In an attempt to blog shorter, but relevant and immediately useful 'stuff', I plan on blogging more, but with less rigidity.
So, here are a few tips to boost your SharePoint performance with very little effort.
1. Move your usage analysis files to a drive other than C:.
2. Move your IIS logs from C:
3. Move your Index from C:
4. Move your trace logs from C:
(are you seeing the OOB pattern here that can kill your system drive performance?)
5. Consider if you really need to check anti-virus on upload and download. Maybe pick one that suits you best?
6. Don't round-trip Active Directory. In other words, use Kerberos when possible.
7. Don't round-trip SQL. In other words, BLOB cache, object cache, output cache, and IIS compress 12Hive files.
8. Put your data files and transaction log files on different spindles in SQL
9. Don't trace log unless you are troubleshooting, only eventvwr.exe. Of course, there are exceptions to this. But, be careful turning up event or trace logging too high. (don't even think about logging ALL for verbose and information!!)
10. If your Index server is also running other apps, consider de-tuning the indexer by reducing performance on the service (Central Administration, Operations, Services on Server)
11. Don't use auditing excessively, unless you have a valid business requirement
12. Use caution will 'roll-up' Web parts on very busy pages
13. Change the SQL default filegrowth settings
cheers.
-ben