Hi --

I have an SBS 2011 Standard SP1 box that continues to be a major annoyance because of how slow and unworkable it becomes. This server is running on dual four-way 3-GHz Xeon processors, 16 GB of RAM and several terabytes of SATA-3 disk space. It is intended to support the needs of THREE users. Right now, it is working essentially as installed; except for the antivirus program, all it's running is software installed by the SBS installer itself. It's providing file and print and email services to three users on eight devices (three deskside PCs running Windows 7 Pro, two laptops (one running Windows 7 Pro, one running Windows Vista Ultimate), and three PDAs (two WM 6.5, one iPhone). And it does it dismally (except for email on Outlook and pushed to the PDAs).

Response times on this server start out passable right after the machine is booted and go downhill from there. Opening server shares or starting a remote desktop session might be OK after the server reboots, but after it's been running for a while it becomes virtually impossible to get the machine's attention. Trying to open an OWA or RWA session is an ordeal no one wants to tackle. It can take one to two minutes after the user enters the URL for the challenge page to be returned from the server. And after the user logs in, it can take up to six minutes for the OWA or RWA landing page to be displayed. From that point, response times on these apps are awful for the duration of the session. We haven't even attempted to set up and use SharePoint on this server yet.

The server and all other devices have gigabit connections to the LAN, with a 6 Mb pipe to the Internet.

The longer the machine runs, the more resource-bound it becomes. On Friday night, with none of the PCs logged in and no one logged in remotely (i.e. the only activity was Exchange pushing email to the PDAs), the server was reporting from 47 to 56 percent of CPU usage and a staggering 95% of physical memory in use, claiming to have just shy of 600 MB of RAM unused. 45 minutes after I rebooted the server, those numbers dropped to 3% CPU usage and 3.9 GB of physical RAM in use. By Sunday afternoon -- in the middle of a three-day weekend during which NO ONE logged into the system -- those numbers had risen to 35% CPU usage and 9.3 GB of physical RAM in use.

And I'm not quite sure I understand how these CPU usages are being reported, either. If I sort the process stack by CPU usage from highest to lowest, on many occasions the total CPU usage being reported does not match the individual CPU usage being reported by the processes. And it's not a round-off problem, or a problem of one or two percentage points. One time I took a snapshot of the Task Manager window, and the sum of the nonzero CPU usages differed from the displayed total by 21 points.

About the only component that's working well on this server is Exchange. Whether on the internal PCs running Outlook through TCP/IP, the laptops connecting -- from anywhere -- via Outlook Anywhere, or the PDAs, mail comes and goes smoothly and promptly. Mail arriving into Outlook hits the PDA an instant later. A reply from the PDA is readily available in Outlook's Sent Items folder. Contact and Calendar updates immediately propagate to all pertinent devices. Just don't try to use OWA ...

This server replaced an SBS 2003 SP2 box running on dual 1-GHz P3 processors, 2 GB of RAM and ATA-133 hard drives. That server also ran software that has not yet been installed on the new box, including the full installation of the Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business suite v11 (with the SEP server component managing the PCs). The new server is only running the SEP v12 unmanaged client; I have not dared burden it with any additional software. The old server dramatically outperformed this new platform. And the old server also acted as the network's firewall and access control device, so it was doing more work than this new machine is doing here now ...

I have looked high and low for an explanation for this and have not gotten anywhere. Every piece of hardware has been rigorously tested several times; none has shown any problem. To the best of my knowledge, all programs, drivers, and firmware are at the latest available revs and are all compatible with Server 2008 and/or SBS 2011. The server has three HP network printers installed. It has updated drivers and management software for the RAID controller, which we downloaded from the Intel site. It's running SEP 12.1.1000.157 RU1 (unmanaged client only). Everything else it's running is right off of the SBS 2011 installation media (plus every available update from WU).

I've found one KB article that references the slow OWA and RWA issue (#2493361). Its solution is to install SP1 -- which this server already has.

I need to fix this ... What is wrong with this installation?

Thanks
CL

• Edited by Chuck Lavin Tuesday, September 04, 2012 6:58 PM

Having that much RAM used *is* correct. Exchange will grab all the free memory, only releasing it whew asked to by other applications. You can restrict that here.

Can I ask what disk configuration is in use? RAID 5?

In all the severs I manage, CPU capability is neither here nor there, it's disk and RAM that are the killers. Our slowest machine has 16GB RAM and RAID 5 SATA discs; our fastest machine has 24GB and RAID 10 SAS discs. Both have the same CPU. The fastest machine is like greased lightning compared to the slow one, which is like wading through mud.

Jim

Hi --

Actually, the process that seems to chew up the most RAM is sqlserver.exe. It will outchew Exchange by a large margin.

The server currently reports 6 GB of physical RAM in use. This is with three users actually working in the office, and with an email load significantly higher than what they receive after hours or over the weekend. But I did reboot the server this morning ...

The drives on this server are set up in three RAID 1 pairs (handled by the RAID controller, not Windows).

I have not noticed disk activity to be a bottleneck on this server. And most of the disk activity would be generated by the server itself. I only have three users on this server. Even with document file redirection, they do not generate large volumes of disk access. Most of the work they do is on the Internet. And while all this traffic flowed through the SBS 2003 box, it does not on the new server.

The point is that we're not doing anything different on this new server than we were on the old one. (We're actually doing less on the new one ...) With the same volume of email and a ridiculously less powerful machine, a user didn't have to wait up to eight minutes after entering "https://server.com/exchange" in a browser window to get his Inbox. And when he did get his Inbox, he could work pretty decently from wherever he was. This same user could open an Explorer window, enter "\\server" in the address bar, and within a few seconds (depending on where he was and how he was connected) he would have the list of shares. This doesn't happen now. Apart from being able to go for coffee after trying to browse to "https://server.com/owa", once you do get your Inbox response is so dismal that options don't seem to work at all. One user tried to set an automatic reply through OWA and gave up, claiming that repeated clicks on the Automatic Replies link got him nothing. 

For the usage that these people have, this new server should be able to run additional software that the users have wanted but that I have yet to install.

Thanks
CL

Could it be a DNS issue? First DNS server timing out? or perhaps IPv6 has been disabled?

A bit of guesswork, yes I know.

Jim

You can also throttle SQL memory usage: http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2010/11/08/throttling-the-memory-in-sbs-2008.aspx

They are for SBS2008, but work fine on SBS 2011. One of my clients has a similar setup (allbeit less powerful) to you: Dell T310, 16GB RAM, Single Xeon processor, 2 x RAID 1 (OS/Data) and this machine runs very well - it also supports 15 users. Mem usage is around 14GB - but I have throttled all three SQL instances as per those instructions, but have not throttled Exchange.

What SQL server instances are installed on this server?  

Hi

SBSMONITORING and SHAREPOINT.

The server recently rebooted after applying some security updates, so it's pretty zippy now. Ask me whatever you need before it bogs down again ... :)

Thanks
CL

• Edited by Chuck Lavin Tuesday, September 04, 2012 5:52 PM

List what is installed on this server?   What third party? And can you disable the antivirus to test?  Seriously.  As many a resource problem can be due to poorly coded antivirus.  

There is no third-party software other than the SEP package. We were having these issues before I installed the SEP client. I installed the SEP client only (not the full-blown package, v. 12.1.1000.157 RU1) after almost two weeks of running the machine with no antivirus protection at all, which was making me uneasy.

And we've run the full SEP package on older SBS machines without issue. On the SBS 2011 box, we have the latest available version. All I've found that might implicate the antivirus program and explain what's happening on the machine is a reference to problems with TDI drivers, but the solution it presented was to install SP1. The article did say to install Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, but the link to the SP1 page says to install it though Windows Update. Since this server is showing that it is running SBS 2011 Standard SP1, and there are no outstanding patches or fixes to install, I'm assuming that the necessary patches are already installed. But again, we've had these problems with this server even before I installed any antivirus program.

The only other "third-party" software is the IASTOR driver and support programs for the Intel RAID controller. The original driver came from the SBS installation media. As part of the troubleshooting efforts to try to resolve the problems with this server, I installed an updated IASTOR driver and application that I downloaded from the Intel site (v. 10.0.0.1046).

The three HP printer drivers all came either from the SBS installation media or from Windows Update.

The latest chipset and motherboard support drivers were downloaded from the Intel site. This included an updated graphics driver for the on-board graphics chip that came with the download package.

And that's it. This server has no specialized hardware. The only "extra" hardware is an external eSATA WD drive used for backups.

The server had multiple Intel gigabit NICs, but all but one were disabled since SBS 2011 only requires (and apparently can only work with) one NIC.

I haven't even installed Office on this server ...

CL

What about nic drivers too?

Are you flipped over to Microsoft update and not just Windows update?  Also be aware that Exchange 2010 service packs do not come down via MU so they will have to be manually installed.  Ensure you've flipped over to Microsoft update and not just Windows update.

I'm just as uneasy with antivirus software that uses older drivers and causes issues.

At the time it starts ticking up , what exact sql instance is starting to hog ram?

Hi --

The NIC drivers are the latest available from Intel.

Exchange is running SP1.

The server had not flipped over to MU. When it did, it presented as "optional updates" 14 fixes for Server 2008 R2. They're installing now.

Hi Chuck, have you resolved the issue after installing the updates?

Sean Zhu

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I have the exact same issue,  where I replaced an old 2003 SBS with new hardware Dell r310 and SBS2011 and it is running very slow for anything network connected.  on the server itself it works OK leading me to believe it is a Network issue?

One of the thinks I am doing is tweaking the NIC Driver settings, turning off all Offloading setting and TCP windows settings.

No results yet I will update later.

I've had this issue before.....

http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2012/01/slow-network-speeds-with-sbs-2008-and.html

Also what are the DNS server settings at the Clients and server?

What DNS forwarder have you got entered in DNS server?

Any news? I am having the same issue.

Did you ever solve your issue with this?

1. DNS settings as Philip indicates above.

2.  nic drivers

3. disable offloading

what ram/specs ?

Same issue here with SBS 2011 same issues I've seen all over the net, sever runs like a dog we have excellent top of the line hardware, I've heard all sorts of solution and have tried most.  Nothing works and there is no apparent fix Microsoft give you no answers other then to try a bunch of stuff a 5th grader would have already tried.  other then replacing sbs 2011 which has already been discontinued by Microsoft I see no fix for this.  That probably should give us are answers, that there is not fix to a flawed OS and that's why it was discontinued so quickly.   Microsoft can't admit this thou because then they would have to refund ever sucker who bought it..  Try running 50 client computers off it not just 2 or 3 dam near impossible to even log onto the server, take 10-15mins just to log in, takes 2-3hrs sometime just to do a shutdown and boot from updates.   windows 3.11 with a 56k modem was faster then this OS.

• Edited by Joshari Tuesday, July 15, 2014 6:30 PM

Can you answer the questions I previously posted before you write this platform off?

DNS - what are you setting as your dns server do a ipconfig /all from the server and then from the client

What specs of the machine?

Gotta posts up the answers to the questions folks... I can't help without information so please help me help you.

We have happy healthy SBS 2011's running right now.

Also throttle that Exchange or make sure you've given it enough resources.

http://www.thirdtier.net/2012/01/solving-the-unresponsive-exchange-sbs-server-problem/

3 hours to do a shut down is *not* normal.  I have never seen a server do that.  What third party software do you have installed.  Even 10 to 15 to log in is excessive and not normally seen.

Does your raid controller have a battery?

Raid controller batteries are a necessity for Windows servers - it makes the server so much faster.