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CPU cranking too much or shoddy DB?

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by flyingknees 1 view

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I am currently running MS SQL 2000 on an IBM x205 xSeries Eserver model 848033X. There's only a single Intel Pentium 4 2.40GHz processor with 2GB (just added today) and 533Mhz FSB. There are 3 x 74GB SCSI disks. The first has the OS on a 12GB partition and the other two disks are in RAID-1 config.
Many of the datafiles that go into this MSSQL2000 database are nothing more than scanned images - small TIFs...but they are many....thousands upon thousands. When the RAID-1 set ran out of room, I started putting these files onto the remaining portion of the first disk which is the OS disk.

Naturally the files grew to up to 30GBs now on the OS disk. Upgrading up to 2GB RAM seemed to help a bit, however, as other people try to access the PC, the CPU would often spike up to almost 100% then down. Is there anyway to alleviate this problem? Is it simply because I have too many of these database files sitting on the first OS disk instead of the RAID-1 array? What can I do to tweak the system with what I've got?

8 replies

by zlitocook

You need to get your IBM rep. in there. I have contracted out to a few hospitals that have Thousands of Tifs and jpgs. They use a SAN that can access any picture in a flash and some of the servers are alot less powerful then yours. You are accessing the data base then pulling info and a image. It will cost to bring in the rep. but it will cost more to keep putting money into the server if thats not the problem. You need to have some one who has seen this problem and can offer you a better way to do it.

by flyingknees

Unfortunately we're on a tight budget right now so I have to work with what I have. It's looking more and more like an issue with a fragmented database

by flyingknees

Unfortunately we're on a tight budget right now so I have to work with what I have. It's looking more and more like an issue with a fragmented database

by bfilmfan

Are you seeing any evidence of disk thrashing causing those processor spikes?

If you turn on performance monitor, what process is showing the most memory utilization?

by flyingknees

Thanks for the suggestion, I've added some counters from the Process object and the one that caught my attention was the Page Faults hitting almost 100. Don't know what else besides the Processor spiking right now.

by wlbowers

You need to get the images off of the os disk. They need to be on the fastest acessable drives possible.

It might not sound like much but depending on how many people are accessing the images, graphics can draw down a server.

If the memory is loading up and the server is having to go to virtual memory that will make it worse.

More memory, fast raid for the images, keep the data drive optimized.

Good Luck Lee

by flyingknees

I am working on moving the images off to a RAID 5 set on another machine. The memory usage is relatively low as I've got 2GB worth in there right now.

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