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In our office, we have a Windows 2008 virtual machine hosted on an HP ProLient ML350 G6. This VM has access to all of the resources available on the host.

On this machine there are some Microsoft Access databasess which are used in a poorly coded vb6 application that runs on our PCs (currently 25-30).

Our problem is that sometimes the queries we use (which are also poorly coded) are slow as hell.

Can the VM have something to do with this problem? How can we debug this?

I was thinking about checking disk I/O but I'm not sure what I should check exactly, CPU and memory usage are very very low.

We are, of course, trying to write better code, but in the meantime we are trying to see if there are other problems with our structure.

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    Don't use Access for anything. Ever. For any reason. - If you are given the choice between Access and Excel, pick Excel. If you are given the choice between Access and Notepad, pick Notepad. If you are given the choice between Access and no computer at all, pick no computer at all. If you are given the choice between Access and being boiled alive in bleach, pick being boiled alive in bleach. Your problem is Access. It is a more effective piece of malware than most pieces of malware. Don't use Access for anything. Ever. For any reason. -
    – HopelessN00b
    Sep 5, 2014 at 14:56
  • Too late; the business burned that bridge years ago. Now they need a way out.
    – Michael Hampton
    Sep 5, 2014 at 14:59

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First: MS Access performance is terrible. It's not made to have any performance, so the DB counts a lot.

Second: if you run a non performatic DB on a VM, you will have another performance penalty.

Third and most important: if the application is poorly coded and with terrible engineered queries, there's nothing you can do on hardware that would make the system perform better.

Generally, performance tunning the software wields way better results than changing the hardware. If you want to speed up the system, switching from MS Access to a real DB would make some difference, and rewriting the code will give you the biggest performance boost. Only after those two changes you will have to take a look on the hardware and VM.

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