[archive] Slowdown going to Server 2003 R2

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 17 April 2006]

Has anyone else had problems going to R2 of 2003 server. we have 5 customers in the last 60 days who have gone to R2 and it seems to slow our Cobol app. down to a crawl.

You move the app to another WinXP workstation and no problems, but if the files are shared on the server big time slowdown.

Some of the Stuff we've tried:

-Clients are in "Performance Mode" for cobol
- turned off OpLocks
-recompiled app removing any previous compatibility switches.
-made users Admins, and gave full rights to shared directories
-use UNC pathnames for shortcuts

I've spoken with Acucorp and have had no luck in anyone seeing a problem like this.

We experience also unexplainable delays with the file settlement on the 2003 servers.
Move the app to another WinXP workstation (p2p) and we have no problems.

The performence mode / unc etc didn't work.

Ed Baur
programmer

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 17 April 2006]

Has anyone else had problems going to R2 of 2003 server. we have 5 customers in the last 60 days who have gone to R2 and it seems to slow our Cobol app. down to a crawl.

You move the app to another WinXP workstation and no problems, but if the files are shared on the server big time slowdown.

Some of the Stuff we've tried:

-Clients are in "Performance Mode" for cobol
- turned off OpLocks
-recompiled app removing any previous compatibility switches.
-made users Admins, and gave full rights to shared directories
-use UNC pathnames for shortcuts

I've spoken with Acucorp and have had no luck in anyone seeing a problem like this.

Sorry to come to the party late, but we had a customer with speed issues on Server2003, and I spoke with their network consultant after the situation was resolved. The major cause of their slowness was unrelated to Server2003, but he said that in his own testing, the built-in encryption of network traffic cause a slowdown that made file IO 45x slower than with it disabled. I believe he was referring to the GP settings for "Digitally Sign Client Communications". Also check anivirus software, as sometimes settings are not what they seem (Symantec has gotten us before by scanning "Network Traffic" even though a particular mapped drive or folder path was set to be excluded). The best way to test for this is to completely disable all realtime protection for the purposes of testing (that way you can make sure that any exclusions you have setup are being honored).
Another speed factor is the link-speed setting of the network card (both on the client and the server). Try fixing the speed, and testing again. I have found (and microsoft has KB articles relating to this issue in XP), that sometimes the network cards continually auto-negotiate, which can cause a big slowdown. Also, with certain combinations of hardware, 100MBps Half-duplex can actually be faster than Full-duplex.

-Chris