Windows 2003 Server Running Slow!

[jwithi]

Morning Chaps!,

We have started to get more and more users complaining about the amount of time taken to access files\folders on one of our filservers.

It is a 2003 server that currently has 650GB data on it. This has only just started happening and i wondered if anyone knows of counters that we can use in PerfMon to check for any bottlenecks on the server and what there thresholds should be.

Any ideas?

 

[itsp1965]

Start off with the following

- Is it a few a users who are having problems accessing or is it everyone?
- Check to ensure that your networking is set correctly (ie no autonegotiating of link speeds between switch port and server)
- Check to see if there are any name resolution issues which is hindering server access in general
- Check the event log for possible disk issues
- Check for excess fragmentation on your drives
- Is the problem happening on all folders or any particular ones? Check to see if you have folders that have a deep dir sturcture (multiple subdirs, huge number of files)

HTH

 

[lhuegele]

Also, are they accessing it with the WINS name or the fully qualified domain name (DNS?)?

Good luck,

 

[jwithi]

Morning Everyone,

After doing some more checking on the server in question we realised that it has roughly 900 shares setup, which seems to be a hell of a lot to me (This server was configured etc before i joined the company) and only has 2GB RAM.

Surely this will be impacting on the performance of the server?

We only really share the top level Data folder and the top level Users folder, as well as any others that are needed for applications etc... so most server we have configured only have 5-10 shares tops.

We are also thinking it might be a problem with the NIC driver as we have another server at the same site which is also slow to access which only had 5 shares setup but they both have the same NIC and the drivers are well out of date.

 

[lhuegele]

Yes 900 shares sounds like way way too many shares. I would check that server for malware/virus infestation if I were you. I can't imagine anyone setting up that many shares on purpose...but I guess it's possible.

The NIC route is also a good one to follow - either updating the drivers or getting a new NIC all together.

Good luck,