Is Our "Server" Too Small For The Network?
Winga
MrSouth Africa Icrontian
First off bear with me regarding my use of the terminology, this is waaay out of my field, so excuse the description. 
Our company runs about 15 workstations off the server.
The hardware we using isn't true server hardware. It's more of a workstation. We using a standard entry level MB, a pentium 4, 3GHZ processor and 4 Gigs of RAM.
The network is soooo slow its driving us all nuts, so we have decided to look into replacing it?
I would however like to know 2 things:
1. Is what we using, too small for our application?
2. What hardware would you recommend if we had to replace what we have at the moment with an actual server that could handle around 15 connections.
Our company runs about 15 workstations off the server.
The hardware we using isn't true server hardware. It's more of a workstation. We using a standard entry level MB, a pentium 4, 3GHZ processor and 4 Gigs of RAM.
The network is soooo slow its driving us all nuts, so we have decided to look into replacing it?
I would however like to know 2 things:
1. Is what we using, too small for our application?
2. What hardware would you recommend if we had to replace what we have at the moment with an actual server that could handle around 15 connections.
0
Comments
Your problem might be elsewhere in the network. If you're stuck in the mud don't go out and buy a Ferrari.
This is the first question that came to my mind...
'moved it up the list for ya RWB.
You should be able to see if it is your server by looking at its statistics. Look at its services, processes and network traffic. If it's XP, you can get an idea with Task Manager, but there are many better server monitoring tools. You might try this on a couple of clients too- just in case you're getting crudware or misconfigured applications on the machines.
But my thought is that mtrox is right- your server is a lot of machine for a normal office file server.
Hope that helps- I'm kind of a drafted and defacto admin myself.
I am unfortunately not the IT guy responsible for keeping this animal going so am unable to answer many of your questions. You have however provided me with an excellent checklist to take to work on Monday. I will get all the answers to questions I don't know as opposed to trying to guess some of them now.
I am definitely refering to the network and not the internet speed although that is also all over the place. Some days it's lightning fast, other days the page just hangs.
As for the network, whether there's one person on it or 10 it's still very slow.
I think we are running Windows Server 2003 and MS SQL.
We run two very large databases off the server. Client information is added by various staff members throughout the day and documents are printed continuously from that data. We have a number of high speed lazer printers connected to the network.
Obviously our e-mails are also routed through the server.
I have heard mention of a hub and I'm quite sure we running at 100Mbs.
More than that I can't tell you until Monday.
How big are the print jobs that run through the server? Just a couple pages of black & white or are we talking 20 page full color?
When you say the emails are going through your server, do you mean you have a mail server on there or just that emails are going out through your system? I'm trying to get a feel for how much work that server has to do. If you have an outside POP3 server, then your server doesn't really do anything with emails.
It has been pretty much copy and pasted as per the e-mail:
Server OS - Small Business Server 2003 SP2.
Main Applications/Services – MSSQL
- Exchange Server
- Domain Controller(DNS, WINS, DHCP, User Authorizations etc)
- Firewall and Internet G/W
- IIS
- Fax Server
- Backup Exec
- Norton Antivus Realtime scanning
- Print Server/spooler +- 4 network printers
- File server/sharing
2 NIC’s (Network interface cards) – one to the LAN and the other to the ADSL Router with the server being the gateway.
Network cards and IP address setup on 2 different Subnets. Settings as per Microsoft’s documentation.
Network Topography – 100MB/s with 100MB/s Hubs/ ( not switches, +- 4 daisychained.).
As you can see this is not merely a file server but this server does perform numerous functions and many background tasks as well as what
was mentioned above, so yes this server does work hard!
The client pc’s are all Windows XP SP2.
I will answer Mike’s forum questions in red.
1.When you say the network is slow, do you just mean the internet connection? What are you doing that seems slow?
LAN speed
2.Is the server running healthy…meaning if you just get on it with no network activity does it run well? All by itself you have enough hardware that you should have decent speed just running the server.
I believe the server is optimally configured as per MS documentation
3.What is the Op Sys on the server? Is this an XP based peer to peer network or is it a domain controller? Linux?
SBS 2003 SP2
4.Are you running one or more server based apps that several workstations use?
Yes, as above
5.Do you have a hub or a switch?
Yes +- 4 Daisychained 3Com 100MB hubs not switches
6.Is there a collision light on your hub/switch and is it lit up quite a bit?
I have never see a collision light lit up on any of the hubs and I have investigated during times of complaints.
7.Look at the lights on your hub/switch…are you running at 10Mbs or 100Mbs?
100
8.Same with the workstations and server’s NIC. 10 or 100Mbs?
100
9.What is the general activity on the network? Is it pretty much Word files going back and forth or is it giant CAD drawings being brought up and saved?
Database requests and updates, Email transfer, Printing, DOS applications (Gilts and WordPerfect Suite) etc.
There's one of your problems right there.
You need to convert those to switches. Daisy chained hubs is a surefire way to horrific network performance.
And with 16 workstations + 4 printers; for $200-$300 and about 20 minutes of install time you could be on one 24 port switch. I still don't know that your Pent IV 3 GHz server with 4 Gigs of RAM is the problem for what you're doing. Maybe you spring for a switch with Gigabyte speed...just for future.
I agree with the response from the forum that the topology and use of hubs vs switches is not ideal and may be the source of the problem.
Just to give you a bit of history about the cabling/hub topology in your offices.
At the time of cabling and the extension of the new building the cable type CAT5 and 10MB hubs were the industry standards, 100MB was only something for the bigger sites, and was more than ample for the types of applications being run, Gilts (Dos application) being the main one.
The reason why the hubs were daisy chained was basically to link the 2 buildings and any extra hubs to cater for the extra points installed.
A while ago(approx 2 - 3 years I think), (The owner) ask me to investigate upgrading the network topology.
This meant replacing all the existing 10MB hubs and cabling to 100MB Switches and new cable topology. The quote was for around R35k and it was
decided not to go ahead with the upgrade at that time. I stand to be corrected, but there were a number of reasons why at that stage it wasn’t done.
Obviously costs was an issue and CIMS staff had recommended to (the owner), to replace the 10MB hubs with 100MB hubs as that would help speed things up and be sufficient. This was done and I do believe it did speed things up to some extent for a while.
We then tried other avenues to speed things up and obviously not to the level required. I am of the belief that it not merely a network related issue causing the speed problems but a combination of both the network and the server.
As I said in yesterdays email that server is working hard and my suggestion was to first, instead of upgrading the server and move entire SBS, was to move the SQL portion to another server, thus making its tasks less and more manageable.
This would allow CIMS (See products) to query a dedicated server. There will be an increase in CIMs performance whether sufficient for you requirements we would have to wait and see.
Unfortunately in this game there is a certain amount of trial and error and in the end you may have to upgrade the network as well.
On the other hand you could upgrade the network and then find that you still need to upgrade the server.
Without know how much the server's doing, he could be right about this, and this could be a good solution.
Absolutely! True again.
I would do the followings to tackle this problem.
From your description it seems like an absolute requirement; I would upgrade the network first, as Prof also recommended. For this kind of a professional network, I would use high-end (I will explain what I mean by high-end below) and at least 100Mbit switches for the networks in each building. For inter-connecting the buildings you can use something faster, i.e. 1Gbit switch. So, it might look like a 1Gbit switch for each building to inter-connect the buildings to each other. You can connect multiple 100 Mbit switches to those 1 Gbit switches in star topology as needed to distribute the network inside the buildings. While choosing the switches, you might want to check the internal transfer speed; a 100Mbit switch does not mean that every port can transfer at 100Mbits (200Mbits full duplex) simultaneously. For that to happen internal speed should be 100 Mbits (or 200) times the number of ports available, and those switches are expensive.
The second important source of bottleneck could be harddisks. I would make sure the harddrives are fast and disk interface (SATA/IDE or SCSI) drivers are properly configured. There was a small and useful utility called hdspeed that you can use to see if the disks are fast enough.
The third step is simple. I would check the CPU and memory usage on the server, if they are fully loaded most of the time, upgrade is needed. But I agree with mtrox, your server seems to be a capable one.
Edit: And, make sure the server is connected to one of the fast main (Gbit recommended above) switches with a fast (Gbit) ethernet card.
I just wanted to add my 2c, hope it helps
Anything else you guys can think of or suggest...please throw it my way.
This thread will probably be printed out and used in a forthcoming meeting as part of a brainstorming process to improve our network. Suggestions are definitely welcome at this stage.
You are welcome. There is an exciting task ahead of you, have fun. :Rocker:
However, if the Server is still laboring, you might have the admin also gather statistics on what's doing what- here are some freebies you might consider (if you've not already):
Server 2003 Task Manager - This is a nice little write-up I found.
Server 2003 Tools - Your admin may already know about these- but I thought Server Performance Advisor might be useful.
... and many others can fall out with a Google search or by suggestion here.
I only say this because the Server may be spending time on non-productive processes or services. They can also get infected too- but your person could know all about this.
I don't know about your application entirely, but people I know who run business critical servers generally have hot spares and remote backups. I think it is a good idea to have another machine regardless.
This one is a big one to see if your server is tooooo small for your needs.
I would recommend that you have your IT guru recored the CPU % usage 3 time a day and IF its 80% or better most of the day then I would upgrade or add another machine to ease the workload off the server.
Be careful on the server OS that you install. If you install another SMALL BUSINESS server OS it may cause some problems because of that fact that OS is designed to do it all. 2 be the Domain controller and the hole 9 yard if you add 2 together they will not play nice together on you network.
But I agree with other on your 4 Dasie chained HUB. BAD that will cause a lot f collisions that will cause very slow traffic on the network