Small Business Server 2003 and Windows XP Pro

Question

1/10/05   I've just installed new server (DELL Poweredge 2600 with dual 3 Ghz processors, 2 MB memory and dual 15 k SCSI hard drives arrayed as RAID 1) on my network.  The server is running Small Business Server 2003 Standard Edition with SP2 and my business program runs on SQL 2000 SP3a (with various SQL optimizations suggested by my business software company).   I also installed 5 new Windows XP Pro workstations with DELL Dimension 4700 machines at 3 GHz, 512 k Ram.  I kept 2 'legacy' machines that were considerably slower but ran Windows 2000 Pro.    The legacy Win 2000 Pro machines are very quick and have given me no problems.  The 'high power' XP Pro machines are struggling.    It should be noted that with the 'old server' the new and old clients were not perceptibly different.  Now the new machines are much slower and the old machines much faster with the new server.     I've tinkered with the system and suspect it's related to securities or firewall issues as the Win 2000 Pro machines don't have some of the securities tabs that XP Pro does (just my uneducated guess so it's FWIW).    I know that I noticed a similar problem when I upgraded a client machine to Win XP Home.  Was told (by my business software company) that the problem would be solved if I upgraded to XP Pro.  Just migrated back to 2000 Pro and forgot about it until recent problems.    BTW, my business software vendor has not seen this problem before--again, SQL based software so I would think there would be others whe MIGHT have experienced similar slowdowns even though not using my particular software.   Thanks,   David Stricklin

scottyp3473 · Answer

I am experencing the same problem.

PE2800 (dual 3 Ghz processors, 4MB memory Dual Channel ROMB raids1 and 5, 5 10k drives). This thing should scream.......but I am having the same issues that you are.

I am also running a few XP SP2 and Windows 2000 machines. Performance is horrible, but it mostly seems like it is SQL server based Business Software that we are running. I do think that the windows 2000 machines were faster but I have reports of them slowing down as well. I do not know what is going on!? With all this new high dollar hardware, we are running slower then our old SBS 2002 PE2400 w/733's.

Do you have a lot of entries in your security event log? I am having about 30 to 50 Success Audit Events (ID's 538, 540, and 576) in one minutes time. There is an article on Microsoft knowledge base #822774 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;822774 I am not sure that this is it or not. I have read on the Microsoft SBS2003 BB's that the security entries are normal, so I have not contacted MS yet.

I also have read on the internet that the Intel Nic's might be slow so I checked them out and they seem up to par.

Another question I have is, my system thinks that it has 4 processors? Is this because of the HT dual channel RAM? are you running 800mhz FSB and experiencing this?

I hope that we find an answer soon. Management is about to through a fit.

regards, scottyp

jmwills · Answer

Original post mentioned XP Home machines?  Not on an SBS Domain you can't. I run three XP Pro machines on this SBS box, and see nothing but fast performance.  No raid drives used however.

strick99 · Answer

You are correct! The Win XP Home issue occurred prior to my recent upgrade. At that time I was running a workgroup network (we only have 8 client machines) and my 'server' was running Win 2000 Pro. All other client machines were Win 2000 Pro. The XP Home machine had double the processor power and memory but was s-l-o-w on the network.

Thanks,

DJS

strick99 · Answer

Checking further into my problem outlined in a previous note, I found a ton of event errors.  The most frequent is the 50070.  Microsoft has a patch to repair this and there's a published registry fix.   In my case, the patch wasn't required and the registry fix didn't seem to speed things up.  Some references say 'critical' to address others make it sound like a bunch of error messages without much effect.    BTW Windows 2000 Pro is faster but not that much faster than XP Pro.  One 'sub-program' loads in about 75 seconds in Win XP Pro and 15 seconds in 2000 Pro--still much too long to be useful--and much longer than with my legacy server.   I looked into the other errors '976 svchost database engine stopped' and 'DNS encountered critical error in Active Directory' but these occurred much less frequently and my research thusfar doesn't seem to suggest that these errors are very important.  There were others but I'm currently focusing on the most frequent ones.    I will check the security event log.  Thanks for the link.    As far as the number of processors, I'm pretty sure that at least SQL thinks I only have 2.  I will look at this again but don't think this is the problem in my case.   Thanks   DJS

strick99 · Answer

I thought I had found the solution to the problem but I'm a whole lot less certain now.    One of the Microsoft answers to the 50070 issue suggested that the local SQL server might not be named correctly.  In Enterprise Manager of my new server, the SQL local machine is simply designated (local) as opposed to the actual identity of the computer listed on my old machine.  I've come to the conclusion that (local) should work just as well as the actual server name but any authoritative comments appreciated.   Unrelated, in hardware manager of my new server there are 4 processors listed rather than the 2 that are physically present.  Just guessing that the mirrored drives necessitated the 2 additional 'virtual processors'.  Again, any authoritatative answer is appreciated.    Possibly related to the 4 processor issue is that there is something like 'SQL 2000 Activation Manager' in the computer management console.  In this you can activate SQL according to 'clients' or by 'processors'.  This was not present on my prior server and there was no entry in either option on the new server.  Is it possible that the computer would operate on only one processor if not 'activated' (seems that the 'by processors' is the preferred option)?  If activation is very important and there are 4 processors listed even though only 2 are physically present then does one activate 2 processors or 4?   Finally, there have been times (rare and only for a short time)  when the new server seems to run seemlessly with only minimal delays (less than 5 seconds as opposed to 75 seconds or so) in opening the most problematic .dll for my business system.  Can't really establish a pattern right now--not on a particular client computer or seemingly due to heavier traffic.  We saw this on the old machine and assumed it was due to the 'governor effect' of Windows 2000 Pro that slows things to a crawl when there are numerous simultaneous hits on the server.  I can't see this to be a problem with SBS 2003 since I have 10 (activated) CAL's and far fewer total users (the CAL's were activated by user).  It appears that SBS adds a bunch of default users during setup (can't think of them all but many more than just 'guest user' and 'Administrator').  Do these additional default users somehow count toward the CAL's?    Sound like silly questions I guess but searching for answers.   David Stricklin

jmwills · Answer

Were the CAL's per User or per Device?

strick99 · Answer

The literature that came from DELL states the 5 CAL's that came with SBS 2003 were pre-installed.  Frankly, when I activated/registered the additional 5 CAL's I don't recall there being a step to specify per user or per machine and thought this was odd.    Can you clarify?   Thanks,   DJS

jmwills · Answer

Per User is exactly what it states as if Per Device.  I was always taught to go with User since a user could log on in more than one way.  If it was per device, then two or three users could eat that up.

strick99 · Answer

Was there supposed to be a field to specify user vs. client machines on the server itself? I know this issue was not part of the SBS 2003 setup and its pre-installed 5 CAL's. I'm less certain about whether this information was requested when I entered the licensing number on the additonal (purchased) 5 CAL's. If so, would that also specify 'users' for the 5 CAL's included with Small Business Server 2003?

Is there a way to specifically check this?

I could get into the circumstances as to why I have set this small LAN up by myself and realize that was probably not advisable--the network tech I had scheduled to do this had a death in the family and I was committed to the date of installation. And, yes, I will likely have a certified SBS 2003 network tech check my system out and fine tune the installation. However, that is not something that I can get done instantaneously. So, all the help I can get is APPRECIATED!

Thanks,

DJS

jmwills · Answer

I've never ordered a preloaded server but I would think you would have to specify up front per user or device. If not, then I would suspect it is per user.

Let me look on my SBS 2003 box tonight and I'll get back to you as to where you can find this info as I know mine are per user.

strick99 · Answer

Thanks,

I went through the new licenses wizard again hoping to get to the phone number to license the CAL's and call directly. I was reminded by going through the wizard that the EULA shows up and APPEARS to give you an option to specify whether by user or by machine. The cursor can be placed in this space but I was unable to enter a number by 'by user'. I re-entered the 25 digit code and got the reply 'already registered' (or equivalent).

I would like to be able to get the phone number to double check on this and also the licenses on the SQL 2000.

DJS

strick99 · Answer

My problem is improved but not as it should be.

A couple of things that might help:

1. If the problem is with Sharepoint Services (numerous 50070 error messages) there is a known problem with upgrading from the Personal Edition of SQL 2000 to the Standard Edition. Here's the link http://www.copyproject.com/_vti_bin/help/1033/sps/html/stsf17.htm . The solution looks tedious and even my proprietary software vendor wanted to "check it out further" before advising the fix.

2. I ran Windows update for both my server and my clients again. For my clients running XP Pro there was a 'firewall solution' (cant' remember the name of the actual update but I think it was listed as a 'critical update'). For the server there was a "Sharepoint Critical Update". These had not shown up before so I assume they are new updates or required another set of updates before becoming available.

3. Curiously, and I'm asking experts to comment, my pagefile is running 2.6 GB with physical RAM of 2.0 GB.

4. I did get a DELL expert to comment on the 'four processor' issue (2 physical processors but device manager showing 4) and he commented that he was confident that the virtual processors were due to the RAID 1 setup. He said that he was "pretty sure" that one licensed the SQL server based on the actual processors present rather than the virtual processor number.

I temporarily lost my network printer after the updates but that was easy enough to fix.

The .dll that was taking 75 seconds to load typically loads in less than 15 seconds and sometimes less than 5 seconds.

All for now. I hope this helps SOMEONE.

DJS

jteel · Answer

The reason there are four processors showing on a two processor server is because of Hyper-Threading being turned on. My server shows two when I actually have one physical processor.

As for the CAL's if you are wondering about the 5 that come with SBS they can be used either way...Client or Machine. The OS has no way of telling since there are no numbers for licenses during set-up. There is no place to choose one or the other at least on a pre-installed setup.

Thanks

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Small Business Server 2003 and Windows XP Pro

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