Client Need more Speed -- Upgrade?, Buy?, ... Help!!

[apphog]

Hello all,


For your info, here is our setting:

Server
--OS: Windows 2003
--P4 3.0 w/ 2GB Ram
--NIC: Gigabit Nic
--Applications use by clients: Stock Application and Data Feed
---Stock application showing many graphs using the Data Feed.

Workstation 1,2,3,4,5
--OS: Widnows XP
--P4 3.0 w/ 1GB Ram
--NIC: Gigabit NIC

Switch
--Gigabit Switch

Internet Connection
--Cable Modem


Problem:
When workstation 1,2,3,4,5 all connect to the server and open the stock application, it runs very very slow on all workstations. But if only three workstations connected then the speed is okay.


Questions:

1. Do I need to buy new server? like dual xeon server?

2. Do I need more ram?

3. If I upgrade to Dual or Quad Port NIC card then is it going to be any help on the speed? And is it hard to configure this NIC on Citrix or windows 2003 server?

4. Any help will be great.



And sorry for my limited english.


Thank you,

Jimmy

 

[tf1]

Jimmy

You need to establish which area is causing the slow down. This could be server needing more RAM, Processing power, better disk I/O or it may be Network congestion.

Don't just throw money at a solution though without investigating where the problem(s) lay. You can use the server tools to check the memory, processor usage disk I/O demands. If you have a good managed Switch, you should have network management tools that let you monitor network usage.

Citrix should have low network demands (that is the purpose of Citrix), so Network congestion is less likely.

In my experience, a Citrix server should support 20 - 25 users but it would need 4GB memeory to run that numbeer of users: 2Gb should be sufficient for 5 users.

What you haven't mentioned is what disks you have in the server. Ideally for Citrix we would recommend a pair of fast RAID 1 (mirrored) disks for the OS and a RAID 5 array for the data. So what you may need is a properly specified server.

But before you purchase anything, use the utilities you have to find out what the demands are on your current setup.


Regards: tf1

 

[lb63640]

Also, check and see if you have some funky antivirus setting that may be assessing every action a user requests.

I had one user complaining that EVERYTHING took longer on her session than anyone else. It turns out that Norton Antivirus checked every file BEFORE it opened. We changed the settings around and life was much better.

 

[apphog]

Thank you all for help.

 

[ascotta]

Stock application showing many graphs using the Data Feed

This is probably the bottleneck. Now I couldn't possibly tell at the mo whether its internet or the ?real time graphs?.

Can you run the app outside of citrix and see if more than 3 w/s cause a slow down ? If so then its the Internet connection.

If not then its probably the Citrix server sending out the vdu updates.

Probably worth a bit of effort to narrow it down a bit before splashing the cash!!

[blue] A perspective from the other side!![/blue]

Cheers
Scott

 

[itsp1965]

Before looking at the hardware/OS..

Is this application designed to be run under terminal services/Citrix? I have worked in environments whereby the application is extremely CPU intensive thus we had to limit the amount of users on the server. You may have possibly reached your max usage at 3 users.
I would recommend contacting your application vendor's support site for recommendations on tuning your environment for Citrix (if possible).

 

[strella]

[ol]
[li]Would the apps, applications, have a significant db, data base, Access or MySql or whatever.
[/li]
[li]Can you distinguish between app and db CPU usage in task manager?
[/li]
[/ol]

If the db is sucking down CPU at three users it may really not handle four or more but there are things to try.

[ol]
[li]Does your db have a "re-Index" or "optimize" function for the data bases or tables? If so try them, else
[/li]

[li]Use database methods to backup, clean out (delete, remove) all tables, then restore the data bases which will eliminate unused records and indexes and can double the performance of a data base.
[/li]

[/ol]

Otherwise, it may be upgrade time.

Apologies if you've already done these things.