strongly need your hints for speeding up server!

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Sarah07

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We have a 1 or 2mb server on our university without any firewall or any other protector or speed up app. and another 2 servers for dial up users and network and both are same they told me to fix them up cause thay seems to be slower than what they are specially dial up server. the network server have less users with very low use at max attaching files for some mails (heaviest work the do sometimes).
I want to know what I how I could do better? example: I were thinking about zone alarm it give me full protection and it's fast is that good or there's something better I don't know?
any qusetions or info needed plz ask?
 
What version of Windows do they run? If you are running a server version such as Windows Server 2003, then you have to get a compatible Antivirus. From the likes of PC Cillin and Norton for example.

If the systems are slow, adding ANY Antivirus/firewall program is just going to slow it down more. But it's a necessary evil I'm afraid.

Of course the best way to speed up a system (hardware wise), is to add more RAM, faster CPU and faster hard drive.
Use Task Manager to see what your RAM usage is like. And can you post some hardware specs of the slowest one?

If you are afraid of being infected with bugs, run Adaware and Spybot, and run an online virus scan from www.bitdefender.com. All free to do.
You can also make sure your startups are clean, and have as little of programs running as needed. Also keep your file-serving machines defragged.
Make sure all the servers have a good sized page file set.

On the dedicated servers, such as the dialup servers, you can use Task Manager to raise the priority of the server processes. This will tell the system to spend more time processing from that program, which can help speed up that service.
 
Ccleaner doesn't really clean the registry, it cleans temp files all over the hard drive. But yes, it can help speed things up.
Registry cleaners are like Regsupreme and WinDoctor, which deal specifically with the Windows registry.
 
please post more machine specs and the OS yer running
routers used and or switchs used
looking for firewall for uni go with a boxed firmware system
that does not use the servers cpu / memory
if its a good uni they can afford such
example barracuda IM firewall

PS linux is faster my 2 cents
 
manual caching and memory allocation
for server I would not depend on or take a chance on a program that says it will speed up the way your server handles clients
again without the type of machine and OS can't tell you much
can say you want fast through put you need gigbit network or fiber optics in place
dealing with larger systems try cisco website very good articles on managing networks
when I ran my apache on W2K one thing I did was enable Gzip to send data compressed
the clients system automatic uncompress's
if running a W2003 server I can't help I never bothered with it
this is a very big topic with diff layers of fields that need to be addressed


good luck
 
Samstoned is on track here.

Primary performance is governed by:
  1. cpu speed
  2. installed memory
  3. i/o system performance
Memory and the I/O system interact when paging becomes a factor.
Paging, especially for servers, can get excessive when there are too many
processes active on one system AND the access from the clients starts rising.

typical means to improve server performance include:
  • installing memory
  • using dedicated devices for paging
  • limiting concurrent threads
  • removing non-esential processes / services

You need to get some performance numbers to determine what the
PROBLEM is before you over react with changes that may not have any influence on the outcome.
 
imo, accelerator programs are to performance gains as adjusting the tire pressure on your car -- yea, getting it right will be an assistance but not nearly as so as a good tune-up or a replacement engine.

why pay for or be concerned about a 1% improvement when you can get 20-30% by proper systems configuration and management?
 
Samstoned nail the requirements:
... again without the type of machine and OS can't tell you much ...

meanwhile, read-up on performance monitoring
 
Sarah07 said:
We have a 1 or 2mb server on our university without any firewall
Not even iptables?

they told me to fix them up cause thay seems to be slower than what they are specially dial up server.
Can you be more specific about "seem to be slower than what they are" ? What are they, then?

I want to know what I how I could do better?
Check that there are no unnecessary daemons / applications running, optimize the kernel, check its networking, virtual memory and file caching settings.

I were thinking about zone alarm it give me full protection and it's fast is that good or there's something better I don't know?
There's no ZoneAlarm for Linux.
 
Linux Performance Monitoring

Sarah07 said:
they told me to fix them up cause thay seems to be slower than what they are specially dial up server.

you might start with this website


xinetd: controls services which are auto started
the control list is typically located at /etc/xinetd.conf
and depending upon which specific Linux you're running
may have other files in the suibdir /etc/xinitd.d/*

XINETD is the first place to start reducing workload.
you should know WHY each and every service is made active and
WHY you need it. If it's just 'it would be nice ...' make it
disabled! set ONLY the processes you need, disable the rest,
and send KILL -1 $pid-xinet.d-process to reconfigure the
running system w/o a reboot.

now the quesiton becomes, what's chewing up the resources?

System Load: use uptime
the last three numbers are important. see man uptime(1)
load average should be no more that 3, better still 2 or lower
only two soultions here: add more memory OR reduce process/thread counts

Monitor Paging / Virtual Memory
a combination pipe:
watch -n 1 -d free

actual Pagefile info is seen
swapon -s​

Linux Paging: man vmstat(1) which gives you
DETAILS on swap in/out
swap-out occurs for hi memory usage, dirty pages and
the need to switch to another process. this will later
generate a corresponding swap-in

swap-in can occur for just simple page stealling
(ie, not dirty and memory needed elsewhere)​

Processes of course: PS
you find HOW MAN and WHICH ONES are using the cpu but

but here's the winner! TOP
man top(1) will give you a better snapshot including
uptime
processes
cpu usage
memory usage
swap space usage (need vmstat 1 for swap i/o)​

Network monitoring? ouch! there's a ton of stuff
google 'linux monitor network performance'

might like to see also
 
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