Hi all,

So at our company, we are running Dataease for Dos v. 5.15 and we just migrated from windows server 2003 to Windows server 2008.

It seems to be twice as slow than it used to be.

I was wondering if anyone had any tips or tricks they use with a setup like this to increase speeds.

I have tried a few combinations of disabling SMB2, disabling/enabling Locks, WINS server with NetBIOS, plus others.

but nothing seems to help much... everything i do seems like there is no change or change for the worse.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Joe

https://serverfault.com/questions/90510/why-is-win...

You don't say if this is new hardware or the same hardware with a new OS.

Both can have its own reasons for slowing thing down. New OS is built on and for better hardware so if you run it on old hardware the performance is very often poorer than the original software designed for that hardware.

If it is new hardware and software there might be parts of the hardware which does not have the correct drivers etc.

Server software is designed to run on server hardware so if run on a normal Desktop pc. it might not perform optimally.

We have tested all the "magic" registry settings etc. over the years and our experience is that we have found no tweak that will actually improve anything but we have managed to mess up both clients and servers so bad they had to be re-installed.

The problem with SMB stuff in networks is 99% of the time due to a mix and mash of hardware. 

Never was it more true than the chain not being stronger than the weakest link than with MS networks.

If you have one network card, or one computer that is outdated or run an old version of Windows (SMB) etc. the rest of the devices need to slow down and convert transactions to stay compatible.

So if you want to move up then you need to get rid of old stuff. If you have an XP machine in your network you already have your answer.

Our recommendation is to NEVER tweak settings on your server or in DataEase. If you have performance problems first look if there is something obvious wrong. Is the hardware compatible with the software etc.

If things are "syrup" after you have upgraded something serious is wrong so no tweak will fix that.

However if something run too slow the best way of improving performance is to look at the logic in your DQL or Form.

We have had clients that have been running reports that took 6 hours on a dedicated computer that ran in 5 seconds on a network when tweaked.

It is easy to focus on what has become poorer and try to configure or tweak oneself out of it, but if there is nothing obviously wrong then to look at your application will benefit you the most anyway.

OK... to give some more specifics,

Our last configuration was on a Dell Poweredge 2900 running windows server 2003.

When we migrated, we did so to a Poweredge R430 running windows server 2012, with Server 2008 running on Hyper-v.

So its running live on a virtual machine now on newer hardware, running on a newer server. We thought maybe it had something to do running on a virtual.

So i went and set up a few test servers (after the fact of course), I started with Windows server 2008 standard on a Dell Poweredge R320, just as is with no upgrades to the drivers or the server OS.... and slowly upgraded from there with no change.

Then I set up another server 2008 standard on the old poweredge 2900 (which was our first server, running 2003). And i did the same thing, Started off out of the box install and slowly upgraded. No luck.

The only thing i found so far to increase speed is leaving OpLocks enabled, which I've been told can cause database corruption.

So I'm at a bit of a lose as to where to go next.

Someone just sent me (literally) a few articles on SMB message block size that i am going to look into.

A simple test here is simply to copy a big number of files from your workstation to the server and try that both on 2003 and 2008.

As SMB1 was the one and only SMB on 2003 I suspect that the problem simply is that SMB1 is slow on 2008 as it is not the main protocol.

We have spent a lot of time on this and done all the things you have been doing and will be doing but the only thing we have achieved is to mess up the server/client so we had to re-install.

There is a lot of theory out there but I've never seen any practical example of success. 

The problem here is that one want to run old stuff on new stuff and that will invariably work less and less well the bigger the difference gets.

If you are to run a dedicated server for DFD then its simply better to run a 2003 server as if you share the 2008 with other stuff than DFD that will suffer.

We never managed to provoke corruption due to OpLocks but there is plenty of articles out there about this. Our investigation showed that as long as the files is opened for R/W oplocks is not enabled. All files used for writing in DataEase is always opened R/W so Oplocks has no effect but if you switch it off on your server it has detrimental effect on other stuff.

You don't what OS you run on your workstations but as long as you run XP you will only be getting SMB 1 which is also what you will be getting on 2012.

What is the result when you run 2012 native instead of 2008 over Hyper-V or 2008?

Messing with the block size and all that is interesting but my "informed" guess is that you will see little to no postive effect.

As said in previous reply. If you have to abandon 2003 then go all the way to 2012 at least, get good hardware and network and focus the effort on improving the logic in the application.

If there is performance issues in a DataEase application it is 99.99% of the time due to bad programming in the application and even though one only get to the "brink" when one change hardware etc. the real reason is the application.

I am under the assumption DFD wont run on 2012 being that it is 64 bit.

But it cant hurt to try.

And everyone in our office is on Windows 7 Pro 32 bit right now, Though that is going to have to change soon due to end of support on it.

I have been searching everywhere for some insight on this. I appreciate all the information so far, and if I have any major breakthroughs I will be sure to update the forum.

But if you guys come up with anymore advice ( even untested, I have a few test servers i can work with), that would be greatly appreciated as well.

Thanks