Symantec Management Platform (Notification Server)

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Troubleshooting a Slow Notification Server Console 

Jan 31, 2008 05:23 PM

SQL and Altiris Products! They go together.... (Not singing that song). But they need to be configured correctly, or you can run into the dreaded slow console, or even worse, data loss.

In troubleshooting a slow console, one area you might consider is the I/O channels on the SQL server, specifically the Network Interface Card. One Altiris user recently discovered that his dedicated SQL server was the bottleneck in his management environment. His SQL server was using 1 NIC to provide all connection to the rest of the world, including connecting to an ISCSI drive array. By only having one NIC for ALL THAT TRAFFIC, the Notification Server was bound to appear slow, since it could not access it's database data as fast as necessary. The problem extended so far as to cause package codebase creation to fail, thus essentially stopping his ability to deliver packages to the managed clients. So, Make sure when troubleshooting a slow console you assure that you have plenty of Disk and LAN I/O available and that you are not holding up the flow by constricting it all thru one path. SAN drive arrays, with dedicated Host Bus Adapters (HBA's), or Local Disk Arrays on dedicated controllers, or even multiple drives (for small environments, and a NIC card for traditional, normal, network traffic will make all the difference.

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Feb 05, 2008 04:15 PM

A few things to check for right off the bat are referenced in some direct quotes from the Notification Server Foundations class:
"If the Notification Server and the database are installed on separate computers, you must have a highspeed LAN connection between them.
If you place the database on a remote computer, the following should exist:
- A fast disk array on the SQL Server, such as RAID-10
- A fast link (Gigabit switch and Gigabit Ethernet NIC) between the Notification Server and the SQL Server system"

Feb 02, 2008 04:33 PM

Great KB to reference on SQL tuning and troublshooting problems: https://kb.altiris.com/article.asp?article=38917&p=1

Feb 01, 2008 08:50 AM

I couldn't agree more. I've run into this issue at quite a few customer sites and many times the issue has to do with where the DB is located and how it is connected.

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