Network shares on SMS is very slow.

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Network shares on SMS is very slow.

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All Forums >> [Management Products] >> Microsoft Systems Management Server >> SMS 2003 >> Network shares on SMS is very slow.

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Network shares on SMS is very slow. - 8/25/2008 11:40:09 AM

fmayet

Posts: 11
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Joined: 10/27/2003
Status: offline

Good day all,

Here is the scenario one central site (Windows 2003 Standarsd sp 2) and 207 secondary sites. Each secondary site is a domain controller (long story..)

SMS is working fine, clients get updated, sms packages get deployed etc.

The only issue that we are having is it takes over 20-30 minutes to login via remote desktop or physically on the server itself. Once we are able to login, if we try and access any SMB shares (\\servername\share) it takes over 10-15 minutes to open. The SMS admin console works fine remotely and software distribution works like a dream.

What we have done:
Updated the network drivers (firmware and drivers)
Changed the registry setting to allow for more than 50 SMB connection.

Ping, telnet and ftp works normally just the SMB type stuff. I know the sender logs is quite busy as new secondary sites are being added on a daily basis, but accessing any shares from the primary server is extremely slow. Accessing local drives is fine, and SMS is working. There are also no errors in the event viewer.

Anybody had/have any issues with 200+ secondary sites on DC's? The SMS groups (site to server and site to connection) become AD groups and the primary server's computer account is added to them.

Updating dp's works fine (all 200+) and performance counters (memory, disk, cpu) all seem ok.
That is the wierd part if smb is not working, updating the DP's will not work either. It does take around 20 - 40 minutes to start the physical copy to the dp's once we select them in the package, but we can live with that.

Anybody have any ideas?

Regards to all,
Faiyaz

Post #: 1

RE: Network shares on SMS is very slow. - 8/25/2008 6:11:33 PM

rbennett806

Posts: 821
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Joined: 6/14/2006
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Sounds like SMS is working fine and you're having a problem with Windows Server. Have you checked your DNS servers and related items to make sure that DNS is working correctly and everything is listed as it should be? You might also check to make sure there's not a domain group policy that's causing the issue as well. Oh, and double-check any firewall configurations. I'm assuming that things used to work just fine previously....

(in reply to fmayet)

Post #: 2

RE: Network shares on SMS is very slow. - 8/26/2008 2:34:29 AM

fmayet

Posts: 11
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Joined: 10/27/2003
Status: offline

Hi,

Thank you for your reply, and DNS seems to working and the firewall is turned off. We also checked the domain policy and there is nothing that jumps out at us, as there are other servers in the same OU.

What we did change in SMS under the primary server, in the sender the maximum concurrent sendings we have changed it to 100. This does speed up the updates to the distribution points drastically, but I am not sure if this is part of couse of our problem.The setting was changed over 4 months ago, but then we only had 70 secondary sites/dp's and now 200+.

Thanks,
Faiyaz Mayet

(in reply to rbennett806)

Post #: 3

RE: Network shares on SMS is very slow. - 8/27/2008 9:43:58 AM

bluzier

Posts: 304
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Joined: 1/7/2002
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fmayet, you are on the right track. The issue is with the sender. We ran into the exact same problem with SCCM and over 500 secondary sites. The problem may be related to secondary sites being offline. The sender will queue up those sends in the inbox folder (can't remember exactly which inbox) and send them once the system comes back online. The problem is that SMS/SCCM constantly tries to communicate with the secondary site, causing this bottleneck. Check your sender.log file for any "error 53" messages or messages relating to systems being offline. You may need to increase the size of the sender.log in order to see everything. Fix those and that should help dramatically.
Also, try changing the "maximum number of packages" and "maximum threads per package" settings under "Component Configuration \ Software Distribution". This should help as well, but will increase the load on network pipe if you are not utilizing thresholds.

Hope this helps.
Brian

(in reply to fmayet)

Post #: 4

RE: Network shares on SMS is very slow. - 8/27/2008 10:35:11 AM

fmayet

Posts: 11
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Joined: 10/27/2003
Status: offline

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your help. We do have quite a few "error 53", this is because the new servers are being shipped to the site after being setup centrally. We are planning to stick to a 500 secondary site limit as well.

Did you also get the issue of extremely long log in times and over 10-15 minutes for responses from the SMS server when you tried to access any UNC shares ?(\\sharename any sharename).

My gut feeling is that the Sender is very busy checking and sending to the unc paths of the secondary sites, and as a result the server "seem" slow.

I do not know of any way of checking SMB (\\unc) performance counters. This only started happening once we were over 100 servers and starting copying the MS patch packages down. (currently 200mb and 150mb)

Regards,
Faiyaz

(in reply to bluzier)

Post #: 5

RE: Network shares on SMS is very slow. - 8/27/2008 11:07:41 AM

bluzier

Posts: 304
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Joined: 1/7/2002
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We were doing the exact same thing! We were building systems, shutting them down, then shipping them. The only difference is that we were adding the Distribution Point role and copying all of the packages while they were local to the Primary Site server. No need to push packages (we had 8GB!!) over the wire to the Secondary Site.
I did experience the slow share access as well. Your symptoms are exactly the same as what I was experiencing.
Luckily, there is a solution! Once the system is ready to be shipped, you'll need to disable the sender address to that system until it comes back online at its destination.
Once the system is powered down, go into the Addresses section of your primary site and close the sender for the site that was just shut down. This will stop all communication attempts to that Secondary Site. Once the Secondary Site is turned back on at its destination, go back in and enable the sender.
This is how we got around this issue. Once we closed the sender addresses for all of our offline sytems, the primary site server performed "like new" again.

Brian

< Message edited by bluzier -- 8/27/2008 11:09:36 AM >

(in reply to fmayet)

Post #: 6

RE: Network shares on SMS is very slow. - 8/27/2008 11:31:49 AM

fmayet

Posts: 11
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Joined: 10/27/2003
Status: offline

Brian,

You are a star. Thank you for all of your help and assistance. I guess I will have to find a "sweet spot" with regards to the maximum concurrent settings and acceptable performance on the server.

Just one more question, when the address for the secondary site/DP is "closed", what will happen if I update a package or create a new package? Will it be "queued" in the schedular and once we "open" the address again, will the software copy over?

It would be nice if we could "up" the number of UNC sessions and maybe the time-outs on Windows.

Hmmmm,
Faiyaz

(in reply to bluzier)

Post #: 7

RE: Network shares on SMS is very slow. - 8/27/2008 11:55:11 AM

bluzier

Posts: 304
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Joined: 1/7/2002
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No problem, glad I could help out.
Yes, if you send a package to a "closed" site, it will be queued up. I believe the inbox to look at is the distmgr inbox. Not positive though. Just find the one with a lot of files in it. We had over 15,000 at our highest.
I'm not sure if it's a Windows issue rather than a SMS/SCCM sender process issue. When you stop the SMS service, everything works just fine. I even ran perfmon and targed the Disk I/O and everything looked fine there too. I also did a mass file copy to multiple destinations (50) and that worked like a champ as well. I think the sender is getting all boogered up trying to handle offline sites.

Brian

(in reply to fmayet)

Post #: 8