Excel Services Performance.

Question

Hi, 

Does anyone have any tips for improving the performance of Excel Services?

I have a moss 2007 SP2 farm with the following servers:

2 x Load Balanced web front ends
1 x Backend (Running Search & ECS)
1 x Server Running Only ECS

At the moment, my report centre only has one dashboard, comprised of two sheets (~20Mb each), the first time I try to view the dashboard it takes between 2 & 3 mins to display the page, once it's cached, it's quite quick.  Looking at perfmon on the ECS server, both processors (Xeon 3Ghz) go to 100% (IIS Processes) whilst processing the page.  I need to get this load time down signifcantly.

All the servers are Windows 2008 x64

Any tips appreciated.

Stu

Answer 1

Hi Stu,

 

An Excel file should be opened and displayed with Excel Service less than 30% slower than the client.

Could you please clarify how much time does the excel file be opened and calculated in client?

If too much time is needed to perform a calculation in the client side. Please make sure you have optimized the excel file in the client side.

See Improving Performance in Excel 2007 for more information.

 

If your issue continues to persist, please capture a Performance Log with Performance Counters in Excel Services to the workspace for me for further research.

Workspace URL: (https://sftasia.one.microsoft.com/ChooseTransfer.aspx?key=78e42a53-1c33-4ab1-b50c-18ed40684ad9)

Workspace Password: d_il)U85jE!TG

 

If the workbook does not contain sensitive data, please also send the workbook to the workspace so that I could try to make a local reproduce.

 

 

Lambert Qin

TechNet Subscriber Support in forum

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Sincerely,

Lambert Qin

Posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Answer 2

Lambert,

The excel file opens within about 45 Seconds in the excel client, but takes 2 or 3 mins (it varies) in excel services.  I will upload the requested files to the workspace.

Thanks

Stu

Answer 3

Hi Stu,

 

The 40M+ excel file you uploaded cannot displayed using Excel Services in my local, could you please let me know how you use it in your environment?

 

I check the file, there are over 100 thousands records in the files and perform complex calculation. I suppose that is why it opens slowly first time.

Have you consider migrate the records to SQL Server and using BI and reporting service to display the data, and the speed should be fast than using Excel Service as the calculation are running at SQL Server side.

 

I am sorry I could not provide many valuable suggestions because lack of BI programming knowledge and your business processes.

 

Lambert Qin

TechNet Subscriber Support in forum

If you have any feedback on our support, please contact [e-mail]  

---

Sincerely,

Lambert Qin

Posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Answer 4

Lambert,

Thanks for your input, it's been most valuable.  I'll pass the data over to our BI guy & let me see what he can do.

Many Thanks

Stu