December 23, 2003 at 4:18 pm
Hi All,
Just wondering what everyone's experience on Windows 2003 has been so far. We have done some testing and decided against the move. Below is what my experince was.
We have a number of large db's running W2K and SQL 2000. We have been doing testing on Windows 2003 with SQL 2000 and have been seeing a lot of problems related to performance.
We have seen sp's that run in our production environment slow down dramatically on the 2003 box, even though the 2003 box has 4GB more RAM and the same amount of CPU's (8). We are also finding that after rebooting the server things run faster and then start slowing down again.
Other strange things happening include SQL performance counters present on one day, missing the next and then reappearing after a reboot. Also Device Manager was picking up a single CPU that did not exist. Upon reboot it saw all 8 again. Bizarre!
Because performance was so completely inconsistent we decided not to push ahead with 2003 for now. We loaded W2K onto the 2003 Test machine and everything runs perfect.
I'd really like to hear what other people have found with Windows 2003.
Cheers,
Angela
December 23, 2003 at 4:33 pm
How did memory change between them? I.e. is the 4GB additional something that might have changed, e.g. using AWE whereas you were not, or such?
We plan to go from W2K on 2G memory to W2003 on 32G servers, and I'm a bit worried about how much is changing, not only the W2K -> W2003, but also switching to using memory beyond the 2G/4G boundaries that are natural in windows.
December 23, 2003 at 4:46 pm
No, we were already using AWE. Production has 6GB RAM Test 10GB RAM. Test box was brand spanking new machine with two brand new Raid 10 arrays. Like I said, as soon as we changed the Test machine to W2K all our problems went away. Which leads me to believe it wasn't a hardware config problem on the server. I think a few others on SQLServerCentral have had successful testing on Win 2003, so I'll be interested to see what they have to say.
Angela
December 24, 2003 at 7:24 am
quote:
We have seen sp's that run in our production environment slow down dramatically on the 2003 box, even though the 2003 box has 4GB more RAM and the same amount of CPU's (8).
Have you compared the sp's execution plan between these two servers? Is /3GB enabled on both servers too?
quote:
We are also finding that after rebooting the server things run faster and then start slowing down again.
Rebooting server will cause sp to be recompiled at first time it exeecutes. Have you tried to run it by forcing the recompilation every time it runs to see any difference?
quote:
Other strange things happening include SQL performance counters present on one day, missing the next and then reappearing after a reboot.
Do you see error message like "Performance monitor shared memory setup failed: -1" in your SQL Server errorlog?
December 28, 2003 at 9:54 am
quote:
quote:
Other strange things happening include SQL performance counters present on one day, missing the next and then reappearing after a reboot.
Do you see error message like "Performance monitor shared memory setup failed: -1" in your SQL Server errorlog?
I am experiencing this on a Win2003 server, incl. the error message. Any idea on how to fix it?
--
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December 28, 2003 at 3:37 pm
Hi Allen,
Thanks for the suggestions. Execution plans are exactly the same. I wasn't initially forcing a recompile on each stored proc, but during testing when I was beginning to loose patience I forced a recompile each time a stored procedure was called. No difference to performance. Still saw the gradual slowing down of the server. Oh, I should note that it wasn't just running queries taking a long time, ALL processes on the server began to slow down.
We didn't have any error messages pop up.
I am not really concerned with why my W2003 set up didn't perform well. I am really just wanting to see if anyone had a successful install and found any advantages W2003 over W2K.
Thanks
Angela
December 29, 2003 at 10:54 am
We are integrating another server here at the site and it will run W2K3. Not sure if it will run the web or db, but we'll see if we notice any difference.
Steve Jones
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