Project 2003 EPM performance improvements

[JB]

3/3/05
Products: Project 2003 Pro SP1 / Project 2003 Server SP1
Issue: Project 2003 EPM performance improvements

We have a fairly new implementation of Project 2003 with about 5 Project
managers using the system. We have about 40 other Project Web users that
will use it soon to contribute their updates to projects. Performance is 3-5
seconds on most all project web "read" type user activity right now (opening
projects, ect).

Our upper management would like us to find out if there are any improvements
possible. Further splitting of architecture would be considered. Ideally,
system response time would be near instantaneous for management
presentations. We have a robust network with only
1ms latency between the front-end and back-end servers. The back-end SQL
server is not exclusive to the Project system however. It has about two
dozen other relatively low activity databases. The Project/Sharepoint
front-end server is dedicated to Project. The servers are midrange Dell
multi-cpu models. The database server is using iSCSI technology for its SQL
data and log drives.

We are currently analyzing both servers via Windows performance monitor
until Friday 3/4/05 at 10pm PST. This will give us about 3 days of statistics
on CPU, Memory, and Disk Activity.

Questions:

1.
With a two tier architecture - frontend (IIS/Sharepoint) and backend (SQL)
of Project 2003 what improvements are possible to further tweak performance?

2.
Are there options for further splitting of the architecture and what are
those? What would the performance improvements be?

3.
With respect to database performance how well optimized is a default
database install of Project 2003? Are there further recommended database
tweaks? Maintenance plans?

I realize this is a lot of questions. We are considering opening a ticket
with the Microsoft Project 2003 Support Team for help in this but; I thought
I’d post here first.

Thank you,

Brandon Shoemaker

 

[Gary L. Chefetz \(MVP\)]

Brandon:

Without knowing a lot more about your environment, any answer has to contain
significant speculation. With that said, I seriously doubt that you can
reasonably expect to maintain the superb performance you're seeing now. In
all likelihood, you'll see significant degradation during peak usage.

For 50 users, the ultimate possible performance could be obtained by using a
beefy quad box running Project Server and SQL, with a big pipe to a Terminal
Services Box with users connecting through remote desktops. That
configuration should yield fastest response time. To address latency in
other areas of the system, other scaling strategies are applicable, such as
adding a views processing instance. At a 50-user scale, it's not necessary.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the books on Project Server"
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

For Project Server FAQs visit
http://www.projectserverexperts.com

For Project FAQs visit
http://www.mvps.org/project

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