Win 2003 and SQL 2000 server hardware problems

Hi there,

I'm completely new to this forum and I hope you'll go easy on my virgin posts.

I work for a company that supplies apartments abroad for travel agents. We currently have a website developed by a third party company that seems to be running slower and slower for each day that passes. Personally I'm convinced that it's the website backend that is causing the problem but the developers insists it's a server issue and that we need to buy an additional two servers at the same specs.

The website has an internal database of approx. 2500 apartments and roughly 5500 registered users. In addition to this database we have 3 external XML feeds from third party suppliers. These XML feeds provide us access to an additional 10000 apartments but obviously not all 10000 apartments are included in any search results.

We own the server ourselves and the specs are as follows:

Dual 2.4GHz Xeon processors
2.5 Gb RAM
3 HD's running in mirrored RAID for the SQL database
2 HD's running in mirrored RAID for the website etc.
1 Mbps connection
Win2003 Server SE
SQL Server 2000 SE

The website is powered by ASP.NET and they're using VB.NET to power it all.

We've looked at the stats and during a busy day we average about 7500 visitors.

Like I mentioned the a search uses our own internal database as well as 3 external XML feeds.

We've done extensive testing on the XML feeds to see if there's a speed issue with any of them but they're all running fine and returning data within seconds.

The developers have admitted that the slow down of the searches is due to the internal database search, which I find strange considering that it's not a huge database and it really shouldn't take that long considering the capacity the server has.

My own conclusion is that the website is poorly programmed and that's why an average search on all board types takes over 90 seconds to perform. A search on Tenerife, all board types usually causes the search to time out and crash.

If anyone has any other opinions please do let me know.

We're currently debating whether or not we should contract an independent consultancy and I'm really looking for other opinions before I put an expensive proposal on the MD's desk.

If you feel my post is completely irrelevant, then please do feel free to yell at me.

Thanks!


Neil

 

Based on your information, the load should not even cause SQL2000 on that server to get out of idle speed. Returns from a properly set up SQL server and database should be pretty much instant unless things get lots larger.

Does the 3rd party company maintain the SQL app on your server? If not, do you have anyone with SQL2000 experience maintaining it? 2000 is lots more robust than earlier versions but still needs some routine care & feeding. The application event logs will be a good place to do a quick check for errors or warnings indicating that you have issues.

Unless the recommendation for more hardware is so a cluster can be set up, I can't think of any justification for more servers. I'd love to hear exactly why company that manages this is suggesting you need more. Clustering might make sense if you absolutely, positively cannot tolerate any down time for the application.

If the 3rd party folks cannot explain the problem and how their 'fix' will make things better and explain it so that you completely understand their reasoning, I'd have to say they are blowing out clouds of smoke like a WWII ship trying to hide itself.

If your original contract with them contains any performance requirements and they clearly aren't meeting them you could certainly pressure them to make it right. If they can't then paying for consulting should be on them.

Otherwise, since it sounds like this application is mission critical for you folks, you probably need to get it fixed sooner rather than later and if you gotta spend some money, so be it. Continued slow searching will drive customers away.