Terminal Server Perfomance Issues

[Mark Kray]

Hi all, I'm having some performance issues with my Windows 2000 Terminal
Server users that are driving me nuts. Most of the problems revolve around
slow response to user input and 3-4 frozen sessions per day. Average usage
is 30 sessions total, with 2gigs of physical memory available and 7 gigs of
virtual memory available. There are no system or application errors
recorded, bandwidth utilization is low and there are no packet errors

Environment
-Server
Compaq Proliant
4gigs RAM
4 x 3.2 gig intel pentium 4
Windows 2000 server

-Clients
WYSE winterm

We are running Tricerat/Thor.

Thanks,
Mark

 

[Guest]

Without knowing what you've already tried, the quickest fix is to add more
RAM. With 30 concurrent users this leaves 33.3MB of RAM for each user (1GB
/30), which may not be enough, depending on which apps you use (the other 1GB
is dedicated to system processes). If you use 4GB of ram that'll give you
2GB or RAM for user processes.

Aside from lack of Physical Memory, there are many many things that can
cause performance problems:

1. Rogue Applications hogging CPU cycles (monitor with System Monitor
Control)
2. Improperly installed applications, or applications that aren't tuned for
multi-user OS (http://www.workthin.com/tsao.htm)
3. Background spellcheck & grammar checking in Microsoft Office (turn it off)
4. Spyware
5. Bad hardware drivers & BIOS, i.e. NIC, SCSI HD, RAID Controllers, System
BIOS...
6. 3rd party printer drivers

Are you monitoring the system performance?

Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
http://www.workthin.com

 

[Mark Kray]

Thanks Patrick. We haven't tried anything yet, as we have no clues to the
cause. All the system monitor counters look fairly optimal. I've run all the
high level Perfmon counters recommended by microsoft and haven't seen
anything abnormal. Total CPU usage rarely exceeds 50%, though occasionally
spikes to 75% and the servers usually have around 2 gigs of free RAM. I do
suspect that the optimization scripts were not run when Office was
installed, that is the next thing I'm looking at.

Thanks for the Suggestions,

Mark

 

[Guest]

If the TERMSERV or similiar transform was nor used to install Office 2000
you're likely to have all sorts of problems. Just look at the install source
in the registry, which will tell you whether or not it was used. If it was
not used,use the make a backup, uninstall Office 2000 & reinstall using the
MST from the resource kit.

Setting up a terminal server to work flawlessly takes some planning and
testing. Imagine how ofter 30 users would mess-up their own PC, then add all
of those problems to one machine (your terminal server).

Another item that can reap instant benefits is to put the page file on its'
own spindle or RAID array, i.e. OS & Programs on RAID1 + Page file on single
disk, RAID0 or RAID1.