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exchange is SO SLOW

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exchange is SO SLOW - 14.Oct.2008 9:17:34 AM   
aschwartz

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 4.Apr.2008
Status: offline 		We have a mixed enviornment, we are currently updating from 2k3 to 2k7, and I just started here a month ago or so, so they had already started when I got here.  Here is what we have
(All virtual on esx 3.5)
exchange 2003 server with a few mailboxes left.  It sends thru the 2k7 box
exchange 2007 with all roles (no edge, we use a websense product for filtering, and that acts as the edge)
Everyone is complaining of slowness in outlook.  I am new to 2k7, and not sure what I am doing wrong.  It constantly freezes or hangs, and people are complaining constantly.  The server is set with 4 processors, and has 6GB memory allocated to it thru esx.  I created 2 pagefiles, on 2 seperate disks for a total of about 8.5GB or so.  I need to figure out what the issue is, and I really dont know where to start.  Does anyone have any ideas?  I appreciate any help..
Post #: 1
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 14.Oct.2008 9:32:08 AM   
aschwartz

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 4.Apr.2008
Status: offline 		A few things I forgot to mention.  We have 223 mailboxes (users and resource) on the 2k7 box and about 20 left on the 2k3 box.  

(in reply to aschwartz)
Post #: 2
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 14.Oct.2008 9:49:49 AM   
mark@mvps.org

 

Posts: 3935
Joined: 9.Jun.2004
From: Philadelphia PA
Status: offline 		So tell us about performance of the guests. Tell us about the SAN. Tell us about how many disks. in fact, tell us WHAT the SAN is and how it's configured. And please don't tell us that you've got the stores in a VMDK (I've seen that cropping up way more times than is comfortable).

_____________________________

Mark Arnold (Exchange MVP)
List Moderator

(in reply to aschwartz)
Post #: 3
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 14.Oct.2008 10:32:42 AM   
aschwartz

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 4.Apr.2008
Status: offline 		We are using an IBM san, and yes, the space is allocated as a disk file.  The san performance seems fine, there are really no file issues that I have seen since i have been here.  I did run the exchange troubelshooter, and it came back that the processor is bottlenecked, the avg. value of Proc Queue Length is 5.63, and thats too high.  Mostly the store process is causing it. 
I spoke with a friend, and I believe that I need to seperate the roles on this box.  I am going to create a seperate mailbox role only server, and move mailboxes over to that, to see if that assists, I believe it might help somewhat.

(in reply to mark@mvps.org)
Post #: 4
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 14.Oct.2008 11:16:47 AM   
mark@mvps.org

 

Posts: 3935
Joined: 9.Jun.2004
From: Philadelphia PA
Status: offline 		Probably less stress to create a new CAS & HT, then move the configurations towards that one. That would save on user outages.
Although, your idea has merit if you do migrations slowly and see when/if a problem happens.
Check your best practices with regard to CPU affinity. Having more in the guest isn't necessarily better. You might do well to look at that before doing anything with Exchange as what you have should be no problem for ESX to handle.

_____________________________

Mark Arnold (Exchange MVP)
List Moderator

(in reply to aschwartz)
Post #: 5
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 15.Oct.2008 8:02:47 AM   
aschwartz

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 4.Apr.2008
Status: offline 		What do you mean in regards to cpu best practices?  are there tweaks that can be done to assist?  Like I said I didnt build this box, so unfortunately I am unsure of anything that was done in that regard. 

Are there certain things that should be done, or just standard MS Best practices?

(in reply to mark@mvps.org)
Post #: 6
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 15.Oct.2008 10:12:05 AM   
aschwartz

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 4.Apr.2008
Status: offline 		I built a new mailbox only server, and moved a few of the biggest complainers to that database, to see if it would help, and it seems that they arent complaining today yet. (yet is the word I guess)

I am noticing on the main box (HT, CAS, and mailbox roles) that the resources used for store.exe are pretty high.  I rebooted the box this morning, and the memory usage keeps going up when I watch task manager, it started around 800MB, and its upt o about 1.4GB now, and it keeps going up, it doesnt go down at all.
CPU usage is between 2% and 15% at times
Network utilization really doesnt go above .5% on the1GB link  It is up and down, but not really too too high.

Another question would be the pagefile.  It is recommeding a minimum of 8830 for the memory I have in there, and I have it split, 1GB on the C drive (system) and 8GB on the data drive, where the databases are.  Is this acceptable, or should it all be on the C drive?  Would that have any impact on performance?

Sorry for all of the info and questions, but I am lost and am not sure which way to go at this point. I do appreciate all of the help.

(in reply to aschwartz)
Post #: 7
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 15.Oct.2008 12:52:50 PM   
aschwartz

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 4.Apr.2008
Status: offline 		Someone asked me to do a copy of 2 years worth of mail from one mailbox to a PF that is on a different server.  So I am doing it thru my outlook, and after each time I do a months copy (about 150 or so emails) my outlook completely freezes up, and I have to end task on it and the reopen it again.  Looking at the task manager on the server shows nothing unusual, memory is at like 2.4GB, and proc is between 2 and 26% at any given time.  This is completely frustrating, and I have no idea how to fix it.    When I end task on outlook and reopen, its fine. 

exchange 2003 never gave us these issues.

(in reply to aschwartz)
Post #: 8
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 15.Oct.2008 1:11:13 PM   
aschwartz

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 4.Apr.2008
Status: offline 		Okay - so I am running perfmon and ht shows that pages/sec is usually zero, but spikes every now and then.  %Proc time has an average of 11.  Not that bad, it hovers around between 5 and 30
avg Disk queue length seems to be an issue.  the green bar is pretty much at tthe top the entire time.  average of 1.6, I havent seen the green bar drop yet.  I assume that could be an issue.

Also RPC Average latency is pegged at max as well.  average of 209 as per perfmon. It drops down for a few seconds and stays for a while, and then goes back up again.

< Message edited by aschwartz -- 15.Oct.2008 1:13:21 PM >

(in reply to aschwartz)
Post #: 9
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 15.Oct.2008 3:17:31 PM   
ace1701

 

Posts: 168
Joined: 1.Dec.2000
From: Chicago
Status: offline 		Mark,
I'd like to touch on your comment about VMDK files.

"And please don't tell us that you've got the stores in a VMDK (I've seen that cropping up way more times than is comfortable). "

Are you saying it is better to have 1 VMDK per database? If so can you expand on why? As you know from other posts I will be migrating to 07. The new 07 servers will be running on ESX so this is important information for me if you can share :-)

Thanks

(in reply to aschwartz)
Post #: 10
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 15.Oct.2008 4:19:12 PM   
Draconis

 

Posts: 160
Joined: 11.Sep.2008
From: Connecticut, USA
Status: online 		Well you can use virtual disks on a VMFS store on your SAN to store your VM OS drive.  You should use Raw Device Mappings for the rest of your drives on your exchange servers.

Example:
C:                   OS                           VMDK
D:                   LOGS                      RDM on the SAN
E:                    Databases                RDM on the SAN

(in reply to ace1701)
Post #: 11
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 15.Oct.2008 7:44:38 PM   
Draconis

 

Posts: 160
Joined: 11.Sep.2008
From: Connecticut, USA
Status: online 		Correction...you could, not should, use RDM.  Performance Breakdown in VMWare ESX 3.5 for VMFS and RDM on a SAN -- link.

(in reply to Draconis)
Post #: 12
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 15.Oct.2008 10:05:32 PM   
ace1701

 

Posts: 168
Joined: 1.Dec.2000
From: Chicago
Status: offline 		Thanks for the link

I saw that you broke out the DB and Logs to separate drives. Is that still necessary in a SAN?

(in reply to Draconis)
Post #: 13
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 16.Oct.2008 8:10:17 AM   
Draconis

 

Posts: 160
Joined: 11.Sep.2008
From: Connecticut, USA
Status: online 		It is not necessary to separate out the dbs and logs but I would do it anyway since every little bit counts especially when you have alot of emails coming in for a lot of users.  A SAN is a high availability/high performance solution with a lot of cool advanced restore capabilities.  I was just following the deployment they had here.  Monkey see Monkey do... 

(in reply to ace1701)
Post #: 14
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 16.Oct.2008 9:56:35 AM   
aschwartz

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 4.Apr.2008
Status: offline 		One thing I am noticing now is that my ping times are extremely high from my workstation to the server.  I used an unused nic on the esx host, and dedicated it to the exchange box, and it is the same.  It seems that there is a ton of traffic to it.  What is the best way to determine if the server is open for relay.  I think it is not open, but what else could cause this type of traffic??  When I ping other servers on the same host, they all come back less than 1 ms for every ping.  I dont think it is the esx host, but I am unsure how to check otherwise.

Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=128
Request timed out.
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=71ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=56ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Request timed out.
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=134ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=56ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=128
Reply from 172.16.0.20: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=128
Request timed out.

(in reply to Draconis)
Post #: 15
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 16.Oct.2008 10:20:44 AM   
Draconis

 

Posts: 160
Joined: 11.Sep.2008
From: Connecticut, USA
Status: online 		Try this link.  There is an open relay tester a few boxes down.

You wont be able to know what traffic is going on unless you capture network traffic on the server side.

(in reply to aschwartz)
Post #: 16
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 16.Oct.2008 11:24:22 AM   
aschwartz

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 4.Apr.2008
Status: offline 		Thank you, so at least we arent an open relay.  Thats a good thing.

(in reply to Draconis)
Post #: 17
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 22.Oct.2008 11:44:36 AM   
aschwartz

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 4.Apr.2008
Status: offline 		After changing logs around and moving files, we seem to be relatively normal for the most part, but at lease once a day, we have an issue, where store.exe takes up a TON of processor time, usually 30-60%, as to normally when it is only between 5-20%.  This seems to be the only issue that comes up, when this happens, we get that very slow ping response time, and everyone has issues with their outlook.

Otherwise it is normal.  I am not sure why this would happen.  Any tips on how to determine why that is?

(in reply to aschwartz)
Post #: 18
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 22.Oct.2008 11:53:44 AM   
aschwartz

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 4.Apr.2008
Status: offline 		Here is a question, we the have mailbox, cas and HT roles all on one Virtual server.  Currently it is allocated 4 procs and 8GB of ram, would it be at all beneficial to up it to 8 procs?  according to the load specs from M$, 4 should work, but i guess it might be a bit taxed.  We have about 200 mailboxes on it, and I am offloading several to a new server I built..

(in reply to aschwartz)
Post #: 19
RE: exchange is SO SLOW - 22.Oct.2008 12:09:03 PM   
Elan Shudnow

 

Posts: 666
Joined: 4.Jan.2007
From: Chicago, IL
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: aschwartz

Here is a question, we the have mailbox, cas and HT roles all on one Virtual server.  Currently it is allocated 4 procs and 8GB of ram, would it be at all beneficial to up it to 8 procs?  according to the load specs from M$, 4 should work, but i guess it might be a bit taxed.  We have about 200 mailboxes on it, and I am offloading several to a new server I built..


You most definitely do not need 8 cores for 200 mailboxes.  8 cores is for the 6,000 mailbox range.

_____________________________

Elan Shudnow
Exchange MVP
http://www.shudnow.net

(in reply to aschwartz)
Post #: 20

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