Advice on Speeding up Server

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pixel_ninja

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Hi guys,

I have an HP G6 server(2x Xeon E5504GHz, 10gb RAM 1TB 7200rpm drives) which a number of staff use for various applications, ranging from Pastel, Caseware, General File server, Mail server, terminal server etc.

The problem is that the Pastel runs abit slow(both when using it on remote desktop and if you have it setup as a workstation, reading the pastel files off of the server) this is because I have everything set up on our server.

What would be the best solution to reducing the bottleneck? Copying files to and from the server gives good speeds, but the pastel and Caseware Applications run quite slow.

Will a NAS help in this regard? or is getting another server our only solution here?

Any thoughts/input would be appreciated :)
 
Where is the bottleneck? Disk IO? CPU? RAM?
 
You need to do some kind of monitoring to be sure. You've mentioned that copying files is quick - so I wouldn't be so quick to point the finger at disk....
 
Sinbad said:
You need to do some kind of monitoring to be sure. You've mentioned that copying files is quick - so I wouldn't be so quick to point the finger at disk....
Click to expand...

Good Point, Ram doesnt get close to 10GB, CPU usage doesnt look too bad either(on the task manager that is, not sure how reliable that info is though)

Or am I looking at the info in the wrong place?
 
You running a 64bit OS and apps?
Which version of windows? Does it have Resource monitor?
 
Assume this is Pastel Partner rather than Evolution?
 
What network speeds are the PCs & server running at? What's the network utilization server side?
 
Check your AV. It's possible that the on-access scanner is slowing your server down. Try excluding the Pastel folders from on-access scanning and see if that makes a difference.

On a side note, running everything on one server is just poor design, certain services just do not work well together on the same box.
 
stricken said:
windows... theres your problem.
Click to expand...

That's not a very intelligent statement to make. Both Caseware and Pastel won't run natively on Linux so that's hardly a solution to the problem.

Also, the big banks in SA run some rather resource-intensive tasks on Windows Server machines as well and they don't seem to be complaining.
 
My first guess would be running all those different kind of applications on one server. Is it a SBS server and is exchange running on the server?
 
Here are a couple of Screen shots:

Untitled.jpg

It's not a train smash, but it is abit annoying for the staff to have to sit and wait for Pastel/Caseware (I tell the Caseware users to copy the compressed file to their machines and run it locally, unfortunately the pastel isn't as easy.)

Real Network Speeds in various offices:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/28142445/untitled1.JPG

The network speeds seem fine, even for those that are running 100Mb lan. It's just the Pastel that runs painfully slow on the server for some reason.
 
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My opinion is it might be Disk IO

And from an article:

given a choice between RAID 10 and RAID 01, always choose RAID 10
Click to expand...

Is it only Pastel Partner running slow?
 
BTW, i will exclude the Exchange Directories including Pastel directories from the active scan of the antivirus
 
I used to be the network admin for a shop I worked in while living in PE. We had Pastel Partner (which is always a 32-bit executable, just btw) and I found that our slowdowns were during peak hours when lots of sales were being run, which I attributed to an I/O limit. Read speed for the RAID 5 array we had was fine, but writing to it was a little slower than normal and would sometimes lock up the entire thing. I later swapped the entire install over to a mirrored RAID array of two 256GB SSD drives. I still check on the server every now and then and that thing still flies - its been up for over two years without any downtime.

A few years ago I read a lengthly piece by a Hexus writer that discussed improving network throughput by having the file server use a SSD RAID array to maximise I/O and make sure that even when more than ten people were accessing data at the same time that performance wasn't affected too harshly. Its stuck with me ever since and every server I worked on was changed to include a SSD if write performance over the network was suffering.

In smaller networks where Pastel was deployed but the users were only on Pervasive Workgroup, I found a regular array of drives to be the better answer, since Workgroup limits you to ten people and I/O wasn't too strained if they weren't making changes to the database all the time. Pervasive Client-Server on its own may even improve performance in your case without you having to change any hardware, but it is a tad bit more expensive. Changes to the database are only made on the server and you no longer have to fix the gateway server files or worry about how many users are logged in at any given time. Changes to the database are also queued up so there's less potential conflicts to worry about during peak hours.

On our existing network, installing Client-Server gave me the biggest headaches as I had to put everything back together in the end in the shortest possible time frame with everything working right off the bat. Starting from scratch would be easier, but with a certified installer you may get through it quicker than I did.
 
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