Load Evaluators ?'s

[bstamper]

I have two MF XPe 1.0 servers running Windows 2003 Server Standard. The specs of my servers are below:

1.
Dual Xeon 2.8GHz
4GIG DDR RAM

2.
Dual Pent. 3 800Mhz
4GIG PC133 RAM

My problem is this. I currently have them set using the Advanced Load Evaluators for the servers and my Published Desktop.

Today I got about 30 users on total so about 15 per server and users started calling saying they were getting the message that the servers were reporting full load and to try again later to log on. I looked at the Load Manager Monitor and the culprit seemed to be the page swaps. The Memory Usage and CPU Utilization seem fine. I opend the windows performance monitor and it shows nasty spikes in the pages/sec. Any ideas on this? Its got me confused. I would think 15 users on a Xeon 2.8 w/ 4 gig of ram would be cake. They claim 20 users per processor or so i've read.
I would ask if I should just create a custom load evaluator but for some reason this just doesn't seem right to me?
Thanks,
Brian

 

[KCDave03]

Brian, I have a dual 1.4 Ghz w/ 2 GB RAM supporting up to 25 users. We have pretty much benchmarked our application requirements prior to roll out to determine how many approximate users each server can support. Consequently, I have been using the number of users metric to dtermine when a server is loaded. I feel that combining the other metrics can make the variables too difficult to interpret unless you can quantify a particular usage concern such as memory or processor. I hope this helps you a little.

good luck

 

[robros]

Just to add my two cents.

I have six dual 2.8 gig with 2 gigs of ram each running win2000 server. Each server has about 12-15 users each and I still run into problems with users freezing. I have been told that there is no majic formula for citrix. I am seeking answers as well. I hope you can find answers I am still looking.

Your Al Meyers Kid..You Look Pretty Stupid To me.

 

[Ogi]

Hi,

Use the default load evaluator that bases it's calcs on User Load, you should get more users on! I get the Advanced one stopping my users logging on, put the default load on and more users get on!

Carl.

 

[RyanB18]

I was also having this issue, so a guy here at work with me and myself created a new load balance, We currently run about 25 users per server (2 servers) and they both have 2Gb of ram and dual processors. I just had to also do a memory upgrade one server was only running off 1 GB while the other was at 2 GB with this said, the memory upgrade with the custom load balance solved this issue for us. Hope that helps.

Ryan

 

[patrickrouse]

I'm reading this and don't see anyone addressing "what is using up the resources"? A dual-xeon terminal server (with or withour Citrix) can handle as many as 75-100 concurrent sessions if setup correctly and you know what applications need to be "managed". Sure there are instances where everyone uses process & memory intensive apps which really tax a terminal server, and limit the number of concurrent sessions it can handle, but identifying those programs and either segregating them or restricting what resources they can consume can go a long way.

If your servers are doing excessive swapping you need to see what processes are demanding the most RAM. Also be aware that a server with 2GB of RAM only has 1GB available for applications and the other is reserved for system processes, so going to 4GB of RAM can make a huge difference in the amount of users a server can accomidate.

There are 3rd party products out there that can help to tame programs that use excessive resources using techniques like lowering process priority, affinity or clamping the amount of memory/CPU a certain application can use. These products include, but are not limited to Relevos, Appsense Performance Manager, TScale, TMULimit...

Full list here:

http://www.workthin.com/tsao.htm

In addition to this Brian Madden wrote an excellent paper on Tuning the performance of Terminal Servers, which is availalble here:

http://www.workthin.com/TSPerfTuning.pdf

Here's one by Citrix:

http://www.workthin.com/mftunetip.pdf

Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server

http://www.workthin.com

 

[mjbianco15]

We have 6 DL380's (Dual 2.4-3.2Ghz w/3.5GB RAM)...we carry an average load of 30 users a day on each box with a max at around 50-55 publishing full desktops. He had the same problems in the beginning with freezing after 10 users logged in. Between BIOS/Firmware updates, driver updates, changing some folder redirection policies, and a few registry tweaks we were able to overcome the freezing. We also purchased the write-back cache option after the fact which helped tremendously. Our last bench mark we hit 60 users working fine on the new 3.2Ghz w/1MB of Cache.