Zimbra Network Edition faster?

[hans@toplanguagejobs.com]

Hi,

Been running Zimbra Open Source edition for just about 205 days now (checked our uptime ) and it has been a good solution so far.

However, one thing that has been an issue is the speed.

We are running a Quad Xeon 3GHz server with 2 gigabytes of memory running Ubuntu 6.10.

We probably have around 40 odd user accounts, 100 or so aliases and perhaps 2 dozen distribution lists, hosting more than 10+ domains.

And so the issue with speed comes down to that many of our users are complaining that they get network errors while using the Zimbra Web/Ajax interface. It has gotten progressively worse over time, in particular, since I last added a new domain to Zimbra and created 8 users for that domain about a week ago.

I do realize a couple of issues which may be related. For example, 2 gigabytes of memory for Zimbra is realistically too little. Memory gets quickly maxed out after starting Zimbra services and hovers around 1500MB out of the 2027MB, while swap space is around 1430MB out of 2863MB (in an ideal world, swap space should be next to none, right?). In addition, the typical load average of the server is around 4.00 - 5.00, although this can easily go up to 9.0 (have never seen figures that high on our other servers). So, one of the things I will be doing is upgrading memory.

However, I also believe its also to do with the Ajax interface being less than responsive on some machines, in particular the less powerful client desktop, and so we are considering our options and whether upgrading to the Zimbra Network Edition. Does ZNE have any inherent speed improvements over the Open Source Edition (ie, in the software package itself or in the web interface?)?

Many regards

[uxbod]

Welcome to the forums

NE and FOSS are basically the same apart from some additional functionality. It would help if you let us know which version of ZCS you are running

su - zimbra
zmcontrol -v

Ajax is heavy on the client end, but the lazy loading should take care of some of those problems. Have a look at http://www.zimbra.com/forums/adminis...ch-window.html aswell.

[Klug]

What kind of errors are your clients experiencing ?
Do they get popups with messages such as "Empty HTTP response" ?

[hans@toplanguagejobs.com]

uxbod:
thanks great to be here

The version we are running is
Release 4.5.8_GA_1394.UBUNTU6 UBUNTU6 FOSS edition

the pc's we are running as clients aren't the fastest pc's in the world. They are running Windows 2000 with 1 gig ram and a pentium 4 1.5 GHz processor. Doesn't seem to make much difference between Firefox and IE, although I'm considering trying it on FF3, as it apparently has a fast javascript engine. just to see if that improves it somewhat.

Klug:
I can't recall exactly at this moment what the error is, as I use Thunderbird to connect via imap and so I haven't had the issue myself. Its definately a 'network error' type popup message, but I will try to get the exact error message for you from one of my collegues as soon as it shows up. But, if I recall correctly, my suspicion is that its a network error in which its unable to establish a connection with the server; i imagine the server didn't respond fast enough the for ajax routine.

[Klug]

If your users are getting popup errors, you should check the server NIC setup and the corresponding switch port setup.

We hit this kind of issues by a customer : the more they added accounts to their ZCS server, the more they were getting these errors.

We eventually found out the NIC in the server was setup in "100 Mbps Full Duplex" mode while the switch port was in "autonegociation". We forced the both at "100 Mbps Full Duplex" and it was fixed...

[hans@toplanguagejobs.com]

I wouldn't imagine so, but I could have a look. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to until some point next week, as the servers are hosted remotely. But I will mark that down as something to look into. Would the kernel report this in one of its logs? as i can remote via ssh

[Klug]

Originally Posted by hans@toplanguagejobs.com

I wouldn't imagine so

You don't have any idea of all the things we tried before this basic check...
However, I'm not saying you're hitting the same problem, just telling what solved the "popup errors" problem there was.

Originally Posted by hans@toplanguagejobs.com

Would the kernel report this in one of its logs? as i can remote via ssh

We had errors on the switch side.

[hans@toplanguagejobs.com]

fair enough. I'll definately consider that, but i guess for the time being, its still uncertain what the problem is.

[hans@toplanguagejobs.com]

I can confirm now that the error my colleagues are getting is the following error:

A network error has occurred.
Empty HTTP response

So, I dunno, could be a switch issue, but could it also be just a general error that the server is unable to respond for any reason?