Question

High value of the Avg. Disk Queue Length

Asked by: goliveuk

Hello, we are running Small Business Server 2003 on HP Proliant 380G3 and there is problem with the average values of the Disk Queue Length. There is moments when the average value is over 2 and the people on the workstations are complaining the everything is too slow. We just upgraded the memory so now the memory utilization is under 30%. Is there any way to reduce the average value for the Disk Queue Length?

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Asked On
2008-02-04 at 03:25:45ID23134438
Tags

Microsoft

,

Small Business server

,

2003

Topics

Computer Servers

,

SBS Small Business Server

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
11

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Answers

 

by: suppsawsPosted on 2008-02-04 at 03:30:13ID: 20813414

Hello goliveuk,

Did you already check which process is causing the disk slowdown?
You could use Diskmon/filemon or check the  I/O writes I/O reades on the task manager.

Regards,

suppsaws

 

by: suppsawsPosted on 2008-02-04 at 03:36:26ID: 20813450

goliveuk,

http://technet.microsoft.com/nl-be/sysinternals/bb896653(en-us).aspx
this was the one I was looking for

suppsaws

 

by: meyersdPosted on 2008-02-04 at 04:11:07ID: 20813634

>Is there any way to reduce the average value for the Disk Queue Length?
Yes - as a general rule - add more discs. How many users on your server and what apps are you running? Presumably Exchange at the least. Can you also provide more information about the physical configuration of the server?

Moments of Disk Queue Length >2 is OK - high disk queue length for extended periods is not. There are other counters you need to check:

If % Disk Time is over 55% when the Avg. Disk Queue Length counter is over 2 per physical disk indicates an I/O bottleneck
Avg Disk sec/read and Avg Disk sec/write should be under 10ms. Over 20 ms indicates a possible bottleneck

And many, many more.

This is a good article to review before you go too much further: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/01/18/diskperf.html

 

by: goliveukPosted on 2008-02-05 at 07:21:45ID: 20823596

Will and upgrade with battery-backed write cache solve that problem ?

 

by: goliveukPosted on 2008-02-05 at 07:23:34ID: 20823617

Yes there is exchange running, and the users are over 15

 

by: meyersdPosted on 2008-02-05 at 13:47:42ID: 20827404

How many discs are there in the server and how are they configured? (RAD 1, RAID 5 etc).

 

by: goliveukPosted on 2008-02-06 at 01:15:00ID: 20830555

There are three disks - RAID5

 

by: meyersdPosted on 2008-02-06 at 18:11:54ID: 20837503

What other applications are running? Your system should cope with ease with 15 users - although be aware of the performance hit caused by the RAID 5 write penalty. Is there a really heavily disc intensive application installed?

 

by: goliveukPosted on 2008-02-07 at 06:04:21ID: 20840759

There is not other heavy application. How can I monitor different instances on the server 2003 and determine which process (or user) is causing the Average Disk Queue Length to rocket high from time to time?

 

by: meyersdPosted on 2008-02-07 at 15:39:07ID: 20846559

Use suppsaws' suggestion. A combintaion of filemon.exe: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896642.aspx and Process Explorer: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx will help you track the process down.

Be careful, though. It isn't necessarily a program that's causing the issue. You may have a hardware problem or a driver that needs updating. It would pay you to go through the exercise of updating the RAID controller drivers and BIOS and the system BIOS as well.

 

by: meyersdPosted on 2008-02-20 at 15:26:42ID: 20943171

Thanks! What fixed your problem in the end?

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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