Question

Why I cannot stop MSSQLServer service and SQL Agent service on NT4?

Asked by: richtree

I have MS SQL7 running on NT4 server. The machine is very slow even when no other application is running. The CPU usage is constantly near 100% when 'idle'. One of the major services that consumes the CPU power is 'System' which is taking about 50%-70% constantly. After I stop the MSSQLServer, the CPU usage is still very high.
Q#1. What is the 'System' in the task list?
Q#2. What can cause the 'System' to be so busy?

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Asked On
2009-10-15 at 07:13:21ID24814861
Tags

Microsft Windows NT4

,

Microsoft SQL 7

Topics

Windows NT Operating System

,

MS SQL Server

Participating Experts
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Answers

 

by: willettmeisterPosted on 2009-10-15 at 07:19:05ID: 25580740

To you use process explorer to see the process that are running under system.  Here is a link.  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

 

by: richtreePosted on 2009-10-15 at 09:27:29ID: 25582212

The process explorer cannot find more information. When the CPU is full, process explorer cannot even update the stats.
All of sudden, the 'System' process disappears and the CPU usage is down to normal and the machine is responsive again.
After I reboot the machine, the CPU usage is near 99% for the first 5 minutes while there is no database query going on. After that the machine CPU usage is down to normal again.

Q#3. Is the above situation normal to a SQL server?

Whenever there is a report being run, the CPU usage is near 99% right away. Of which, the mssqlsvr.exe is taking about 70-90% of CPU.

Q#4. Is it normal for mssqlserver.exe take such high CPU usage? If not, how to find out what's wrong? or what can be done to improve it?

 

by: willettmeisterPosted on 2009-10-15 at 10:53:47ID: 25582966

Are the disks that the databases it on heavily fragmented?  Are the databases themselves heavily fragmented?  Are your databases on the same disk as the OS?  How large are your databases?  How much memory do you have in the system?  How much is free and how much is used by SQL?

There are a large number of reasons that this could be happening but in a properly configure sql server this should not happen.

 

by: richtreePosted on 2009-10-15 at 11:31:06ID: 25583361

The machine is a virtual one. So the OS and database are together.
How to tell how fragmented is the database?
The original database is 17GB for mdf, 4GB for ldf. Now I allocate 21GB for mdf, 6GB for ldf. The drive has 5GB free space. Auto growth file (10%) is on.
The system has 2GB memory. The system uses about 1.5GB memory.

 

by: willettmeisterPosted on 2009-10-15 at 12:03:06ID: 25583635

I would guess that you have a pretty badly fragmented database.  Setup up some performance counters on the disk to watch the and see how it looks.  Look at latency, queue depth, bytes in/out,  If that doesn't show anything interesting look at memory next.  Pages/sec, cache hits.  Then you probably need to look at SQL stats.  If we get to that point i'll figure out what to look at there.
'

 

by: richtreePosted on 2009-10-15 at 13:10:10ID: 25584333

I don't know how to get the info you mentioned. Can you please provide detailed steps? I will get it and post it here.
Thanks.

 

by: willettmeisterPosted on 2009-10-16 at 05:44:37ID: 25588937

from remote machine open perfmon.msc.  

expand performance logs and alerts

right click counter logs choose new log settings

put in a name

choose add counters

in the select counter from computer box put the machine name that is having the problem in the format \\server

for performace object choose physical disk

choose current disk queue length and choose it for each disk.

disk reads/sec for each disk

disk writes/sec for each disk

disk transfer/sec

set the interval to 15 secs.

choose binary file under logs files

let start there.  If you need help interpreting them post the resulting file and I'll help.

 

by: richtreePosted on 2009-10-16 at 05:52:26ID: 25588989

Do you also want to collect SQL specific data?
I will try it soon.

 

by: willettmeisterPosted on 2009-10-16 at 06:13:35ID: 25589143

lets do each one seperately.  this will collect the disk counters.

 

by: richtreePosted on 2009-10-16 at 10:28:21ID: 25591509

I set this up on a windows 2003 machine, but cannot start it. I also tried to collect data from another NT, windows 2003 machines, same result. What else is needed to collect counters from remote machine?  I can collect data locally on windows 2003 machine but not on NT. Is NT able to log such counters locally? If yes, how? Sorry for the delay due to other emergency.

 

by: willettmeisterPosted on 2009-10-16 at 11:07:46ID: 25591852

NT can collect the data locally but it's not a good idea.  You don't run perfmon on a machine and gather logs from that machine because the collection may skew your results.

I woudl guess that your problem is that the windows 2003 and NT4 versions of perfmon are not compatible.  Do you have another NT 4 machine?  if you do the perfmon is under aministrative toosl I believe.  All of the otehr instructions shoudl be similar.

 

by: richtreePosted on 2009-10-16 at 11:12:28ID: 25591889

Yes, I log in as admin. I just don't know how to log counters in NT. When I switched over to log view, the status shows 'closed', but cannot find a way to start it. Can you show me the detailed steps in NT? I see 'start' button in windows 2003.

 

by: richtreePosted on 2009-10-16 at 19:32:09ID: 31641626

Thank you very much.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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