On Tue, 2 Oct 2001 14:46:56 -0400 you said:
>We have just dramatically upgraded our hardware for our Listserver, from a
>350 mhz, 128 MB RAM, 10 GB HD WIN NT 4.0 to a 1000 mhz, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB
>HD, WIN2K SP2.  We do several mass emails involving several huge bulk
>adds.  On our old system it took up to 45 min to add 20,000 users to a
>list.  The CPU would also be maxed out, average about 95% cpu time during
>the add.  This would stall listserv performance until it was done, so the
>listserv was not accessible through email or the web interface for 45
>minutes.
>
>Now with our new server the performance gains haven't been inspiring.  It
>takes upwards of 30 minutes to do a 20,000 user add, disabling listerv
>(email and web interface).  But with the new server the CPU seems to be
>barely used, averaging 2% cpu time.  The Listserv software isn't using all
>the resources available on this new machine.  Is there anyway to increase
>the performance of the Listserv.  I have changed the optimization levels to
>the highest recommended values to no avail.  How can I make sure Listserv
>is using greatly improved hardware resources.

I am not sure how it can be taking so long for you to add 20K users.  I
have a machine that is similar to yours (1GHz PIII, 1/2 the RAM, same
OS, 7200RPM 60GB HD) and I was able to add 20K users to a list in .491
seconds.  This was with LISTSERV HPO, BTW; you don't indicate if you have
HPO or not.  Here is the log:

2 Oct 2001 14:35:15 To   [log in to unmask]: ADD: no error, 20,000 reci
pients added, no entry changed, no duplicate, none (...)
VCPU=0.300 TCPU-VCPU=0.160 Elapsed: 0.491 sec
2 Oct 2001 14:35:15 Sent information mail to [log in to unmask]

The bulk add job looked like this:

// job echo=no
TIME QUIET ADD BIG DD=X IMPORT
//X DD *,EOF
(20K addresses, one per line)

Even with non-HPO Classic I was able to add the users in just over a
minute and a half:

2 Oct 2001 14:42:38 To   [log in to unmask]: ADD: no error, 20,000 reci
pients added, no entry changed, no duplicate, none (...)
VCPU=78.032 TCPU-VCPU=21.140 Elapsed: 99.974 sec
2 Oct 2001 14:42:38 Sent information mail to [log in to unmask]

You don't indicate if this is a DBMS list so I don't know if that's part
of the equation.  Certainly loading the data into a DBMS list would take
longer but I'm not in a position to test that at the moment.

Bottom line, LISTSERV is capable of doing what you want faster than your
server seems to be doing it.  I don't know what other factors might be
involved but my machine is pretty much vanilla at this point (I just
built it two weeks ago so I haven't had time to load it up).

Nathan