Hi Everyone,
I have recently been investigating extremely high CPU Usage from the System Process on my company's main File Cluster.
We managed to track SRV2.sys Threads causing high CPU load within the system process, but was having issues identifying why this was the case.
As per Microsoft's direction via support call, we have installed the latest SRV2.sys Hotfixes, but this does not appear to have allivated the issue we are experiencing. We have also added more CPU and Memory into both nodes, which has not helped either.
We have since managed to create a system dump and is being sent to MS Support for analysis.
I have noticed the following that appears to happen on our cluster:
- Whenever our CAD/Design department run certain functions within their apps running on a windows 7 client (apps include MicroStation, Revit, AutoCAD etc) we see a massive spike and flatline of the system process.
- We found several users with Windows 7 clients that have Configured Offline File to sync an entire Network Volume (some volumes are 2TB Plus, so would never fit on a users computer anyway, i was quite shocked when I found this). How we spotted this was through Resource Monitor, the System Process was trolling through all the folders and files in a given volume (it was "reading every single folder). Now, while this was the system process, we could identify the user by using the Open Files view in Server Manager's Share and Storage Management tool.
I have done a fair bit of research and found that a lot of CAD/Drawing applications in the market have issues with using SMB2 (srv2.sys). When reviewing the products that we use, I noticed that a lot of these products actually recommended disabling SMB2 and reverting to SMB1 on File Server and/or the clients.
I have gone down the path of disabling SMB2 on all Windows 7 clients that have these CAD Applications installed to assist with lowering the load (our other options are to potentially shift the CAD Volumes off our main file cluster to further isolation these performance issues we have been experiencing.) We will be testing this again tomorrow to confirm that the issue is resolved when mass amounts of CAD users access data on these volumes via their CAD Application.
We only noticed the issue with Offline Files today with trying to sync an ENTIRE Volume. My questions are:
- Should Offline File sync's really cause this much load on a File Server?
- Would the the size of the volume the sync is trying to complete create this additional load within the system process?
- What is the industry considered "Best Practice" regarding Offline Files setup for Volumes which could have up to 1000+ users attached? (My personal opinion is that Offline Files should only be sync of user "Personal/Home" Folders as they users themselves have a 1 to 1 relationship with this data.)
- Is there an easier way to identify what users have Offline Files enabled and "actually being used" (from my understanding, Sync Center and Offline Files are enabled by default, but you obviously have to add the folders/drives you wish to sync)?
- If I disable the ability for Offline Files on the volumes, what will the user experience be when/if they try to sync their offline files config after this has been disabled on the volume?
Hoping for some guidance regarding this setup with Offline Files.
Thanks in Advance!
Simon