Poor Performance

For 3 years my single 2000SBS server was the only server and was doing fine.
In April I added a second server (also 2000, but not SBS) as a member server
(running a departmental appliction) and it was still doing fine. In June,
anticipating the upcoming retirement of server1 I added a third server
(server3, 2000, not SBS) to handle the finance department and made it a DC,
giving it DHCP, DNS, and WINS, while moving most user directories over to
server2 (the member server).

For a month or so everything worked wonderfully... but since mid-July
performance has gone right down the toilet. Logon takes forever (up to
several minutes) for ALL users, but this is the weird part. The department
that uses the application on server2 (the member server) will work fine for a
few hours, then EVERY workstation in that department (4 of them) will slow
down to a crawl and have random dropoffs. Also, all the users
(organization-wide) whose directories are on that member server have the same
problem accessing their files... but communications between the servers are
FINE, and there is NO problem with the finance application running on
server3. The only thing that seems to solve the user's performance issue is a
reboot of the WORKSTATION.

I'm stumped. I'm not listing the myriad of things I've tried so you can tell
me if I'm going in the right direction. I've got some pretty unhappy users,
and most of my hair is now on the floor....

Hi Ernie,

I dont have much experience of this in particular, but i reckon breaking it
down might be useful.

1) Put a ethereal on an have a look at the network traffic when I logon is
made. Is there lots of wrkstn-DC dialog, or just a logon request and return?

2) Again is there lots of traffic between the new DC and the second server?

3) Any QOs policies in place?

4) I guess you have looked at basic CPU/memory, how about using perfmon to
get some detailed stuff on the DC and workstations.

5) Take off the DC functionality and make it local logon ?

Hope one of these uncovers a trail...

nick


"Ernie" wrote:

> For 3 years my single 2000SBS server was the only server and was doing fine.
> In April I added a second server (also 2000, but not SBS) as a member server
> (running a departmental appliction) and it was still doing fine. In June,
> anticipating the upcoming retirement of server1 I added a third server
> (server3, 2000, not SBS) to handle the finance department and made it a DC,
> giving it DHCP, DNS, and WINS, while moving most user directories over to
> server2 (the member server).
>
> For a month or so everything worked wonderfully... but since mid-July
> performance has gone right down the toilet. Logon takes forever (up to
> several minutes) for ALL users, but this is the weird part. The department
> that uses the application on server2 (the member server) will work fine for a
> few hours, then EVERY workstation in that department (4 of them) will slow
> down to a crawl and have random dropoffs. Also, all the users
> (organization-wide) whose directories are on that member server have the same
> problem accessing their files... but communications between the servers are
> FINE, and there is NO problem with the finance application running on
> server3. The only thing that seems to solve the user's performance issue is a
> reboot of the WORKSTATION.
>
> I'm stumped. I'm not listing the myriad of things I've tried so you can tell
> me if I'm going in the right direction. I've got some pretty unhappy users,
> and most of my hair is now on the floor....

You didn't move any of the FSMO roles from the SBS? That would be a mistake
if you did since SBS wants to be the primary server. Did you update DNS with
the new servers? Did you configure at least two dns servers for failover?

Thanks for the pointers, Nick...

1) Just a request and return... lots of dead air somewhere... but I found a
misconfigured WINS in the new DHCP and some differences in how DNS is
loading, so that might do it...

2) Traffice between servers is normal.

3) No QOS.

4,5) I think the DNS and WINS errors have cleared it, but it will be a day
or so before I know for sure.

Thanks again for the advice!

Ernie

"Nick Farrow" wrote:

> Hi Ernie,
>
> I dont have much experience of this in particular, but i reckon breaking it
> down might be useful.
>
> 1) Put a ethereal on an have a look at the network traffic when I logon is
> made. Is there lots of wrkstn-DC dialog, or just a logon request and return?
>
> 2) Again is there lots of traffic between the new DC and the second server?
>
> 3) Any QOs policies in place?
>
> 4) I guess you have looked at basic CPU/memory, how about using perfmon to
> get some detailed stuff on the DC and workstations.
>
> 5) Take off the DC functionality and make it local logon ?
>
> Hope one of these uncovers a trail...
>
> nick
>
>
> "Ernie" wrote:
>
> > For 3 years my single 2000SBS server was the only server and was doing fine.
> > In April I added a second server (also 2000, but not SBS) as a member server
> > (running a departmental appliction) and it was still doing fine. In June,
> > anticipating the upcoming retirement of server1 I added a third server
> > (server3, 2000, not SBS) to handle the finance department and made it a DC,
> > giving it DHCP, DNS, and WINS, while moving most user directories over to
> > server2 (the member server).
> >
> > For a month or so everything worked wonderfully... but since mid-July
> > performance has gone right down the toilet. Logon takes forever (up to
> > several minutes) for ALL users, but this is the weird part. The department
> > that uses the application on server2 (the member server) will work fine for a
> > few hours, then EVERY workstation in that department (4 of them) will slow
> > down to a crawl and have random dropoffs. Also, all the users
> > (organization-wide) whose directories are on that member server have the same
> > problem accessing their files... but communications between the servers are
> > FINE, and there is NO problem with the finance application running on
> > server3. The only thing that seems to solve the user's performance issue is a
> > reboot of the WORKSTATION.
> >
> > I'm stumped. I'm not listing the myriad of things I've tried so you can tell
> > me if I'm going in the right direction. I've got some pretty unhappy users,
> > and most of my hair is now on the floor....

Joshua,

Nope, I won't transfer any of the roles until I retire the SBS server
(hopefully this coming winter or early spring).

I updated the DNS service BUT did not update those changes in the DHCP
service... which is probably accounting for much of the problem. I'll know
over the next day or so as all the PCs renew the leases...

Both DCs WERE configured as DNS servers, but DHCP had not been updated so
the workstations had no clue. Damn I hate it when I do something really
stupid like that.

Thanks for chiming in!

Ernie

"Joshua Bolton" wrote:

> You didn't move any of the FSMO roles from the SBS? That would be a mistake
> if you did since SBS wants to be the primary server. Did you update DNS with
> the new servers? Did you configure at least two dns servers for failover?