"find-operation" crashes file server

I am working as a system administrator in a small NT 4.0 and DG-UNIX environment. I have about 30 users which work as Oracle and C++ programmers.

These users need to search on a regular base for certain keys on a 8 GB shared volume. This volume has about 13% free space left. I was quite surprised to see that this increases the network utilization from 2-7% to 70-80%. Hardware we are running are Compaq Proliant 2500 computers with a 200 MHz Pentium Pro CPU and a RAID 5 configuration.

After some very high network utilization a network error occurs and we loose all connections with the PDC and BDC's. It takes about 5 minutes till users are able to browse/access the network again.

Last week Friday such a "find-operation" crashed our file server.

In a few weeks we are going to migrate all our data to a new Compaq Proliant 3000 server but I am not convinced that this is going to solve our problem...

I wonder if any one had a similar problem and if there is a way to prevent such a dramatic network utilization (mixed 10 and 100 MBPS Ethernet environment).

Your advice is very much appreciated!

With kind regards,

Rudjer Flatz-Stransky Received on Tue Nov 30 1999 - 15:23:07 CST