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My current setup is the following:

  • Intel Xeon 5620 2.40Ghz
  • 16GB RAM
  • 1000GB disk
  • Windows Server 2003 R2 x64

I'm having a really poor performance with this setup. I have some previous experiences running SharePoint on VM's with a lot less resouces than that, and equivalent performance.

I'm currently running a trial version of SharePoint 2007, but the whole machine is having a poor performance.

With that kind of hardware and software, I'd expect a really good machine running, but all I got is something worse than a 1gb VM.

I already bought the licences for SQL Sever 2008 and SharePoint 2007, so I can avoid the SQL Server Express limitations, but I'm really concerned that the problem is somewhere else.

Can anyone give me some tips regarding where to look for the bottlenecks and solutions? All suggestions appreciated :)

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  • You need to update your question with the specs of the underlaying disk setup. Where is you 1TB virtual disk located (RAID level, block size, number of spindles, rpm etc)
    – pauska
    Oct 27, 2010 at 9:16

5 Answers 5

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Two things that stand out is that 56xx-series CPUs don't run their memory in a 'power of 2' way (i.e. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64GB etc.) but in a 'block of three' manner (i.e. 3, 6, 9, 12, 18GB etc.) - so having 16GB rather than say 12GB may actually be slowing your machine down - sounds odd I know but that's the way they work.

Secondly, and this has been mentioned already, but a single consumer-grade 1TB SATA disk will be quite poor in server-type situations. Those disks are really designed for near-line applications such as close-to-hand backups, not for multiple-random-IO operations such as SQL/Sharepoint activities. I know you'll lose capacity but look at the various 600GB 10krpm SAS enterprise disks sold by WD, Seagate etc. Also consider a mirrored pair for your own safety too ok.

Best of luck.

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  • Moreover, each CPU in the system better be equipped with 'block of 3' pieces of memory: 1 CPU better works better with 3, 6, 9... RAM pieces while 2 CPU-based server better be equipped with 6, 12... RAM pieces. If an author omitted CPU numbers it may be better to reconsider RAM. 16 Gb looks like 4 x 4 Gb which is no way optimal for Xeonx.
    – Alexander
    Apr 19, 2012 at 8:20
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I feel it safe to say that the bottleneck is your hard disk without knowing the specifics it seems to be the item that stands out. In Windows 2003 there are various performance counters you can setup, one of the counters to look for is 'Disk Queue Length' take a look at the Microsoft TechNet guide for a full listing of objects to query in performance manager, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc775961(WS.10).aspx.

Generally speaking adding another disk and storing the SQL database for sharepoint on that volume should further increase the disk performance.

Another thing you might want to look for is your windows paging file and its size, since you have 16GB of ram a bit interested in hearing how it is currently set.

good luck!

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  • Hi Nick, the configs for the Virtual Memory are the following: Custom Size (Initial Size: 2046 and Maximum Size 4092). I'll run the Performance manager with those indicators and update it here, thanks!
    – Tzn
    Oct 26, 2010 at 9:46
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You don't mention what analysis you've done so far. What's the workload on the server? I'd be interested in hearing whether the CPU is busy, disk busy time, disk queue length, commit charge, Etc. Are there many (any) Wow64 processes (look for *32 in Task Manager).

What do you mean by poor performance; do you mean at the console, or via a Sharepoint client? Is the server under load, or are you just testing it?

Have a dig around the processes using SysInternals ProcessExplorer, check TCP/IP connections using TCPView.

What's the underlying disk setup (SAS, SATA, how many spindles, Etc).

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I have some previous experiences running SharePoint on VM's with a lot less resouces than that, and equivalent performance.

I doubt that. What you told me has a craptastic IO subsystem. A 1000gb disc is slow as hell for random IO which is what you face. I run sharepoint on a RAID 10 of 4 320gb black scorpio and have io load problems there at times (that is a small internal office server).

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  • Indeed, there's something wrong here :) I don't want to go back to 1gb VM's
    – Tzn
    Oct 26, 2010 at 9:52
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Dispute RAM issues (which in fact gives you maybe 1-2% in speed), you better take a look at storage. I don't know you disk interface, but since 1 Tb disks are mostly SATA these days (due to price factor; you can buy 1Tb 15K SAS drive, but in fact if you're care for spending decent money for SAS, you'd spend a bit more and get then two along with h/w RAID card to put them in robust mirror; as you have one big drive I think it is SATA), and these drives are not simple customer-grade but not even faster one between customer-grade disks (this is due to fact huge drives are mostly for storing multimedia (photos, video) content, and raw speed not a factor for such files). So, storage you're using is slo-o-ow.

I'd start with good h/w controller. If you loke SATA, go for at least four SATA disks (or two SAS) disks in RAID10 storage configuration. With smart enough controller, you can add some speed later by simple adding more disks into RAID10 (so the load will be paralleled between more spindles) - a nice free bonus with RAID10.

You can also (at least for test purpose) get SSD drive instead and install server on it, it'll be very responsive but if you use cheap one (which is wise for pure test purpose), you'll risk your data later since it may wear out too soon; if you get enterprise SSD, then price won't be lower that RAID+HDD scheme.

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