Topic: Major performance issues migrating from SBS 2003 to SME 7

[weblance]

Hi,

I migrated my company server last weekend from SBS 2003 to SME, and we are having major performance issues. All of our users are complaining that the server is responding very slowly, and it takes very long time for them to sync their IMAP folders. I have one user that experiences that it taker about 35 sec's just to open a mail in Outlook 2010 and it takes 1-1½ minute to close it, sometimes the computer freezes for 3-4 minutes before he can continue.

Remote users are also experiencing slow connection when connected through VPN.

We have 14 users on the network and they are all more or less experiencing these issues.

What can I do to boost the perfomance?

[Stefano]

are outlook's pst files on shared folders?

[weblance]

No they are stored local on each computer.

[Stefano]

it could be an Outlook issue.. try thunderbird to check the performances..

then, please, report here

[byte]

Can you also tell us about your server history, hardware you are running  and network details.  Sounds like a network performance issue some to me.

Thanks.

[weblance]

About the long email retrieval time: I'm not having this issue on my workstation. It might be because I don't have that many emails (about 100-150). The users that have issues have 1500-2000+ emails in their account. My theory is that it's because of their large account that they are experiencing long waiting times.

Now for the server:

The server is a Dell PowerEdge 2850, connected to a 10/100 switch (Allied Telesyn AT-FS724i, and i'm going to replace it soon with a 10/100/1000, HP Procurve 2824), connected to a Zyxel Zywall 5 firewall/gateway.

SME is running as a mail and fileserver. I've also set it up to handle the DHCP.

The former server is a 5-6 year old HP ProLiant DL380, and it's no in good shape.

Are there any other informations you need to get a better overview of my situation?

[cactus]

Are there any other informations you need to get a better overview of my situation?

What amount of RAM is used? Are you using spamassassin and e-mail scanning?

[byte]

About the long email retrieval time: I'm not having this issue on my workstation. It might be because I don't have that many emails (about 100-150). The users that have issues have 1500-2000+ emails in their account. My theory is that it's because of their large account that they are experiencing long waiting times.

I think I've seen this issue somewhere before, can you log in webmail and see the emails without the long waiting times?

[Stefano]

I think I've seen this issue somewhere before, can you log in webmail and see the emails without the long waiting times?

I agree.. if it's slow in webmail too it's a I/O issue IMHO

@weblance: is your server fully supported by RH4.X?

[weblance]

I have 4 GB installed RAM. Using spamassasin and e-mail scanning.

I'm not experiencing slow webmail on any account, so it's just slow sync in Outlook.

I don't know if the server is fully supported by RH4.X - where can I check this?

[byte]

I'm not experiencing slow webmail on any account,

How do did you find out? Have you actually tried logging into the account with 1500+ emails??

so it's just slow sync in Outlook.

In that case, try thunderbird as Stefano mentions to rule out a broken MS product.

[weblance]

How do did you find out? Have you actually tried logging into the account with 1500+ emails??



In that case, try thunderbird as Stefano mentions to rule out a broken MS product.

I have logged in to one account with 2250 mails and one with 6800 mails and one with 20. All three of them took the same time to load, about 5-10 seconds.

I'm going to try to test with Thunderbird.

Furthermore the filesystem performance is also very slow. We are using Microsoft C5 accounting software that runs directly on the server. We also did this before on our SBS2003 server without any noticable perfomance reduction compared to if the software was run locally on the workstation. Now, the software has a reduced speed of about 20%. I was under the impression that the Samba filesystem was faster than Windows. Maybe i've misunderstood something.

[Stefano]

are you using HW or SW raid?

[byte]

Did you find it slow installing?

I would check your BIOS and see if the AHCI mode is set. 

[disclaimer]
The only problem you might have is a kernel panic after rebooting this is because its now using a different driver to access the drive(s).  You will be able to fix this though by using the SME Server CD and typing sme rescue, then you'll have to rebuild the initrd with mkinitrd command.
[/disclaimer]

[weblance]

are you using HW or SW raid?

I'm using hardware RAID 0 and software RAID 1.

Could it be that the SME is too slow mirroring data? What will I gain if SME stopped using RAID 1? Is it possible to reconfigure SME to stop using RAID 1 without reinstalling?

Regarding AHCI: I don't know if the server is in AHCI mode, i'll check tomorrow, Should it be set to legacy or AHCI?

And I didn't find it slow installing.