--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, tmc@... wrote:

>
>
>
> Am running Firebird 1.5.3 Classic on Redhat 8.0 with a Dell 2650

(dual 2.4GHz,

> 4MG RAM). Have about 15 million records in various tables. One in

a while

> (like once a week), the database becomes very busy and slows to

where MS-Access

> programs can't connect properly (using open source odbc V.2.128).

After about

> 20 minutes, the load average (which gets upwards of 28) calms down

to around 2

> and the system is not as busy. Requests start to be processed at

some point

> during this, so it's not quite an 'outage', but becomes very slow.
>
> What is this doing? We were on Interbase before migrating to FB1.5

with a

> backup and restore. It had the habit of becoming slow over time.

Then we

> would do a backup and restore in interbase and it would get faster

again.

>
> What are the mechanisms at work here and how can I tune them to not

cause an

> interruption of service? Even knowing what parameters to monitor

would help

> predict when the interruption would likely occur.
>
> Thanks!
> Tom

Tom,

Have you ruled out the obvious? Scheduled virus scanners running at a
particular time, backup running, or is someone running a huge report
while they are out at lunch. Check gstat -h to see whether you have a
stuck transaction causing a backlog of garbage when it finally
commits. Has your server got enough RAM to manage all those
connections, remembering that each connection gets its own engine, if
you allocate too many buffers etc, you may be running out of RAM and
causing it to page.

Run gbak nightly (outside peak hours). It is good to have a nightly
backup but a nice side effect is that the backup will clean up garbage
as it goes.

What is your bottleneck (CPU / HD / etc)?

Adam