Processor queue length

[Frank Verheggen]

Sorry for the crosspost but I have tried another group before and did not
get any reply so I am trying to double my chances.

I hope somebody can shed some light on my problem.

We have a Compaq Proliant ML370 with a P933 and 512 Mb memory. For some
reason the system has an average processor queue length of >6 but the
utilization is less then 15%. Performance on the server is sometimes rather
slow. On this box we run Exchange 2000 and ISA 2000 (no not my idea to put
them together). Besides that the box only has Symantec Antivirus for
Exchange 4.5 running. We use the server also for our VPN connections
(homeworkers, on average 2).

Has anybody a clue why this is happening? Normally if the utilization also
was high I would suggest a processor problem but now???????????

Thanks in advance for your help

With kind regards,


Frank Verheggen


BERGSON
Sint Antoniusstraat 9
5616 RT Eindhoven
The Netherlands
http://www.bergson.nl

 

[Matthew Byrd [MSFT]]

Hi Frank,

The Number one reason we see for slow Exchange performance is not CPU but
disk. I recommend that you take a look at the following whitepaper it
should assist you in determining why you Exchange performance is slow.

Troubleshooting Exchange 2000 Performance
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2000/library/te2kperf.mspx

For disk performance I recommend using Method 3 for determining if you have
a bottle Neck in disk. That is the method that is most often used
internally and is the most accurate across multiple disk types.

Hope this Helps,

--
Matthew Byrd
Microsoft PSS

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[Frank Verheggen]

Thnx for your advice. Unfortunattely it looks like the disks are not the
problem. Was a little odd if they were. This are 3 9Gb disks on a Smart
Array controller using RAID-5

PhysicalDisk(drive\Avg. Disk sec/Write average is below 0.020 maximum
however is 0.037.

Store gave a maximum of 337 IO data operations but that did not result in a
high disk sec/Write.



My guess is that it is a combination of VPN, ISA en Exchange on one server
that is causing this problem. After installing Symantec Antivirus we noticed
a further drop in performance but we can not do without it.



So I might have to tell management to seperate the tasks to 2 machines I
guess.



Frank