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What can I do to increase network performance?

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by weigm

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I have recently upgaded a server to a Dell Poweredge 2950 with dual gigabit nics. All my switches are 10/100 switches and all the pc's accessing the server have 100 base T nics. The server is getting bogged down trying to fill all the requests. Will it speed up the server if I add a gigabit switch to my network and connect the server to it?

12 replies

by nimmo

For you to speed up the server you first need to find out whats bogging it down. Open your performance monitor and look at disk read/right, pagefile, memory.

What are the Spec's for the server?

by weigm

I just installed it. It has 2 Quad CPU's, 4 GB of RAM, 4 - 160 GB SATA Drives in a Raid 10 array, 2 - 1 Gig Nic's, Windows 2003 R2 Server.
I have a pagefile on drive C of up to 6 GB and a pagefile on a dedicated drive (F:) of up to 12 GB. I look at the Performance monitor and it says that the pagefile usage is 373 mb, utilization goes to 55 - 62% when more than 15 or so users log in and start working. The sessions slow to a crawl. If only 10 or so users are on, the server is very fast. I run Microsoft's Server Performance Advisor and it tells me that the network interface has a heavy load. The NIC's are Broadcom BCM5708C cards that are joined as a Team. The MS Performance Advisor says that the CPU at 58% is a normal CPU load, Memory is at 14%, and Disk I/O is less than 100/sec. I have the server plugged into a small 1 Gig Switch, but the users are all on a 100BaseT Switch.

by ---tk---

take the page file off c:\ and keep in f:\. Freeing up your c:\ partition from I\O is always a good thing.... Give it a shot, you can always add it back in if you dont see an performace jump.

Nic teaming can be a little fishy, sometimes it just doesnt work the way it should... Alot of the server we have in our infrastructure were teamed, for fail over purposes, but they often times caused more issues than what it was worth! Expecially when the servers were in a cluster, but thats besides the point. I would unteam them for the time beeing and see how it goes.

Added: None of the servers in our infrastructure are teamed anymore... just as an fyi....

by nimmo

First up I'd get rid of the pagefile off C: you want to keep the system drive as clean as possible, you only need to F: pagefile. Check your network cabling and make sure you haven't created a loop anywhere. Do you use corporate antivirus, you maybe want to scan the PC's and make sure they don't have a virus. Is your switch a managed switch? if so you will be able to take a look at interface traffic, which will help you narrow down the problem.

by el_duce

what is bogging it down. If on the server you see that network traffic is at 100%, you could team your 2 nics on the 100 switch in order to increase network traffic. or even team them to gigabit to have like 2gigabit available.

In all the other cases check like Nimmo says.
Then you can report back here for further assistance.

by weigm

I did team the Nic's when they were attached to the 100BaseT Switch and they are still teamed on the 1 Gig switch. That did not seem to have an impact or at least a significant one.

by weigm

but I ran dcpromo and removed it as a BDC. It only has print and file server roles. I do have Windows 2000 Terminal Server and when users from it access the applications on this server, it slows down even more.

by rjluvkc

Could it be possible the application is the culprit here?

by weigm

I spoke with Dell Network Support and they said all seemed to be configured correctly but that the SATA drives were probably too slow. I installed 4 new SAS drives over the weekend and reinstalled the system. On Monday and Tuesday CPU utilization was in 1-5% range. It ran beautifully. However, there were several security patches that were downloaded on Monday. I installed those and rebooted this morning. Suddenly the CPU usage had jumped up to 50-65%. There were 20 updates installed, including updates to .NET framework 2.0 SP2 and .NET Framework 3.0 SP2. Is anyone aware of slow downs due to these patches, please let me know. I'm wondering if this is what caused the slowdown the last time and I didn't catch it because of the timing of the patches.

by sue t

the updates/patches. Did your problem go away? If so, try reinstalling the updates/patches one at a time and see if your problem returns. If it does then uninstall the update you installed just prior to the problem and see if your problem goes away again. If it does then you probably found the problem. It is possible the update does like something else on your system or there is a problem with the update. Good luck.

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