We are not experts on server management, and efforts to improve server performance should be reviewed by a system expert.
If MANEX is running slowly, look at the following:
Work Stations
- Check the Speed of the CPU on the work station, the amount of memory, the amount of free hard disk space and the fragmentation. These things can make a HUGE difference when accessing large data sets. This is not a MANEX issue per se but one involving the windows environment in general.
- Check for other applications running in the background on the work station such as a maintenance program, multiple applications, TSR's, ISP (This would conflict with the push down on-time service), Screen Saver (If the screen saver is running in the server, this can take up to 90% of the server resource while running and intermittently slow down the system).
- Check the access time on the work station hard drive
- Check the number of records in the files being accessed
- Check the complexity of the the query (that is how many "filters" used to limit the records to be returned)
- Check the number of records to be returned
- Check to see if the wires are crossed. Basically, what happens when a computer sends out a message that it has not received, then data will be re-sent. This causes extra network traffic. So the error messages are multiplied. Fluke has a test that will test the wire mapping end-to-end.
If there are problems in terms of maintenance of individual workstations, such as viruses or badly fragmented hard drives, MANEX recommends a maintenance schedule be established to keep the machines in top form. At a minimum, a periodic run of the scandisk, defrag and virus detection applications is highly desirable.
Virus detection software will typically scan files on access. As MANEX requires a large number of open files at any one time, this can degrade performance. There are two possible solutions: 1) disable the virus scan software when MANEX is started (I would change this to set the Virus scan to disreguard (not scan) any files within the ManEx root directory), 2) exclude the MANEX\DBFS subdirectory files from protection using configuration files provided by the scan software publishers. Note that the latter solution still requires access to the configuration file and thus will not be as effective as the former.
NT Windows Work Station
There may be too many applications on the hard drive or not enough RAM. Before adding memory or upgrading the CPU, try the following NT tools: Task manager and Performance Monitor. If these don’t help out, then check out the hardware. Memory is often the problem but also check out the processor, the video display, disk drives and even the network.
Unlike Windows 95 and 98, NT requires a paging file. Changing its size can boost the systems performance. Launch Control Panel/ System/Performance to display a Virtual memory area that shows the current total paging size for all disk volumes. If you press the Change button in this area, you’ll bring up a Virtual Memory control panel. This lists all of the disk volumes and their allocated maximum paging – file sizes. The total of all of the allocated initial sizes must exceed the Minimum Allowed value given in the middle area of the Virtual memory control panel. For best performance, try setting your total initial allocation to the amount of RAM in the system plus 100MB, and your total maximum allocation to at least 50MB higher.
Server/Network
- Check the speed of the network
- Check the distance between the work station and the server
- Check the number nodes and routers on the network between the server and the workstation
- Check the access time on the server hard disk
- Check the number of users on the network
- Check the number of users accessing the same files
- Check to be sure that there are no system monitoring features running on your workstation or server (make sure that your Virus Scan or Monitoring system ignore (do not scan) any executables located within the ManEx root directory. Some virus protection schemes check every access to a file, and will greatly bog down MANEX
- Is your installation using UNCS to point to the installation location on the server? While this will work in most circumstances, the recommended procedure is to assign a drive letter and reference the drive letter in the shortcuts to the application
- Within the shortcut to any of the MANEX executables, there are two fields: The first, “Application”, should point to the executable using the assigned drive letter as above. The second field, “Start In”, should point to a local drive resource temp file location, such as WINDOWS\TEMP. Temporary query results and certain system set up files are created on the fly when MANEX is run and the danger is (if one uses a shared resource for the temporary files) that the file names will collide with each other causing a system error
- On your network protocols, are you using TCP/IP or NetBEUI? If possible, restrict to TCP/IP. Check to see that the server and the workstations are configured the same and there are not any conflicts with addresses of cards or workstation names.
- Check the server records to check on collisions and bad packets. If high, the hub may be a problem.
- Make sure there are not resource conflicts on the server. Is MANEX the only product running on the server? If you are running your modem or Internet connection on this same server, you may be timing out if the server is busy doing something else. Serial communications in particular take a lot of resources. Also, on the server, eliminate any screen savers and turn the monitor off when not in use
- If the screen saver is running in the server, this can take up to 90% of the server resource while running and intermittently slow down the system
- In the NT server, every time a user does a transaction, all of the sessions accumulate. It doesn’t release log-ons and offs, but instead creates a new session. The user needs to manually delete these sessions once a week or several times a week depending on the usage. (this one we would have to confirm with someone if ths is still true)
Other items that may or may not be factors
- Check the CPU speed of the server
- Check the amount of memory on the server
- Check the amount of free space on the server hard disk
- Check the amount of fragmentation on the server hard disk
| Type of Bottleneck |
How to check |
How to fix |
| Memory |
Run Task manager. Look for one application using more memory than all others combined. |
Close and relaunch the app |
| Memory |
Run Performance Monitor. Look for high page faults, etc |
Add RAM, adjust application performance boost and/or paging file size |
| Disk |
With Performance Monitor running, copy/verify large file, check for dynamic rise in % Disk Time and Disk Bytes/sec |
Try defragging. If that doesn’t work, add RAM |
| Processor |
Watch Processor Interrupts/sec in Performance Monitor for a sustained value of more than 1,000 |
Check for I/O problems with disk controller, network card or video display |
| Video |
Run Performance Monitor. Look at processor object’s CSRSS instance to see if % processor Time is consistently more than half of the Processor object’s % Processor Time |
Get faster video card |
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