SBS 2008 - Is my hardware not cutting it?

Further to the previous post: SBS 2008 - Reliability at a glance

How about how is the existing hardware handling the current load on the SBS OS?

System Performance

This has been one of the most difficult questions to answer from the client in the past. We needed to install third party monitoring tools to keep an eye on that box in order to provide a clear answer ... after a period of monitoring time.

That is no longer the case.

With the built-in Resource Overview and the ability to drill down to the smallest detail on the way the SBS OS is performing on the current hardware, we can find out very quickly whether the hardware is cutting it or not.

Under the four performance graphs are the four categories that can be clicked on to drill down to discover which processes are utilizing the hardware component the most.

Resource usage drill down

For those of us who have been working in this industry since way back, when we had to fight and struggle with third party tools to get any kind of information out of our systems, the new Reliability and Performance tools are a huge step ahead for us.

This particular SBS box configuration:

• Intel Xeon 3070 Dual Core
• Intel S3000AHLX Server Board with current BIOS
• Dual on board Gigabit NICs are Teamed (one disabled when the wizards are required)
• 8GB Kingston KVR667D2E5/2Gi DDR2 ECC (4 pieces)
• Intel SRCSASRB PCI-E RAID Controller
• 4x 320GB Seagate Enterprise Storage series in RAID 0+1 for redundancy and performance.
• Intel SC5299DP series server chassis.

So far, with the Exchange being relatively quiet, the box has been running a consistent 4.5GB of RAM being used. Once we bring the e-mail volume up over the next couple of days or so we will see where things go with the Exchange Store.

SQL has been behaving itself as well, though it looks like we may end up needed to trim the memory levels allocated to each instance just as we needed to do for SBS 2003: SBS 2K3 RTM SP1 R2 Premium - Post install must do - Tame SQL Memory Usage.

More to come on our SBS 2008 lab setup ... and thanks for reading! :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

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