Very slow performance in SBS 2008
Righto I've just swapped out a SBS 2003 for a SBS 2008 this wsa done as a migration using the howto from Microsoft to a new machine. The new machine in question is way over specc'd for the Office in question but we have some serious performance issues, I'll explain more.
The migration went well and all appeared fine, for those of you that don't know you have 21 days to complete a migration i.e you can have your SBS 2003 and your SBS 2008 machines on the same domain for that period of time. All appeared to be going well until I switched the old controller off ( I left it on just incase someone went Oh dear forgotten something). Browsing for files on the shares the started taking an age (Now I'm a patient person) but 15 seconds to go from one folder to another would be enough to drive most people insane is my guess.
I did some searching and found that for some very strange %$%$%^ reason 2008 does not have the computer browser service running by default, I've no enabled and started it (Thus making it the master browser), moving between folders is now better but performance is still slow. The office went from a Dual core with 4Gb of ram and mirrored SATA raptors to a quad core with 8GB of fast ram and 6 fast SAS drives in a RAID 5 config, add to the fact that the performance problems didn't start until the old SBS was switched off then I'm pretty confident it's not the hardware. However I am at a loss as to what the problem may be, there is nothing in the logs that helps either, any ideas?
Thanks in advance
David
The migration went well and all appeared fine, for those of you that don't know you have 21 days to complete a migration i.e you can have your SBS 2003 and your SBS 2008 machines on the same domain for that period of time. All appeared to be going well until I switched the old controller off ( I left it on just incase someone went Oh dear forgotten something). Browsing for files on the shares the started taking an age (Now I'm a patient person) but 15 seconds to go from one folder to another would be enough to drive most people insane is my guess.
I did some searching and found that for some very strange %$%$%^ reason 2008 does not have the computer browser service running by default, I've no enabled and started it (Thus making it the master browser), moving between folders is now better but performance is still slow. The office went from a Dual core with 4Gb of ram and mirrored SATA raptors to a quad core with 8GB of fast ram and 6 fast SAS drives in a RAID 5 config, add to the fact that the performance problems didn't start until the old SBS was switched off then I'm pretty confident it's not the hardware. However I am at a loss as to what the problem may be, there is nothing in the logs that helps either, any ideas?
Thanks in advance
David
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WINS is not needed on 2008, but both 2003 and 2008 cannot function if DNS is acting up.
ASKER
Hi there I do apologise for the lateness of my reply. It turns out that it was three problems. Firstly Master Browser Service (I've no idea why this is by default not enabled on SBS 2008) and the OLD SBS 2003 being present in DNS.
There was also a confounding problem here in that one of the users who was complaining of slow perfromance had also installed iTunes and put his entire music library on his work computer leaving all of about 70Mb of space, DOH!!
There was also a confounding problem here in that one of the users who was complaining of slow perfromance had also installed iTunes and put his entire music library on his work computer leaving all of about 70Mb of space, DOH!!
ASKER
The B Grade is nothing to do with the quality of your reply which was excellent, it's just the multiple probelms. Apologies for the delay in posting the points
Thanks DBrookfield, glad to hear you have resolved.
For the record Server 2008 (not just SBS) relies totally on DNS and does not require browser service or WINS. If you have old Win2K servers in your domain you may require those services.
Cheers!
--Rob
For the record Server 2008 (not just SBS) relies totally on DNS and does not require browser service or WINS. If you have old Win2K servers in your domain you may require those services.
Cheers!
--Rob
ASKER
Now that is interesting (this is my first experiance of 2008), so why would performance improve dramatically once I started the master browser service? By performance I mean anyone traversing folders in a share had to wait seconds view contents of folders?
Are you sure it was the Browser service and not the old SBS DNS entry? DNS is the foundation of an Active Directory domain.
I have yet to enable the bowser service on any 2008 server and all work well, though I am wondering if in your case it could also be tied to something else.
I have yet to enable the bowser service on any 2008 server and all work well, though I am wondering if in your case it could also be tied to something else.
ASKER
All possible in this world I guess, however as soon as I enabled and started the browser service performance improved (Not my thoughts the users) I then went onto remove the old DNS entry afterwards about a day later. And sure i know about active directory intergrated DNS etc etc Maybe some weirdnesss about a migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008?
Interesting. Not saying you are wrong, I am just surprised. I'll be sure to keep that in mind and see if it makes a difference anywhere else. It really hasn't been needed since Win2K unless you have Win9x or WinNT clients, though 2008 is the first server version with it disabled 'out of the box'.
Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for the feedback.
ASKER
Thanks so far