Aside from "put linux on it" and "uninstall windows" comments, I'm looking a few tweaks to apply to our company server. It is currently running Windows 2003 Server RC2 and has been peaking out CPU usage 80-95% lately.

Any tips or suggestions on speeding up the server and freeing up unnecessary processes?

7/6/2009 1:55:38 PM

Seen any particular processes that are eating too much/more cpu? Are you asking too much of this server at this point?

7/6/2009 2:25:16 PM

What is it actually doing/handling? That would help us a lot more than "hay guize i have a sever that could be doing anything.. how do i fixiz it?"

7/6/2009 2:36:31 PM

I don't understand why people think utilization is a bad thing. 95% is less than what you have available, so what's the problem?

7/6/2009 2:41:13 PM

It's just a file server and a quickbooks server for about 10 people.

Some of the processes that are spiking up and down throughout the day:
SemSrv.exe
Smc.exe
PD91Agent.exe
Dbsrv9.exe
Cidaemon.exe
Semsvc.exe
SmcGui.exe

These are all under "SYSTEM" in the task mgr.

[Edited on July 6, 2009 at 2:45 PM. Reason : d]

7/6/2009 2:41:50 PM

Most of that is A/V related....you might think about tweaking the on-access scanning parameters.

7/7/2009 10:55:40 AM

What version of Symantec are you using? I've noticed the latest version, Symantec Enpoint Protection (version 11 I think) can be VERY, VERY processor intensive. Our company has gone to great lengths to minimize the deployment of this version across our servers.

I remember reading an article about the the Symantec "higher-up" (CEO, CIO, etc.) railing his company for adding so much to their packaged software. The article said that most IT professionals were uninstalling their product rather than trying to debug why it was taking up so much processing power. Here's hoping they fix this shit in version 12.

7/7/2009 3:09:22 PM

Yeah, this server was pretty much dumped on me with Symantec End point installed.

I'll see if I can't turn some of it down.

7/7/2009 6:42:30 PM

see if you can disable active scanning of the quickbooks directory and other heavily used shares

7/7/2009 9:42:50 PM