We moved onto a hosted server last year. We had initial teething problems that we expected then everything started to work well. Over the last 4 months though it has become a nightmare with programmes become slower to open and produce reports. We were initially told that we needed more memory as the physical memory usage was in 90%’s so they increased it by another 2gb to 12gb. Memory usage is now mid 70%’s but we are still having problems with using the programs.
The hosted support seem to be fobbing us off at the moment as if we are the problem. Any ideas on what can be causing the slow performance so I can ensure support have looked at it?

Given how many variables there are in all this I’d suggest getting a professional in to look at it.

Without understanding the type of app, how you’re running it and all the other infrastructure in place it’s just going to be people making guesses.

The support supposed to be the professionals looking after it which is the problem.

The other variables that I can provide is 6 users running mainly accountancy software including Sage Accounts and Payroll, Iris which runs off SQL, Microsoft office package, Dropbox, Mozy Pro and Adobe reader.
The server is Windows Server 2008 R2 standard – service pack 1, Intel Xeon E5-2690 2.90ghz, 12GB memory. Performance screen shows 18 cores with currently only 15% cpu usage and 74% memory

If it’s not RAM/CPU then the chances are its storage/DB related, especially if there’s any sort of heavy lifting going on with the DB/reporting.

That would kinda tie in to the degradation over time, are there maintenance plans set upon the DBs? 9 months of not rebuilding your indexes will hurt 😉

http://www.brentozar.com/responder/triage-wait-stats-in-sql-server/ is probably a good place to start if you need to take a look at the SQL bottlenecks

it’s probably the Flux Capacitor
or

Without understanding the type of app, how you’re running it and all the other infrastructure in place it’s just going to be people making guesses.

how are users accessing it?

what linespeed are they using?

what other resources might they use and be competing for.

what used to happen on the non-hosted server that doesn’t happen now – usually hosts will expect you to maintain applications etc – they’re only interested in the hardware and OS. Who used to manage the applications and db’s before, have they stopped doing it?

RDP connection

15mb download 2mb download

Very little else is used

Sage has its own database which are separate to each client which when you log in connects you to the datapath for that cleint’s database. Iris uses an SQL database with SQL Express.

The previous server was just a windows XP Pro computer running as a file server on a peer to peer basis so the software was hosted on each machine with the exception of Iris which ran off the file server on SQl Express. I looked after the file server and all I did was clear out the duplicated files to prevent wasted storage and run a defrag every once in a while.
We moved onto a hosted server as the file server was very old and started to shutdown on its own. We took the decision to upgrade to hosted rather than repair what we had. The hosted server provider supposed to look after everything to do with the server including performance and software updates.

Mike, its fluxed alright.

Is it a virtual or physical server?

Are the disks on a NAS or in the server?

I think the server is virtual as we have an odd number of cores which were increased within the first few months. I’m not sure about the storage but can make enquiries.

I still think you need to get someone who knows what they’re doing to look at it directly, it’s really too complex an issue to diagnose via a forum thread.

If your hosts are rubbish/not doing what you want then get new hosts.

Rackspace are great but you do pay for it.

Rackspace are actually pretty cheap for the service you get, having been a UK Fast customer and forced to look in to AWS I consider it to be money well spent 🙂

We had done our research before going with this company including talking to their clients and also looking for feedback on accountancy forums as the updates to the accountancy software appealed. The downtime we are experiencing is getting worse than we had with the old peer to peer file server.
We are looking to change but concerned that moving elsewhere and all the hassle it involves just to end up in similar position again. I will look at Rackspace though. Thanks for your help.

running all the apps and the db’s on the same server seems a bit odd as they’ll be competing for resources the whole time. It’s not how you used to do things.

Unless you can virtualise the server further and protect cpu and memory for the sql stuff you may find you’ll always have issues.

I follow what you say and have requested a detailed explanation how it is configured.