How to Troubleshoot Slow Windows Server Performance?

Windows Server is one of the efficient and most widely used operating systems developed by Microsoft. Certainly, there are some tips to keep your server humming in the windows infrastructure.

The primary phase of resolving a problem has to be monitoring in detail. A commonly used way for monitoring is to use the great tool “Windows perfmon” effectively but should not be used in Windows 2008 R2 as there is a lack of possibility of saving your settings. Try to achieve a single goal comprehended with all the possible counters needed, with a suitable duration in combination with the suitable configuration of sample values, thus equipped to use on multiple servers. Also, focus on resolving the startup issues and utilize performance advisors. Automation of some tasks which has to be performed regularly accelerates the windows server performance to a great extent. This includes:   

 Efficient DNS management

A well-managed Domain Name Systems always possess an efficient performance. Rather than manually working with zone files or the DNS interface, make use of the cluster of tools available to automate most of the processes dealing with DNS.

Cleaning up Active directoryActive directory gets summed up with non-existent machine references, expired users and full of other junks which never gets cleaned up. Keep the AD tidy by cleaning it up the AD at regular intervals utilizing a number of tools which automate the work.

Automating disk defragmentation

The server gets overloaded with time as a plethora of applications are installed. The System Administrators have to run Disk Defragmenter on a regular basis with the aid of Windows Task Scheduler. Routine defragmentation ensures sequential storage of data blocks in preference to random locations, upgrading overall file-reading efficiently.

Adjust server response

Adjust the server to optimum in order to prioritize the applications running in the background since server applications are not executed from the server console.

Administering an exclusive drive for pagefiles.

As pagefiles are used frequently by Windows, it is highly suggested to place it on a dedicated drive. This assures that your server has a primary access to pagefile data.

Employ New Technology File System (NTFS) being the most secure file system.

Transaction-based (possess security and speed improvement)
Avoid Running 16-bit apps

Running 16-bit apps reduce Windows server performance as independent multitasking models are used for 16, 32, and 64-bit applications.

Set up your Power Plan

Optimize the power plan for Windows Server to attain maximum power efficiency based on the role of the server along with application requirements. It actively increases or reduces the CPU performance while workload changes thereby matching computational capacity to computational demand.

Solving the named pipes puzzle

Invisible pipes are used for communicating with other servers. Interact well with them for transparency of procedures.

Explorer folder options

Some common configurations used for a better performance are mentioned below:

Uncheck “Hide protected operating system files”

Uncheck “Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items”

Uncheck “Show preview handlers in preview pane”

Uncheck “Use sharing wizard”

Uncheck “Display file size information in folder tips”

Check “Show hidden files”

Uncheck “Hide empty drives”

Uncheck “Hide extensions for known file types”

Check “Always show menus"

Disable IE Enhanced Security Configuration, at least for administrators, for a better performance.

"Internet options mentioned below are recommended for better server performance.

Launch IE, and configure first-time run options

Set Home Page (set to blank or other)

• Uncheck “Advanced – Enable page transitions”
• Uncheck “Advanced – Reuse windows for launching shortcuts”
• Uncheck “Advanced – Show friendly HTTP error messages”

Hard Disk Compression

Despite the introduction of Cloud, hard disk compression enhances server performance by reducing the time taken to read files from the hard disk. It generally becomes applicable when running a disk-based app which depends on a large number of individual files.

• Disable the Shutdown Event Tracker which is certainly not much necessary for the expected level of performance.
• Turn On SuperFetch which makes the OS more responsive only after making the necessary registry changes.
• Uninstall the Rarely-accessed Utilities and Disable the Rarely-used Services
• This, besides increasing the server performance, enhances security for your systems runs on a reduced number of services. The overall vulnerability of the server is thus reduced.
• Using Microsoft's File Server Migration Toolkit, Windows server tuning template also helps to achieve the desired performance.

All the above-mentioned practices collectively equip you to troubleshoot slow windows server performance.

Why Performance Boosters are inevitable in Apache!!!

Apache is a free and open source cross-platform web server software which is widely used. For delivery of static pages, an Apache series was rated significantly slower than Nginx and Varnish. To approach this issue, the Apache developers designed an event, which mixes the use of several processes and several threads per process in an asynchronous event-based loop. This architecture accommodates better performances. Nginx and Varnish can be used as plugins in Apache, meanwhile, there are cPanel based combination plugins created to enhance performance.

Nginx: It also has features like caching, security and load balancing. Caching done by Nginix is mostly static. Load balancing keeps check of the network traffic.

Varnish: The uniqueness of Varnish is the dynamic caching. The process of caching can be done to reduce data access time. It also helps with the recovery of input/output which in turn enhances application performances. Dynamic page caching helps in caching of HTML pages considering the cookies, request headers etc. How and when to cache the responses are decided upon by making use of a mix of factors from an HTTP request. Varnish supports load balancing and caches feature Gzip compression and decompression, HTTP Streaming Pass and Fetch, etc.

Now let's have a look on to few performance boosters which make use of features of Nginx and Varnish.

Apachebooster is a cPanel plugin built to improve the total execution of a server by raising the performance of Apache Software. Compounded with Nginx and Varnish Apachebooster doubles the working volume and capacity of Apache Software which in turn helps the servers to become faster in their processing. Compared to other plugins in the industry ApacheBooster has the advantage of Nginx and Varnish together. Apache software has many valuable properties, which may require manual aiding, usually done by an expert. Apachebooster can work for it out of the box.

In short, When a user reaches the site over HTTPS protocol, Nginx sends the request to Varnish and if Varnish already has the content in its cache it immediately responds with that content. Else, Varnish requests the content from Apache (if necessary), caches it and then assigns the content to Nginx. Nginx encrypts the content and transfers it to the user. Just like the caching, image optimization, minification of JS and CSS are also done by Apachebooster. Last but not the least feature is the SSL technology for security. It is the most trusted and safe technology implemented in HTTP.

Apachebooster requires a simple installation procedure only. The number of advantages of Apachebooster is inversely proportional to the cost you give. Because it's worth buying and you get an unexpected number of advantages.

Engintron is Nginx on cPanel. Nginx functions as a web traffic proxy, directly serving all static contents like CSS, JS, images by default instead of Apache. This drops appreciably the CPU/RAM resources used by Apache, leaving your server with more space with room for more websites to host. Engintron will raise the performance and web serving capacity of the server while decreasing CPU/RAM load at the same time. It does that by installing and configuring the conventional Nginx web server to operate as a reverse caching proxy for static files (like CSS, JS, images, etc).

cPnginx is again an Nginx highlighted plugin. Nginx doesn’t rely on threads to manage requests. Rather it uses a much more scalable event-driven (asynchronous) architecture. This architecture uses small, but more importantly, expected amounts of memory under load. Likewise, if you don't demand to handle thousands of synchronous requests, you can still avail from Nginx's high-performance and small memory footprint.

There are so many plugins available nowadays, X-Varnish, Nginx Admin (NginxCP) are few other similar plugins. Website performance optimization is perpetually something that should be the top priority, especially when there is so much competition. The web is growing at an active pace, and this year we have seen some severe changes to web performance, such as the release of HTTP/2 and on-page assets extending to gain in size. Some studies show that in two years global Internet traffic will be equivalent to 66 times the volume of the whole global Internet 10 years before. So choose your performance boosters wisely!