Hi all,



Scenario: We are currently consolidating 130 fileservers (also acting dc’s),

to a 2-node Windows 2000 file cluster (SP4). On all 130 fileservers, the

folder structure is identical; three folders in the root hierarchy named

“Users�, “Common� and “Projects�.



“Users� contain all home folders, which only the specific user and

administrators has access to. The security on “Common� is set to Change for

all users. Finally, “Projects� contain several sub folders with different

security lists on each folder. There are usually 10-30 users on these lists,

which have read, write or change access to the folders.



Now the problem: After the consolidation, users have no problems accessing

their home folders or the Common folder. But when they are accessing the

Projects folder (or any sub folder) they are experiencing horribly slow disk

access! It may take up to 45 seconds to open just a normal word-file.



What can cause this problem? The only thing I can think about is the file

security which is used very frequently in the “Projects� folder. Hardware is

not an issue, nor is simultaneous users.



Cheers,

Johan Ã…kerlund

Have you checked the event log for any clues?  This seems quite odd... is

the projects folder on the same partition as the rest of the folders?



"discuss@miq.se" <discussmiqse@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:38F442A2-DB77-4E49-880D-7AFAB6486AD1@microsoft.com...

> Hi all,

>

> Scenario: We are currently consolidating 130 fileservers (also acting dc's),

> to a 2-node Windows 2000 file cluster (SP4). On all 130 fileservers, the

> folder structure is identical; three folders in the root hierarchy named

> "Users", "Common" and "Projects".

>

> "Users" contain all home folders, which only the specific user and

> administrators has access to. The security on "Common" is set to Change

> for

> all users. Finally, "Projects" contain several sub folders with different

> security lists on each folder. There are usually 10-30 users on these

> lists,

> which have read, write or change access to the folders.

>

> Now the problem: After the consolidation, users have no problems accessing

> their home folders or the Common folder. But when they are accessing the

> Projects folder (or any sub folder) they are experiencing horribly slow

> disk

> access! It may take up to 45 seconds to open just a normal word-file.

>

> What can cause this problem? The only thing I can think about is the file

> security which is used very frequently in the "Projects" folder. Hardware

> is

> not an issue, nor is simultaneous users.

>

> Cheers,

> Johan Åkerlund

Not sure why you would think hardware or

users would not be a issue with

consolidating 130 servers 

into a single two node cluster.



I can see your setup just getting bogge 

down in authenications let alone 

serving up resources.



Might want to run some performance monitoring and check out your usage

on a number of fronts.

wanderer wrote:

> Not sure why you would think hardware or

> users would not be a issue with

> consolidating 130 servers

> into a single two node cluster.

>

> I can see your setup just getting bogge

> down in authenications let alone

> serving up resources.

>

> Might want to run some performance monitoring and check out your

usage

> on a number of fronts.

>

>

>

> --

> wanderer

>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Posted via http://www.mcse.ms

>

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> View this thread: http://www.mcse.ms/message1408545.html



Hi again,



Thanks for your replies. We solved the problem by copying all data in

the Projects folder to a temporary server. Then we checked the disk for

errors (we didn't find any), and copied all data back to the cluster

again. Performance is now better then imaginable. Sometimes there are

odd solutions to odd problems ;)



Wanderer, before such a consolidation we did of course estimate a

baseline of what hardware we should use. The cluster servers are

actually over dimensioned for this job. We continuously measure the

performance on both cluster nodes, and none are heavily used. The

number of simultaneous users never exceeds 2500. Hence, hardware or no

of users was not the issue in this case.



Take care,

Johan

Sounds like you did an excellent job on your hardware consolidation considerations.  I am still boggled why coping off and back would speed up access but am glad it worked for you.  I wonder if it was a fragmentation problem.