Tuning NT Servers

1
Tuning 2000/XP/.NET
What should you tweak, and what should you
replace?
Presented by Mark Minasi author of Mastering
Windows 2000 Server MRD / www.minasi.com/gethelp
2
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4
Tuning 2000/XP/.NET

• What should you tweak,
• and what should you replace?

Presented by Mark Minasi author of Mastering
Windows 2000 Server MRD / www.minasi.com/gethelp
5
Overview

• Tools for tuning
• Five tuning methods
• Takin Out the Trash
• Tuning disk subsystems
• Tuning memory subsystems
• Tuning CPUs
• Tuning NICs

6
Tuning Tools

• Performance Logs and Alerts (perfmon) but dont
  worry, you neednt look at every single thing
  that Perfmon offers!
• Task Manager
• logman command-line perfmon logger
• Another excellent tool Network Monitor (Netmon)
• Some nifty free Sysinternals tools pagedfrg,
  contig, Process Explorer
• Msconfig

7
Meet Perfmonthe Performance Monitor

• Youve probably looked at it before
• Things are grouped into objects and objects are
  divided into counters
• Example things related to the CPUs are in an
  object called processor
• Lets you either log info long-term or view in
  real time

8
Perfmon Tips

• Use Perfmon on one computer to log another
  computer
• Alerts can be useful, even if theyre simple
• The key to using Perfmon is in finding a small
  number of things to log, and looking at them
  periodically

• Click the Ask a question button in the lower
  left section of your screen to submit a question.
  

9
Tuning Basics

• The object of tuning is to find the bottleneck
• Bottlenecks are where the computer spends most of
  its time, the binding constraint
• File servers bottleneck in different places than
  applications servers
• File servers bottleneck on the network card
  interface and the disk interface
• App servers bottleneck on memory and CPU power

10
Five Tuning Solutions

• Delete useless junk (programs that waste
  resources, unnecessary services)
• Buy faster hardware
• Reconfigure the hardware for better throughput
  (i.e., registry tweaks)
• Clean resources
• Move loads (apps) to other systems

11
Eliminating Junk

• Fire up Task Manager and ask What is all that
  stuff?
• MSconfig32 can help
• So can Process Explorer and Autoruns from
  www.sysinternals.com
• Then go after the services

• Click the Ask a question button in the lower
  left section of your screen to submit a question.
  

12
Autoruns from Sysinternals
13
Process Explorer
14
Process Explorer
15
Killing Unnecessary Services

• Workstation services
• Server/computer browser
• Any Web/FTP server
• Wireless Zero Configuration (unless 802.1x)
• WebClient (unless you know you need it)
• Infrared Monitor and tons others look your
  system over and experiment
• Tune your personal firewall/antivirus software

16
Disk Tuningcounters and solutions

• Must use diskperf y on W2k and reboot but its
  no longer necessary on XP/.NET
• You want to see
• Physical Disk / Percent disk time
• Physical Disk / queue length
• Solutions faster interfaces (UDMA-133) faster
  host adapters (SCSI), bus mastering (if it
  doesnt already exist), move processes

17
Disk Tuning

• If using two EIDE drives, put them on different
  channels
• Use NTFS not FAT32
• Defrag volumes periodically
• Sysinternals contig will make a particular
  file contiguous
• On an AD DC, defrag Active Directory with NTDSUTIL

18
Network Tuningwhat to watch

• Network Interface/Output Queue Length
• Look for increases in Server object, counter
• Blocking requests rejected
• Errors system
• Pool non-paged failures, pool paged failures
• Sessions errored out
• Rearrange binding order or provider order if you
  have multiple protocols
• Kill unnecessary protocols

19
Memory Tuningpagefile optimization

• Defrag pagefile with Sysinternals free
  pagedfrg.exe
• You no longer need a pagefile RAM if you
  choose minidumps or kernel memory dumps
• Spread pagefile over several physical drives
• This, of course, only makes sense if those drives
  run asynchronously

20
Memory Tuningsizing pagefiles general info

• You cannot have too large of a pagefile you
  dont slow down your system although, of course,
  you may burn too much disk space
• Set maximum pagefile size minimum
• And provide space for crashdumps

• Click the Ask a question button in the lower
  left section of your screen to submit a question.
  

21
Memory Tuningsizing pagefiles specifics

• Size with XPs Task Manager / Performance /
  Commit Charge (K) / Peak or log Perfmons
  Memory/Committed Bytes counter, take peak
• Note that they may not match, as Perfmon and
  Taskman poll at different intervals
• This will almost always be more than youll ever
  need look at Paging File / Usage Peak

22
Tuning CPUsperfmon counters

• Processor counters want to see
• percent CPU time
• System/Processor Queue Length
• Run the histogram to find out who are the hogs

And for heavens sake dont run the silly 3D
screensavers!
23
Thank you for attending!

• You can find me at help_at_minasi.com
• Dont forget the evaluations!
• Free tech newsletter at www.minasi.com
• Seminar information also
• Join our tech forum at www.minasi.com/forum

24
Audience QA

• Time for YOU to ask questions!
• Mark is now taking questions from the audience
  on Tuning and Monitoring XP Win2k Net Server.
  Click the Ask a question button in the lower
  left section of your screen to submit a question.

25
Feedback

• Thank you for your participation
• Did you like this webcast topic? Would you like
  us to host other events similar to this one? Send
  us your feedback on this event and ideas for
  other topics at editor_at_searchWin2000.com.