NT4.0 Problems

Although it's possible this has something to do w/RAID, I think it's more likely that it's something else - another program/utility that's running on the server. It may even be the database program itself doing clean-up or committing changes to a permanent data store of some kind. What database program is it? If this is a new phenomenon, you might want to look into whether there are maintenance or compaction utilities for your database program that could help with the performance. Also, you could use performance monitor to monitor the hard drive activity and see what process is causing this to happen. Hope this helps!

Here are a couple of thoughts. Is Microsoft Office installed on this server? By default the Find Fast utility is installed. This utility periodically indexes your files. This indexing takes a toll on the system. What about Internet Information Services? There is an Indexing service that can cause the system to become sluggish. Just a couple of possibilites to consider

It seems to me that if you notice the lights on the hard drive flashing excessively, this would be an indicator that a disk-subsystem problem is going on.

Things to look for:
1) Does just 1 drive light flash or multiple drives?
2) How long do they flash for? (the more diskspace on raid 5 the longer it may flash if it is rebuilding the raid)
3) Does it happen at a specific time or what exactly is the pattern.

It is common to see a Raid 5 disk system where 1 drive enters a failure mode, then back to normal. This will cause the Raid 5 system to rebuild itself on the fly, which 'will' cause your system to slow down quite a bit.

Get a hold of your hardware manufacturer and perform tests on the hard disks to see if 1 is bad or goingbad.

If the hardware is OK, then continue with looking at your operating system/utilities/software.

NEVER assume is your OS or utilities running on a server.

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