MS Access is slow

[johng231]

Users are complaining of slow performance when accessing database files using MS Access across the WAN. I've simulated this in my lab and I do notice when navigating through the different tables it is a little bit slow and crashes a lot when closing it out. I have to open up the db file by going into MS Access first; it won't let me double click on the db file from the mapped drive. The files are stored on an EMC Solaris storage system. The WAAS is seeing TCDL connections.

Are there any issues using EMC Solaris storage system and WAAS?

Has anyone else experience slowness using MS Access?

Thanks,

John

[Bhavin Yadav]

Hi John,

For EMC, we have default policies in the policy section which does nto use CIFS but rather uses their own accelerator policy.

	Basic 30	EMC-Celerra-Replicator	Replication	Optimize(DRE,LZ)	Yes
	Basic 31	EMC-SRDFA-IP	Storage	Optimize(DRE,LZ)	Yes

You have mentioned that this is MSAccess but if this is DB query or something like that, my experience says, not to use CIFS AO for those connections adn try to use TDL or one of the above application.

Further, was this working before? If yes, any idea what change could have caused this issue. like upgrading WAAS / EMC software? or installation of any new network devices / change in routing, etc. ?

I would suggest try disabling CIFS for this traffic and see if that helps. MS ACCess traffic can be extremely chatty and CIFS could adversely effect.

Regards.

[johng231]

The local branch had a windows 2k3 file server which was consolidated backto the datacenter onto the EMC Solaris Storage system. Since that happened, thedb files are slow opening, navigating through multiple tables, entering dataand generating reports. I was told by one of our LAN guys that EMC runs the CIFS protocol TCP 445 and looks and feels as a w2k3 file server. This is the first site that has WAAS and is accessing their mapped drives on EMC

The users don't just access db files on EMC. So if I disable the CIFS AO, I would be affecting other types of files such as word, excel, pdf , etc...

[johng231]

I ran some tests using the WAFS benchmark utility and noticed the  compression is better going to the native windows 2k3 file server than  using the NAS. Is any one using NAS as their main file server with WAAS?  Are there any limitations to using NAS with WAAS in this scenario?

[Amir Asfandyarov]

Hello John,

Access to MS Access database placed at the remote server across the WAN is usually quite slow, especially if the database is large in size and/or acessed by multiple users. This is due to the nature of native CIFS/oplocks and their implementation when opening/modifying MS Acess files (so this is not connected with WAAS itself directly).

But I must admit that even with concurrent access, WAAS usually provides better than native WAN performance.

As for NAS vs w2k3 problem -can you provide the numbers/%s ?

Regards

[johng231]

The users originally had a local file server where the MS Access DB file lived. This is now on the NAS storage system at the main datacenter. The WAN connection is 20MB and latency is 6ms.  They are complaining that it is much slower to navigate around and pretty much everything since it was moved over.

The comparison I was performing between the 2k3 native file server and the NAS may not be a true comparison as files and folder are a lot more on the NAS than the 2k3 server I was testing with. The DB file size is over 80MB.  When I increased the latency to 250MS the response time on opening and closing  the DB file is very slow, to the point where I don't see the WAAS having much impact at all. Access becomes very unstable to where it sometimes locks up on you.

[yprasannas]

We see the same issue...

Access DB opening sometimes is slow and sometimes it times out. Disabling WAAS entirely does not cause this issue.

Not sure how I can classify the traffic for Access DB and not apply CIFSAO?

[johng231]

There is no way that I know of to classify traffic on just MS DB. If you can, move the DB to another file server then classify it for either TDL or PT.

The problem I was having, I had the users use VDI to access the DB files from within their session so they didn't have to go across the WAN.