Main Citrix server in farm stops responding

[clubleo]

I have an interesting problem. I'm running 2 metaframe 1.8 tse servers. The main server in the farm is a dual processor 800mhz with 1 gig of ram for each chip. The 'little' server, which was built to be kind of a backup is a regular 1.2 single processor desktop with 512 of ram. The problem is that the big guy (dual processor) stops responding all the time and then the little guy jumps in and takes over. The thing is, the little guy can't handle all of the logons like the big guy can. My question is, why does the big fella stop responding all the time? Secondly, what is a best practice type of thing for me to do for redundancy? ANY help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Any event log information you can dig up would be useful - otherwise it's difficult to tell why your main machine keeps halting.

As for the second point, pairs of identically specced servers are best for a MetaFrame farm, preferably running the Load Balancing service. If you have that already, then maybe there are some parameters that have already been configured that are causing the problems.

This doesn't provide redundancy per se, but it does provide what Citrix like to call "High Availability"; if one server fails, the other will accept logins on its behalf.

Hope this helps CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[wilsona]

Check that the ICA Browser Service has not stopped. Reboot to fix.

 

[Illuvatar]

To addon to the reply of CitrixEngineer:

In a farm, there must always be a master browser. If the dedicated master browser fails, then another server takes this role. Even if you assigned: never become the master browser. There has to be always a master browser!

Next, I am also interested in stop codes. Often stopcode 0x50 appears or 0x0a. They almost always point to driver problems, especially HP Driver problems. Check to see that you do have the proper printer drivers. In this form CitrixEngineer published an excellent site which shows the proper HP drivers on a metaframe farm.

 

[clubleo]

I have designated the Big fella to be the master browser and I set up the little fella to never attempt to be the master browser. Is this setting correct? Also, when I do a qserver /load, I never see the big fella's load, only the little fella. I'm also getting evidence that the big fella isn't quite right. Whenever I load MS Office 2k, it crashes my system. I have raid 5 on the big fella. Is it necessary?

Thanks

 

[Illuvatar]

The only reason why the little fella - haven't heard that name before - always becomes the master browser could be because the master browser version is more recent then the big one. For example, if you have MF SP3 on the little one and MF SP2 on the big one, the little one will become the master browser. The best thing to do is: make sure that both servers contain the same service packs and hotfixes. Then shut them both down. Bring up the big one first. Make sure that Allways attempt to become the MB is selected. Next bring up the little one. Make sure that Never become the MB is selected. That should do the trick.