High Disk Activity

Run the Performance Monitor Server Health chart view to determine whether the disk is overworked. If the disk is causing the problem, the chart will look similar to one in the following illustration.

Note   If you haven't done so already, you should start the disk performance counters by typing diskperf -y at the command prompt. Then, add the LogicalDisk: Disk Bytes/sec and LogicalDisk: % Disk Time counters to the Microsoft Exchange Server Health chart view. These counters indicate the amount of data that is transferred to or from the disk during write or read operations. For more information about adding counters to charts, see your Windows NT Server documentation.

Look at the disk and pages/sec counters to determine which disk is the problem. If paging is high, the disk containing the pagefile is causing the problem.

To improve disk use do any of the following:

• Move Microsoft Exchange Server transaction logs to either another physical disk or another physical disk that is using a disk controller other than the one the disk containing the databases is using.
• Restrict the amount or type of mail users can send.
• Add more RAM, and run Performance Optimizer to increase the database buffers.
• Add more disks to the stripe set.
• Use multiple disk controllers.