SBS 2003 with ISA.... SLOW.

TechJunky

I just setup a SBS 2003 server for a small company and setup ISA with its default settings. By default http,ftp,active caching is enabled.... It seems to be bogging down the network traffic.

I was curious what type of servers you guys are running with ISA installed. It just seems to be slower than it should.

It is running SQL 2000 with a 2GB database, AD, and ISA.

Server specs are more of a desktop computer due to a low budget by the client

2.8ghz
1GB memory
2, 80GB SATA Drives
Raid 1

LukeQuake

Hmm, seems weird as ISA doesn't need alot of machine power to operate well. Our is running on an old p4 800 mhz job.

sprkymrk

You might try Performance Monitor, or at least Task Manager and see what's eating up your memory or CPU. It looks like you might be on the low end of memory for SBS running SQL and ISA:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/evaluation/sysreqs/default.mspx

TechJunky

i have checked the page file, cpu utilization etc and all look ok, it just seems as though the caching is killing the web browsing because it is only related to http traffic. Email works smooth.

I am going to try and disable caching and see how that works. I need to reboot the machine though for this to take effect? i went into caching, changed the cache file size and hit set and then it asked to save settings and then reset, i did that after disabling caching but it didnt seem to be any faster, so I was thinking the server would have to reboot? CPU = 30%, memory paging file is 1.0GB in size, and only about 28% used.

Everlife

Are you using ISA 2000 or 2004? I have almost the exact same setup here, but we are using ISA 2000. You shouldn't have to reboot the server, just restart the ISA services. As long as you aren't hosting any websites, this should just be a quick interference with the user's internet connections.

TechJunky

It's actually not that bad now. It just looked like it needed an hour or so to sort itself out.

Thanks guys.

sprkymrk

Glad it's working better. One thing just occurred to me, can you install a third drive just for caching? Caching is a lot of read/writes and in your situation using a mirrored drive could be a bottle neck you won't see with Task Manager.

TechJunky

Yup, I have seperate drive/disk that is allocated for the caching.

TechJunky

This server is hit and miss lately. It is a 3.2Ghz P4 with 1GB of memory. I am trying to get the company to purchase one more stick of 1GB to help speed up things.

I am currently setting up download rules for caching daily at an off time to try and download some big sites like msn.com, yahoo.com, google.com, cnn.com etc. These seem to be the sites with the biggest problems.

Any other suggestions to speed up ISA would be appreciated.

blargoe

I have a client running sbs 2000 on a old p2 server, internet works OK until you enable the SBS firewall client on the computers. Then it is SLOOOOOOOW... just a thought

TechJunky

I tried disabling the client firewall and didnt see a difference....

I will figure it out eventually.

sprkymrk

How many rules are there on the firewall? I would check the performance monitor in ISA itself to see what it looks like if you haven't already. Could it be something else related to SBS instead of ISA?

Are you logging the ISA to W3C, ISA format, or SQL?

I think (from what we've seen so far) that having 1GB of memory and the Task Manager showing that over 1GB of the page file is being used is at least a small problem. Based on the 1GB page file in use and the fact that it's on a mirrored drive (unless you have other disks not mentioned in your specs above and have moved the page file) you may want to double your RAM if you don't see anything else suspicious.

TechJunky

I have already put the request in for more ram.

Though the paging file is supposed to be 1.5 times more than the physical memory correct? So It should be 3GB and if 1.5GB is in use it is about half way used?

I agree on the memory issue. I think 1GB in a SERVER is rediculious.

If they wanted all this stuff on their SBS server they should have atleast got one with SAS drives and 4GB of memory. It's just too hard to some people to spend the money on a system if it will work with a get by solution.

I am logging via W3C for the firewall, web proxy, and Packet Filters.

I am running Perfmon to view ISA performance stuff.

RussS

SBS 2003 is a pig - the more memory you throw at it the worse it seems to get