We received a nasty gram from the ISP that hosts Norwescon's website, a local science fiction convention I help run, that our DNN site is just hammering their SQL server. Here's the content of their e-mail:

During an investigation into the high resource usage on the MSSQL server Raptor it was discovered that your database NwcDNN4 was in the top 5 databases for resource usage on the server for both CPU usage and memory usage. It was also the top database for reads and writes with both being in excess of 5000 within 5 minutes of a restart of the MSSQL service. Since this is a shared resource we simply can not allow a single database to monopolize on any of the server resources as this causes services to not be available for other hosted databases and affects total server performance.

Since your site is a DNN site it is likely that there are several modules that are not being used and that are contributing to the overal resource usage for your database. You will need to take steps to reduce both the CPU usage and the memory usage for your database otherwise your account could face further action. If you are not able to make any changes to your DNN configuration to reduce the total resource usage of the site then you would need to look into hiring someone to make the changes for you or upgrading to a dedicated server.

Currently your domain is suspended on the Arcturus server. This step was taken to effectively reduce the load on the Raptor MSSQl server. Your account was one of many that has been affected by this action and it was necessary to stabilize the services on the Raptor server. Once you have agreed to make the necessay changes to your site or have decided to upgrade to a dedicated server we can restore access to your domain. However your database would need to remain offline until such time as the site files were modified to better handle the database connections.

Being that I am brand new to this anc I am having problems location information on these problems, does some have pointers to trouble shooting this?

Thanks!

Rory

I'm a little frustrated here as I was not the one who did the initial configuration of the system. Do you have a pointer to a reference to remove the modules or discover which modules are installed so they can be removed? Googling for documentation on how do this seemingly basic task did not yield anything useful.

Thanks!
Rory

Well, I'm not sure you're getting the best advice here. I'm not sure how uninstalling modules that you are not using will reduce your SQL server usage. It might reduce your footprint, but won't reduce your database usage. Your ISP is not complaining about the 'size' of your database, but the number of transactions that are being executed. I would check your log settings and scheduler settings. First it would help us to understand the scope of your site before we can get more specific...

- how many portals? just one? or do you have multiple portals?
- how many tabs?
- how many registered users?
- what is your site's approximate usage per day? # hits?
- If you are unsure how to get access to your site logs, ask your ISP. Check the site logs, take a look at your SQL database. There are some simple queries that you can run against your database that might help you determine what all the transactions are that are being executed. If you can see what the huge volume of SQL transactions are you should be able to backtrace them to DNN to see what's causing them.

As I mentioned, the first things I would check are your logs to see if something unexpected is happening. It could be an error condition that is causing a lot of log records to be written.

- Go to Admin->Site Log and see if any application errors are being logged
- Go to Admin->Event Viewer and look to see if a large number of exceptions are being thrown
- Go to Host->Schedule and see which scheduled events are turned on