Citrix Delays 2

[terrywilson]

Our farm is MF XP1.0 SP2 with all servers set on FR1. I have two problems; the first of which I know how to fix but will mention anyway -

A. When loading a published application, the loading your setting screen apperas, login scripts windows run and then the screen returns back to the neighborhood for up to five minutes and then the application suddenly appears; with no hour glass or indication the program is running. The session is connected on the server but the ap has not launched. It seems to go away when you up the fr to 2, but I have been unable to do that as I am having some funny behaviour moving from fr1 to fr2 with printers not being autocreated; I am seeking to resolve this by moving all of the printers to login scripts and getting rid of autocreated printers; but thats another story altogether.

B. This is whats really bothering me; users are getting pauses when using citrix - typing in docs etc and they seem to be hanging up for five - ten seconds before resuming. Does anyone have any idea on how to troubleshoot this? I am watching perfmon from my machine, just of cpu and mem and I am not seeing anything glaringly obvious. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Also good would be some citrix tuning tips if anyone has them? I have pulled down a few off th enet and am just working through the advanced concepts for metaframe administration which itself has a few ideas.

Thanks all.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

This looks a bit like the Windows 2000 SP4 issue (well, one of them...)

http://www.tokeshi.com/modules.php?...e=article&sid=783&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Tokeshi has a stack of good tuning tips as well.

Hope this helps

 

[terrywilson]

Having read on tokeshi previously I haven't been game to sp4 our citrix boxes.

 

[xs4citrix]

Regarding your problem in A:

In FR2, citrix changed autocreated network printing from ica (Client\clientname#\\\printserver\printername) to MS SMB (\\printserver\printername).
This has caused quite some people problems, so citrix created a hotfix, to revert back to ica printing. (CTX102308 item 20)

If you use FR3, the hotfix is included, and you only need to set the mentioned regkey to revert back to ica printing.

Regarding your problem in B:

I think this has been adressed in one of the latest fixes, but since you run an old FR/SP combination, i am not sure on how to advise. Any chance on going to FR3/SP3 with the latest hotfixes?

http://www.printingsupport.com

Free citrixprinting support

 

[terrywilson]

xs4Citrix; nice, I had just seen a reference to CTX102308 under the knowledgebase on Citrix. I can't take the risk of messing their printers, so I am still stuck with the chore of setting up mappings for autocreating them during login.

As for a fix resolving pauses; I would love to hear more about that if anyone has any ideas? I'm not seeing anything peaking out on the performance counters; just the system lags momentarily; it would definitely be a good motivator for upgrading.

Thanks

 

[bran2235]

Hey Terry,

I have 17 remote offices working off of my XPe farm (MF2, SP2- W2kSP3)... In regards to your 'pauses' I would like to take a stab at it and say Bandwidth. What kind of bandwidth do you have on your Circuits? Are folks on you LAN having the same pauses?? If so, is the duration the same? Are you using Speed Screen on your Thin Clients or are you using ICA 'Fat' Clients/desktops???

Brandon

 

[terrywilson]

bran, I wish I could blame it on our WAN links; but the problems are also happening back here at Head Office on our LAN.

 

[MattWray]

Terry, have a look at this,

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324446

I used the hotfix and the reg hacks, and it fixed my pauses. Try and notice if it seems to happen more during logon times, like first thing in the morning... Worked wonders for me, thank the CitrixEngineer for turning me onto it....

Thanks,

Matt Wray
MCSE, MCSA, MCP, CCNA

http://www.sss-steel.com

 

[terrywilson]

Matt, thats another good link. Sadly, I have been down that road with one of my servers and it "broke" it already. I did the hotfix and then the system bluescreened on bootup.

Sigh.

 

[Ogi]

Are these Office applications? If so, can you get your users to disable auto spell check and auto grammar and see if that helps your situation?

Also, just for info, what are your:-

Processor(s)
Memory
Page File
Free Space on System Drive
Anti Virus
Anti Virus Settings - What do you scan?

Cheers,
Carl.

 

[terrywilson]

Dual P3 1.11 ghz
2gb RAM
1gb Page file (doesn't even get 20% util)
NAV Corp 8.0, realtime enabled, notes support


The main apps we use are IBM Client Access 5, Office 2k (Excel mainly) Notes 5 and Prism

I have noticed that the processor queue length is way up there. During the day its hitting up to 100. We have had a few new users on (Another 40 bringing us to about 180 average across 7 servers, each user running 6 or so apps)

I checked the interrupt % and its down at < 1% most of the time so I am wondering if my servers are just too slow?

 

[Ogi]

Rather than looking so deep, how about logging into a desktop session and watching Task Manager and see what is running at what processor utilisation?

I'm not sure on Client Access or Prism but Notes can be a hog and am sure that there are issues, what is the spec of your notes server? What number of users are you getting on your Citrix box before it starts lagging?

Cheers,
Carl.