Tuning a SBS 2003 Server

Susan Bradley has touched on this subject before over various posts on her blog, but I wanted to give a summary of how, on our recent “up to date” installations, we are tuning memory on our SBS Servers.

Our servers are normally around the following specification and configuration:

Dual Xeon or Single Quad Core processors
4GB of RAM
RAID 1 or RAID 5 configuration
Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2
Windows 2003 SP2, and all hotfixes.
Windows Server Update Services 3
Sharepoint Services 3
All hotifixes and patches installed.
Normally Running GFI MailEssentials and MailSecurity

This means that we have the following databases running:

Windows Internal Database (Sharepoint 3 / WSUS 3)
Sharepoint (2)
SBSMonitoring
MSFW (on ISA Premium installs only)

Basically, all you need to do is run the commands listed on Susan’s post here on each database and tune as required.   What has worked for me is to set the following limits on the above specification.

Windows Internal Database – 256MB RAM
Sharepoint 2 Database – 75MB RAM
SBS Monitoring Database – 50MB RAM
MSFW Database – 75MB RAM

Doing this, on your average 30 user site has had no ill effect.   You may also notice that I have GFI running on these servers in normal circumstances.   I normally setup a separate instance for the GFI stuff, and limit that database to 100MB.

Hopefully this will help some of you out there that happen to be running the same kind of specification installs for your clients.

  4 Replies to “Tuning a SBS 2003 Server”

  1. Rich Lusk
    October 3, 2007 at 7:56 am

    Great information! Thank you for sharing. When adjusting the limits how do you know what numbers to plug-in without breaking the server? Also, any suggestions on limits when Accounting 2007 and BCM 2007 database is on an SBS server?

  2. October 3, 2007 at 8:16 am

    Hi Rich,

    If it breaks, you can change the setting. I have not had any issue (so far) with settings as low as 50MB.

    I do not have specifics for you on those products, I would try 100MB and see how it goes from there…

    Nick

  3. Rich Lusk
    October 3, 2007 at 9:20 am

    Ok. I’ll try 100MB. Thanks for the reply.

    Oh, I forgot to ask…Is there a way to show what limits are currently in place for the running databases before changing them?

  4. October 3, 2007 at 10:13 am

    Hi Rich,

    I am not sure of the command off the top of my head. However, the default is an insane figure….

    I normally just write down what I have it set to.

    Nick

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