Poor performance on Itanium processor 1

[SelbyGlenn]

Hi there,

I have SQL 2000 Enterprise (SP3) running on a dual processor (1.113GHz) Compaq Server and everything works fine. I have recently purchased a new Itanium dual processor (2.2GHz) server and I am running the same code on the same OS (Windows 2000 Advanced Server -SP4). The performance on this new server is terrible! A simple test is taking nearly 8 times longer to complete!

The one thing I have noticed is the Itanium processor appears as two processors under Windows. Does this mean I need 2 SQL licenses for every Itanium processor??

Any help at all on this would be most appreciated!!

Thanks in advance,





Glenn
BEng MCSE CCA

 

[mrdenny]

The extra processors are the Hyperthreading being turned on. You'll want to turn this off until you upgrade to Windows 2003. Windows 2000 can't properly use them.

As for the licensing, no you don't need to license the virtual processors. You only need to license the physical processors.

Denny

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

 

[SelbyGlenn]

Thanks for the reply Denny. One quick question though - how do you turn off hyperythreading?

Glenn
BEng MCSE CCA

 

[SelbyGlenn]

aha! It's a BIOS thing!

Glenn
BEng MCSE CCA

 

[theoxyde]

A star for doing your own research

 

[HbO]

Glenn,

Have you turn of the hyperthreading? If so, how is the performance now?

 

[SelbyGlenn]

I have now turned off hyperthreading but it's still running very slow! I've just done a simple file copy on the same volume and the new server is taking over 5 times as long to copy the file compared with the older server. It looks like a disk or controller problem. At least now I can eliminate SQL from the equation. Time to call Compaq!...

Thanks for your help everyone and thanks for the star!

Glenn
BEng MCSE CCA

 

[LedZepRock]

I hear that Itainium has poor 32bit emulation (not sure emulation is the term). Windows 2003 Server is 32Bit as is SQL I guess, would that explain the poor performance??

Simon

 

[SelbyGlenn]

No, it turned out that when they purchased the server they tried to save money by buying a cheaper raid card. I told them to replace the card with a higher spec one. All works fine now.

Cheers,

Glenn
BEng MCSE CCA