VMware Disk Utilization

Are you running any backups or snapshots? What application is using the SQL Express? Is it doing any backups? I saw something like this recently where StorageCraft was running snapshots hourly and causing intermittent delay.

try using standard windows monitors http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.08.pulse.aspx?pr=blog#id0120016

you will need to log the information for a period of time to get the period when the failure happens.

You dont mention what the hard drive configuration of the server is (Raid, HDD Types, etc..)
Also look at any ways that you can optimize, eg, create vhd's on seperate physical drives to offload items like swap files.

Cheers
Andrew

I'm using RAID 5, 4 300GB 15k SAS drives.

The SQL Express is using a program called, Juris. It's for law offices.

ShadowCopy is turned on, but it's only set to run at night.

I'm not very familiar with creating separate VHDs on the physical drives. Is there a how-to that explains the process to perform that? I assume that since I've already setup the VM, there is no way to split it now?

I'm using RAID 5, 4 300GB 15k SAS drives.

Good. You would be surprised the amount of times i have seen people trying to use low quality drives in a VM.

The SQL Express is using a program called, Juris. It's for law offices.

Not familiar with that but shouldn't matter.

I'm not very familiar with creating separate VHDs on the physical drives. Is there a how-to that explains the process to perform that?

in your VM you just add a new drive and configure it there, however as your host only has the one Drive (raid array), there is really no benefit in this now.

I assume that since I've already setup the VM, there is no way to split it now?

Not without some serious work, my choice would be to simply add another physical drive, but before going to that expense you need to narrow down the cause.

As per above you can use Perfmon to capture the disk perfomance. There are also a number of remote management apps that will let you monitor various perfomance metrics and warn when they go outside thresholds.
GFIMAX - http://www.gfimax.com/ Nice client reports, simple interface
N-Able - http://www.n-able.com/ more functionality, but client reports are not great unless you have onsite server.
Centrastage - http://www.centrastage.com/index.html This one is a little basic, but has some really nice remote background management, and is cheep.

All the above do have trial period that you can use to get a feel for what is right for you.

Regards
Andrew.

What are the servers, and what roles are they performing? you said "FPS" what is that, or did you mean SBS

Cheers
Andrew

Andrew,

 Sorry, it is acting as a File server, and print server for two copiers. It's also hosting that SQL express install. There are a total of about 22 users.

I actually opened Perfmon and I'm watching the Disk Queue and it's typically at 0.00. The highest I've see is 0.05. That doesn't seem to indicate an issue with the disk.

I just checked the DHCP and there is a WINS server listed there that does not exist in their environment. I removed that from DHCP. I'm wondering if that could've been this issue?

I actually opened Perfmon and I'm watching the Disk Queue and it's typically at 0.00. The highest I've see is 0.05. That doesn't seem to indicate an issue with the disk.

You said this was a intermittent issue, so were the users having the issue when you tested it?

That is why you may need to log the output for a period to cover a reported slow down.

Cheers
Andrew

Yes, I had the user open the SQL database and attempt to print from it. It froze, but the perfmon and server did nothing. I never saw the print job enter the queue either. I'm thinking it may be an issue with the software and not the server. As for the reported delays accessing file shares, I have yet to see it myself.

The other possibility is that SQL is hogging the memory and causing memory preasure on the OS.

Google "SQL Max memory" and you will see a lot of articles about it.

Info on how to configure http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178067.aspx


Cheers
Andrew

I mentioned this server was also a print server I have seen issue where a corrupt/ bad print driver would cause the CPU to it 100% rendering the server useless.  Is your server running Windows 2008 R2 or greater? If so, are you using printer isolation?

Also are you using copy a lot of files to the server throughout the day? If so are the server large or small? Windows SMB file share usually copy files in 1MB block size are work perform better at moving large files then multiple tiny file of 32KB as an exmaple

Do you have a WINS server setup on your network?

Removing the WINS server and not disabling NetBIOS over TCP/IP does appear to be the issue. After turning that off for several users, the issue cleared up and they no longer saw the long delays when connecting to network drives.

Several clients were using NetBIOS over TCP/IP and it was causing a delay, as the old WINS server was removed.