fastfrank

Hi,

Just a quick question to anyone who might posess some exchange 5.5 knowledge.

Accessing mails with attachments in excess of 1MB take forever to open. Disabling Antivirus on the server helps a little but its still very slow.

Any suggestions on what might be causing this performance issue?

Server has NT4 O/S
512MB RAM
Information Store is about 50MB
Processor runs at 2.5Gig

Regards
Frank

*Sonic*

Is that 50Gb information store or 50Mb, how many users ?

do you have any other servers connecting to it, like Mailsweeper for Exchange, or a Blackberry Server ? (as these all hog the CPU)

What Antivirus is it ?

What is the CPU utilisation like?

Do you have Outlook Web Access installed, if so do you get the same problem opening attachments as you do with the Outlook Client

ozzy

512Mb is pretty low for a 50Gb IS. The old server at my work started struggling with an IS around 8GB and around 60 users. Although it did have two processors, but just 600Mhz PIII's.

Could be memory related or a slow network response. Is copying files to/from the server using RPC any quicker (e.g. to/from UNC sharenames) ??

Stefan

fastfrank

Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

The server Database is only 50megabytes.

CPU usage is about 30% on average.

Copying a 1MB file across the network is super fast.

Opening the same attachment whilst on the Exchange server itself is just as slow as from a remote client.

Antivirus software is Norton AV Coporate edition... not the exchange version I know .

I've come to the conclusion its something to do with how exchange is configured.

I've had a similiar problem in the past with a SQL server running slow and it turned out to be the Stripe Unit size across the disc array.

This is a test server with no RAID... so I'm stumped.

Ohhh. Its Exchange 5.5 on Windows 2000.

Cheers
Frank

*Sonic*

CPU is a little high, unless running other stuff too

One of our customers has 150 users on Exchange, and its a single PIII 1.4 Ghz and CPU util is about 2%


Outlook on the Exchange Server is not a very good idea (messes about with the Mapi.dll's and Microsoft will not support it, that said, if you want to use Backupexec bricks level backup, you have to have an Outlook client installed !!)

Does seem a little odd esp with only a 50Mb IS, is everything all installed on one partition, and is the win2k box running AD as well

How much memory is being used (task manager) how big is the swap file
and what is the hardware, is it scsi disks or ide ?

ozzy

I have a test server in the office running Ex55 (windows 2000) on a Dell workstation (P2.4GHz, 512Mb). IS is tiny as yours and file copies and Exchange are both super fast. This on a single 40GB IDE drive.

Can you try removing Norton completely given it's a test environment?

Other than watching memory, I would monitor disk activity. With no users attached, is there lots of disk activity. Then try opening a simple attachment and see of the activity goes through the roof.

Stefan

fastfrank

Hi Chaps,


There is a fair amount of disc activity due to another application which is running. I might remove NAV as I thinks might be the cause. There are special AV apps available for Exchange systems aren't there?

Cheers
Frank

ozzy

It's recommended that you don't run file system anti-virus software, but just a dedicated Exchange version.

On our Exchange box we run McAfee GroupShield 6.0 sp1 without their VirusScan software that we run on all other servers.

Stefan

*Sonic*

Out of curiousity what is the other app that is running ?

please dont tell me its SQL

ozzy

LOL

*Sonic*

Stefan

you would be surprised (then again maybe not) at how many of our customers try and ru Exchange & SQL on the same box, and wonder why one of em dont work properly

fastfrank

Cheers for the replies.

Yes, it runs SQL in conjunction with some web services. Website don't really get used that much.

F

*Sonic*

stop all the SQL services, and try opening the attachments again

ozzy

Just stop all the IIS/SQL services and see how it affects Exchange.

*Sonic*

LOL at Stefan & my posts, and the time they were done

David_Wallis

Your having a fooking laugh right?

I Seriously would NOT recommend that.. infact you wouldnt be allowed to connect that to our network.

The only option I would recommend is the exclusion of scanning the exchange system folders..

VirusScan Enterprise allows you to exclude processes from being scanned which is what I would do.

I would like to see Jack Clarks recommendation on this!

David

ozzy

No, not having a laugh. Could just be mis-informed though.

Nick

3 points in agreement with other posters

1. Don't run the Outlook client on the server. (MS best practice)

2. Disable the virus scanner from scanning the Exchange folders. (McAfee best practice)

3. No poofters

If you use Backup Exec & have an Internet connection, make sure that you have the latest BE SQL patches.

>Sonic
Shirley SBS Server runs Exchange + SQL on the same box?

David_Wallis

SBS is completely different to BackOffice.