A couple of weeks ago my boss (I'm a salesman) discovered I had a background that involved computers, so he promptly appointed me IT-manager and gave me the "opportunity " (his words not mine lol) to give the 4yr old, completely and utterly neglected, network a complete overhaul.
Now I do have some professional experience with these matters, but it's 5yr old with a whole lot o' dust on top.
So I need help
The network I'm talking about resides in an office-building. Inside said building we find 22 office-workers, about the same number of funny blue-collar guys, and a copier with an attitude.
For now only the 22 officepeople are of concern to us, since they are the ones using the server and network.
The IT uses are limited to :
-mail : MS Exchange 200. very limited use, since only 2ppl can mail to the outside world, so there's no endless stream of videojokes and pictures clogging the server. Just internal memos and the occasional pdf file
-SQL database : a rather hefty thing, accessed with a custom written program. Around 900Mb of data, accessed and updated constantly by all 22 people.
that's basically it
Now we have one server that runs everything. Above mentioned applications and the Primary Domain Controller. It runs windows 2000 and SBS2000.
the specs are :
1.5Ghz processor
512 Mb RDRAM (ECC) (since yesterday upgraded to 1.5Gb)
2*200Gb desktop maxtors in RAID 1 array
the whole thing is hooked to everything else using a pretty standard 10/100 switch.
Now when i got first asked to do something about the performance (which was awfull in every which way possible) I demanded money for a memoryboost before I did anything else, and I got it.
Where before the server was constantly maxing out in mem usage it is now pretty comfortable with 1.5Gb RAM (about 150-250Mb free at any given time)
Processor usage fluxuates like mad, but I've been logging for awhile and it has never maxed out for longer than a couple of seconds.
But, alas, for my liking the database still isn't as fast as it should be...a simple query can take upto 8-10 seconds.
My guess is that the harddrives are to blame, since they have to process alot of I/O requests...they're no scsi drives so they are pretty limited that way.
Now for tyhe questions:
Am I right in focusing on the HD's next as the main reason for below par performance?
Am I realistic in assuming that a database query shouldn't take more than, say, 2 seconds? (I'm an absolute n00b when it comes to SQL (and databases in general) so I have really no idea)
Will an additional 512Mb RAM further improve things noticably or not?
Thanks for your time. Since you've been reading this long, might as well post a helpful reply
Now I do have some professional experience with these matters, but it's 5yr old with a whole lot o' dust on top.
So I need help
The network I'm talking about resides in an office-building. Inside said building we find 22 office-workers, about the same number of funny blue-collar guys, and a copier with an attitude.
For now only the 22 officepeople are of concern to us, since they are the ones using the server and network.
The IT uses are limited to :
-mail : MS Exchange 200. very limited use, since only 2ppl can mail to the outside world, so there's no endless stream of videojokes and pictures clogging the server. Just internal memos and the occasional pdf file
-SQL database : a rather hefty thing, accessed with a custom written program. Around 900Mb of data, accessed and updated constantly by all 22 people.
that's basically it
Now we have one server that runs everything. Above mentioned applications and the Primary Domain Controller. It runs windows 2000 and SBS2000.
the specs are :
1.5Ghz processor
512 Mb RDRAM (ECC) (since yesterday upgraded to 1.5Gb)
2*200Gb desktop maxtors in RAID 1 array
the whole thing is hooked to everything else using a pretty standard 10/100 switch.
Now when i got first asked to do something about the performance (which was awfull in every which way possible) I demanded money for a memoryboost before I did anything else, and I got it.
Where before the server was constantly maxing out in mem usage it is now pretty comfortable with 1.5Gb RAM (about 150-250Mb free at any given time)
Processor usage fluxuates like mad, but I've been logging for awhile and it has never maxed out for longer than a couple of seconds.
But, alas, for my liking the database still isn't as fast as it should be...a simple query can take upto 8-10 seconds.
My guess is that the harddrives are to blame, since they have to process alot of I/O requests...they're no scsi drives so they are pretty limited that way.
Now for tyhe questions:
Am I right in focusing on the HD's next as the main reason for below par performance?
Am I realistic in assuming that a database query shouldn't take more than, say, 2 seconds? (I'm an absolute n00b when it comes to SQL (and databases in general) so I have really no idea)
Will an additional 512Mb RAM further improve things noticably or not?
Thanks for your time. Since you've been reading this long, might as well post a helpful reply