Question : Performance issues on 2003 x64 Server - disk queue length

We recently acquired a new client that has a custom built server.  It's a 64-bit system running Windows 2003 Standard Server x64 with 12GB of RAM and two quad-core processors.  They experience severe performance issues throughout the day and I suspect it is the way the RAID was configured.  The RAID controller is an Intel ESB2 SATA with 4 drives in a RAID-5 config as one large volume.  It is running Exchange 2007, SQL, VMWare, CA eTrust 8.1.  It also functions as a domain controller, file and print, DNS, DHCP, etc...  Basically it is the only server in their organization.  Performance monitor shows high disk queue length - frequently reaching above 100 - and sometimes for several minutes.  Also, the Memory Pages/Sec has gotten as high as 16800.  The free physical RAM is about half and processor usage is always low.  I was thinking the performance issue is due to the fact that the paging file, exchange database, sql database, and virtual machines are all on the C: drive.  I made sure the RAID controller has the latest 64-bit driver installed.  Is there anything else I should check to narrow down where the bottleneck is?  There are 2 available ports on the RAID controller.  I was thinking of adding another drive as a 2nd volume and at least move the paging file and virtual machines off of the C: drive.  Do you think this would help any?

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Answer : Performance issues on 2003 x64 Server - disk queue length

Ideally you'd want raid 1 for the c drive and then raid 5 or raid10 (better for databases apparenlty) for the apps on a second controller but that probably doesn't help you much here but i'd work towards that. Sounds like your issue is due to everything being on the same volume. I woulkd try what you're suggesting personally.