Disk Management Related Information

Screen Shot from Process Explorer

 

Some Windows Stuff

The combination of physical RAM and pagefile is called Virtual Memory. Virtual Memory is managed by Virtual Memory Manager. Physical memory(RAM) can be accessed at expoentially high speed than disk. So everytime server has to move data between physical disk and Memory, disk will introduced significant delay. Excessive and consistent paging activity is called thrashing.

Pagefile could be set in several ways, if you let Windows let manage PageFile size, it will create pagefile size (PhysicalRAM+1) MB. This PageFile size is required to catch memory dump when server create DUMP. Create seperate pagefile on seperate partition to improve performance. Number of pagefile you can create is 16 and Maximum size is 4 GB. So totak 16 x 4 =64GB page file size can be created and OS treats this file as one file. When pagefile is distrubuted across volume, all volumes have same characteristic like speed,size.Pagefile size should be kept on dedicated drive if we are looking for optimizing it’s use. RAID0/RAID1 might be good option but RAID5 is not recommended. Paging is write operation and may not suite characteristic of RAID5. If Page file optimization is required try not to put on system drive. If you need to catch memory, you have no option but to create it on System drive. Make sure you put on same drive as C drive and not same volume but different drive. Set Minimum and Maximum page file size to be same to avoid any overhead for dynamically increasing page file size. Best practise to create page file is to format volume and create pagefile before placing any data on that volume, this ensures you get full contiguous space.Also to note first partition on physical disk is closer to tip of this disk, where disk speed is highest and performance is best. How do you decide if you need more ram based on pagefile. Check pagefile: %usage Max in perfmon, if the usage is more than 10% it is time to think.

File system cache

File system cache is area on physical memory (RAM) for dynamically store accessing recently data of IO Subsystem, which includes Disks,Network interface and Networks. More is this space less times IO subsystem is accessed considerably increasing performance.

Maximize data throughput for file sharing: is generally recommended for file server and servers above 2GB RAM

Maximize data throughput for network applications: is using for application server and one who have internal memory optimization techinques.

Maximum values are put down above. SQL and Exchange server Maximize data throughput for network applications should be selected. Since they manage their internal system cache.

 

How to configure system failure and recovery options in Windows

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307973

The Kernel Memory Dump option records only kernel memory. This option stores more information than a small memory dump file, but it takes less time to complete than a complete memory dump file. The file is stored in theDump Filebox (%SystemRoot%\Memory.dmp by default), and any previous kernel or complete memory dump files are overwritten if the Overwrite any existing file check box is selected. If you set this option, you must have a sufficiently large paging file on the boot volume. The required size depends on the amount of RAM in your computer (although the maximum amount of space that must be available for a kernel memory dump on a 32-bit system is 2 GB plus 16 MB; on a 64-bit system, the maximum amount of space that must be available for a kernel memory dump is the size of the RAM plus 128 MB). The following table contains guidelines for the size of the paging file:

RAM size	Paging file should be no smaller than
256 MB–1,373 MB	1.5 times the RAM size
1,374 MB or greater	32-bit system: 2 GB plus 16 MB 64-bit system: size of the RAM plus 128 MB

 

How to turn on cluster logging in Microsoft Cluster Server

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/168801/en-us

 

Cluster KB’s

How to configure MSDTC in a Windows 2000 cluster environment

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290624

How to configure Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator on a Windows Server 2003 cluster

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301600

How to troubleshoot the Cluster service account when it modifies computer objects

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307532

Description of the properties of the cluster Network Name resource in Windows Server 2003

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=302389

How to Create a Server Cluster File Share with Cluster.exe

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/284838/en-us

 

My Favorite KB’s

How to gather data to troubleshoot Exchange virtual memory issues

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317411/en-us

Monitoring for Exchange 2000 memory fragmentation

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296073/

Large memory support is available in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows 2000

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283037/en-us

Status of Exchange 2000 Server and Exchange Server 2003 components on a server cluster

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/259197/en-us

 

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