Very slow response when MDB stored on Small Business Server 2003 network share

Hi All,

This is post with my challenge and the solution to my problem.

Background:
I have a client running Windows XP sp1 workstations and a Windows 2003
Small Business Server (Standard).

The PCs are PIII 866 to PIV2.4/533s with a minimum of 384Mb ram.

The Server is an Intel PIV Xeon with 512Mb Ram and RAID 5 SATA.

The network is a 100Mb switched network.

My client develops stand alone management applications in MS Access
XP/2002.

There are two MDB files. One with the App and one with the data
(linked tables I am told). Each file is around 10-12Mb when compacted
by Access.

The Symptoms:
When the MDBs are on the local drive. They run like lightning (< 2
seconds to load).

As soon as they are moved over to the server, they take in excess of
90 seconds to load.

The files copy over to the server in around 8 seconds each, and
transfer back in around 6, so its not the network.

If I move the files over to a workstation share. The performance is
around twice as slow as running from the C: drive or about 20 times
"better" than running from the server.

Word / Excel / Adobe files all open without a hitch.

Remember this is one 10Mb program file, one 10Mb data file and one
person trying to open them.....and it is taking almost 50 times longer
to open across the network !

I transferred the files to another Windows 2000 SBS network with and
the same symptoms occurred.

The Solution:
The key was the difference in performance between the workstation
share and the server share. I investigated the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Lanmanworkstation\
key in the registry on both the SBS box and the workstation and
noticed the following differences

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Lanmanworkstation\Parameters\enablesecuritysignature
and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Lanmanworkstation\Parameters\requiresecuritysignature
were both enabled (1) on the server but disabled (0) on the
workstation.

After changing both of these values in the registry from 1 to 0 and
restarting the server, the problems went away. The time to open a file
went from 90 seconds to around 4-5 seconds.

Much better thank you.

Further Information:
After searching through Google Usenet archives, I found lots of
interesting stuff on MS Access network optomi[z,s]ation. especially
here.

http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/performancefaq.htm

Details of a similar problem with network share performance can be
found at this page
http://www.tangent-systems.com/support/delayedwrite.html

Conclusion:
I hope this is of use to someone. I spent a couple of hours trawling
through Google Groups as well as the regular web search and came up
with very little that directly reflected my issue with a real solution
that didn't involve hacking at the Access DBs. It took me a few good
hours to test the solution, deploy it for my client and test again on
their system. Had I known this, I would be that many hours younger

Good luck all.

Any comments would be appreciated espeically from MS people

Kind Regards
Chris Wilson
21c Technology Consulting
Sydney NSW Australia
http://21c.tc/

(Just to push up the relevance a little for words I may have missed)
Keywords: MS Access, Microsoft Access XP, Microsoft Access 2002, Small
Business Server 2003, SBS 2003, SBS, extremly slow network performance

 

We recommend disabling SMB signing in SBS boxes as a normal item to
speed up the server.

Smallbizserver.Net > SBS 2003 > Server issues > Slow file copy to the
SBS 2003 server:
http://www.smallbizserver.net/Default.aspx?tabid=98

 

I think this is what you are referring to

http://www.smallbizserver.net/default.aspx?tabid=98

Credit goes to Susan Bradley for this one.

Gordon
--
Gordon Ryan
Longneck Consulting Pty. Ltd
http://www.longneckconsulting.com

 

<cough> Credit goes to Mariette for that one.

 

In

Thanks!