CitrixEngineer and other Citrix Gurus - Seen this one before?

[CyberThug]

Environment:
Compaq proliant 800
NT4.0 TSE W/SP6a Dual PIII 500 CPU With 500MB
MF1.8 W/SP3
OfficeXP

ISP Connection:
640K/S DSL at both Locations


We have about 25 users but only 10-15 users are on at the most. THey are running words, excel, and two access db at the most. I just rebuild the server last week because they said it was too slow and someone installed some spyware that killed the RPC services. It's been running for a week now. As far as I can tell it's running faster then b4.

Problem:
Some users are complaining why their session are too slow at times and at other time it's ok speed. The login process seemed fine for now and at good speed. THeir profile have been set to max at 3mb in the policy.

I am sick of these people complaining. Nothing seemed to please them. Is there anything I should check or do? I've monitor the process and as far as I can see there's plenty of resources on the server to utilize. Is the hardware I have sufficient enough for the operation that is present?

Any help would be great. Thanks in advance.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

I'd feel more comfortable with 1Gb RAM - even if they're only running Word, Excel and Access, it's possible that the files could be quite large. Dual 500s should be fine for that number of users.

Also, by implication, they seem to be running Internet Explorer, which can be a terrible memory hog. Can this be locked down (via the Res Kit)?

Do you have a regular reboot cycle? With NT4-based servers, I used to find that once a week was OK, but twice was better.

Last tip for now; use the system yourself, if you do not already - do all your work via Published Apps or a Custom Connection to a desktop. Do you think performance sucks? If so, what, specifically? Can it be monitored using perfmon? Can you upgrade to MetaFrame 1.8a on Windows 2000 without going through the normal budget rows?

I hope some of this is helpful CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[DexX7]

I am running a similiar setup to you. I found that caching from a slow client pc or workstation can cause this issue. Try clearing the cache on your clients or not caching at all. Different clients respond differently in different environments. You may find that your clients benefit from caching. If so, play with the cache settings until you find what works best in your environment.

Also, just a thought, do you have heavy Internet browsing that can be zapping your bandwidth at times???

Hope this helps

 

[CyberThug]

Engineer and Dex77,

Thanks for the tips and thanks for making my day! I'll implement them and see what the result is.

CT

 

[byteya]

I have found Access to be a big hog. Start up a monitor to watch utilization on the Citrix server. Have people call you when it is very slow and check to see what other users are up to. *J*

 

[Philly44]

I work in on a LAN qith about 200 citrix users within a farm of about 4 citrix servers(all fairly fast). Although we are running w2k server. Their is a kown issue with IE causing this very poblem of thing sbogging down. It plays a start up sound that whether you allow sound or not still runs in the background. THis sound beleive it or not will bog down the fastest servers out there. I would look into that if I were you, once we discovered it on citrix's site it cleared up a ot of headaches.

Hope this helps a little