Transcript Tuning NT Servers

Tuning 2000/XP/.NET
What should you tweak,
and what should you replace?
Presented by Mark Minasi
author of Mastering Windows 2000 Server
MR&D / www.minasi.com/gethelp
WEBCAST SCHEDULE
Today’s event will run one-hour long. Here are the expected
times for each segment of the webcast:

:00 – :05: Moderator introduces the speaker and discusses the
details of the webcast.

:05- :25: Speaker delivers a PowerPoint presentation on the
webcast topic.

:25- :35: Moderator and speaker engage in a brief Q&A on the
topic.

:35- :60: The speaker responds to questions submitted by the
audience.
You can submit questions to the speaker at any time during the
event. Just click on the “Ask a Question” button in the lower left
corner of your screen.
TECHNICAL FAQs
Here are answers to the most common technical problems users encounter during a
webcast:
Q: Why can’t I hear the audio part of the webcast?
A: Try increasing the volume on your computer.
Q: I just entered the webcast and do not see the slide that the speaker is referring to.
What should I do?
A: The slides are constantly being pushed to your screen. You should refresh (hit F5)
to view the latest slide.
Q: What time zone do the webcasts take place?
A: The TechTarget webcasts all occur on Eastern Standard Time (UTC/GMT – 5
hours).
If your question is still not answered, please click the “Ask a Question” button in the
lower left corner of your screen and submit your problem. A technical support person
will respond immediately.
You can also visit the Broadcast Help page for more information or to test your
browser compatibility. Click here: http://help.yahoo.com/help/bcst/
Tuning 2000/XP/.NET
What should you tweak,
and what should you replace?
Presented by Mark Minasi
author of Mastering Windows 2000 Server
MR&D / www.minasi.com/gethelp
Overview
Tools for tuning
 Five tuning methods
 Takin’ Out the Trash
 Tuning disk subsystems
 Tuning memory subsystems
 Tuning CPUs
 Tuning NICs

Tuning Tools






Performance Logs and Alerts (perfmon) – but don’t
worry, you needn’t 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
Meet Perfmon
the Performance Monitor
You’ve 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

Perfmon Tips
Use Perfmon on one computer to log another
computer
 Alerts can be useful, even if they’re 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.
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
Five Tuning Solutions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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
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.
Autoruns from Sysinternals
Process Explorer
Process Explorer
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
Disk Tuning
counters and solutions
Must use diskperf –y on W2k and reboot…
but it’s no longer necessary on XP/.NET
 You want to see:

–
–

Physical Disk / Percent disk time < 90
Physical Disk / queue length <= 2
Solutions: faster interfaces (UDMA-133)
faster host adapters (SCSI), bus mastering (if
it doesn’t already exist), move processes
Disk Tuning
If using two EIDE drives, put them on
different channels
 Use NTFS… not FAT32
 Defrag volumes periodically
 Sysinternal’s “contig” will make a particular
file contiguous
 On an AD DC, defrag Active Directory with
NTDSUTIL

Network Tuning
what to watch


Network Interface/Output Queue Length <= 2
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
Memory Tuning
pagefile 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

Memory Tuning
sizing pagefiles: general info
You cannot have too large of a pagefile – you
don’t 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.
Memory Tuning
sizing pagefiles: specifics
Size with XP’s Task Manager / Performance /
Commit Charge (K) / Peak or log Perfmon’s
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 you’ll
ever need – look at Paging File / % Usage
Peak

Tuning CPUs
perfmon counters

Processor counters; want to see:
–
–

percent CPU time < 80 percent
System/Processor Queue Length <= 2 on UP
system
Run the histogram to find out who are the
hogs
And for heaven’s sake don’t run the silly 3D screensavers!
Thank you for attending!
You can find me at [email protected]
 Don’t forget the evaluations!
 Free tech newsletter at www.minasi.com
 Seminar information also
 Join our tech forum at
www.minasi.com/forum

Audience Q&A
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.
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
[email protected].