind of input regarding our problems.
Configuration:[\b] The servers are two Dell PowerEdge 2800 having two 2.8GHz CPU’s and 4 GB of RAM (DDR2) each. We use RAID 5 (PERC 4e/DC U320 PCI Express with SCSI Ultra320 hard drives). The two servers run W2K3 SE with SP1 and SQL Server 2000 SE with SP 4. We use one server as production server (PS) and one as backup server (BS). We use replication with a pull subscription between PS and BS. Also, we have eTrust Antivirus installed on the servers. Our application consists of several processes which reads and writes to the database and also logs and traces actions to files during program execution. We also have a process for connecting to a FTP server to download and upload small text files which our application uses. The application is developed VB.NET and we use the .NET Framework 1.1. To administrate our application we use the web server IIS 5 and a web interface developed in ASP.NET.
Problem description:[\b] When we run our application we experience delays in our application which causes the application to halt for some time, sometimes up to minutes, until the systems resumes to work (a common delay we have seen in our FTP process is 40 seconds that cannot be explained when analyzing the code). These delays affect several separate processes leading to poor performance. When we monitor the system using Task monitor and Performance Monitor we find nothing unusual. The CPU load is about 30-40 percent in average and there is nothing strange with memory usage either and I/O as far as I can tell. We use this setup (W2K3, SQL Server 2000) on two other sites where these kinds of problems don’t exist. The main difference in these environments is that we don’t use a web server at all there and instead of RAID 5 we use RAID 1. Also, there is no Antivirus software installed.
Possible problems:[\b] We believe that the problem lies in other parts of the server environment than our application. When searching for possible problems we have identified some issues that could cause our problems and I would like some input on them:
• When using IIS 5 and connection pooling when connecting to SQL Server 2000 delays can be experienced.
• The eTrust Antivirus software.
• RAID 5
If anyone have input regarding these or have experienced other causes for delays in a system, please let me know what your solution were and maybe we have a possibility to solve our problem.
Best
/Mortsdeh
The software development company I am working for delivers a server environment consisting of Windows 2003, SQL Server 2000, IIS 5 and our developed application. We are experiencing bad performance and delays in our system that probably is caused by factors other than our application. I am going to describe our environment and our problem and I am desperately hoping for any kind of input regarding our problems.
Configuration:[\b] The servers are two Dell PowerEdge 2800 having two 2.8GHz CPU’s and 4 GB of RAM (DDR2) each. We use RAID 5 (PERC 4e/DC U320 PCI Express with SCSI Ultra320 hard drives). The two servers run W2K3 SE with SP1 and SQL Server 2000 SE with SP 4. We use one server as production server (PS) and one as backup server (BS). We use replication with a pull subscription between PS and BS. Also, we have eTrust Antivirus installed on the servers. Our application consists of several processes which reads and writes to the database and also logs and traces actions to files during program execution. We also have a process for connecting to a FTP server to download and upload small text files which our application uses. The application is developed VB.NET and we use the .NET Framework 1.1. To administrate our application we use the web server IIS 5 and a web interface developed in ASP.NET.
Problem description:[\b] When we run our application we experience delays in our application which causes the application to halt for some time, sometimes up to minutes, until the systems resumes to work (a common delay we have seen in our FTP process is 40 seconds that cannot be explained when analyzing the code). These delays affect several separate processes leading to poor performance. When we monitor the system using Task monitor and Performance Monitor we find nothing unusual. The CPU load is about 30-40 percent in average and there is nothing strange with memory usage either and I/O as far as I can tell. We use this setup (W2K3, SQL Server 2000) on two other sites where these kinds of problems don’t exist. The main difference in these environments is that we don’t use a web server at all there and instead of RAID 5 we use RAID 1. Also, there is no Antivirus software installed.
Possible problems:[\b] We believe that the problem lies in other parts of the server environment than our application. When searching for possible problems we have identified some issues that could cause our problems and I would like some input on them:
• When using IIS 5 and connection pooling when connecting to SQL Server 2000 delays can be experienced.
• The eTrust Antivirus software.
• RAID 5
If anyone have input regarding these or have experienced other causes for delays in a system, please let me know what your solution were and maybe we have a possibility to solve our problem.
Best
/Mortsdeh