Novell File Access Latency

[ScottHarrison]

We have an ongoing problem that I'm trying to address. Our employees have their home drives (H mapped to various Novell volumes. Departmental shares are also stored on Novell volumes. When opening a document off the network, .doc, .xls, .mdb, .ppt, there is a 20-30 second latency before the document is opened, regardless of how large the files are. I removed the Novell client on one workstation and put a 9MB Powerpoint document on an NT4 share and the document opened up in like 7 seconds. I believe the document would have opened up even faster but the NT server was a Pentium Pro200 with older SCSI disks. Several Novell volumes are attached to Fibre Channel SCSI drives configured on our SAN. There is major throughput between Novell Servers (4.11) and SAN storage (gigabit fibre into Broacade gigabit switch). The problem also exists on Novell servers (4.11) with local storage. We are running switched 100MB ethernet to each desktop. All the workstations reporting this problem are running NT Workstation 4.0 with Novell Client 4.71. I'm running 2000 Professional with Novell Client 4.8 and have also seen the latency. I'm convinced the Novell Client is the source of the latency. I've upgraded several workstations to the Novell Client for NT/2000/XP ver. 4.83 and although there was an improvement in load times 3-4 seconds better, they were still not as quick as the test I did off the NT share. An interesting symptom to report, after installing the Novell Client 4.83 on an NT4 workstation, the 9MB Powerpoint doc stored on the NT share opened up in 12-13 seconds as opposed to 7 without the client. Anyone seen this symptom in their environments?

Thanks,
Scott

 

[TheLad]

What SP are you running on your NW servers? Also are they configured for 100Mb Half Duplex or Full? -----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
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[yizhar]

HI.

You should also check for client and application issues.
What version of MS office used?
Is journaling turned off in Outlook options? (known problem in Office 97)
Are you running "Find Fast" (better not)?

Did you try with another file, let say a 10mb BMP picture, what happens now?

You can try my simple "TestFile" utility to check for application layer network performance and compare file access speeds for Netware/NT shared drives:

http://teachers.sivan.co.il/yizhar#NUTS

Bye
Yizhar Hurwitz

http://come.to/yizhar

http://teachers.sivan.co.il/yizhar

 

[ScottHarrison]

We're running SP9 with post-sp9 SNMP fixes. The Netware servers in question are running 100/full. All clients are forced 100/full, NOT autodetect. We are running Office97 sr-2b. I tried opening a 59mb .tif file off the same Novell server and had a response of 10-15 seconds. Seems like Office 97 might be the culprit. This has certainly been an eye-opener. I will next test the same 9mb Powerpoint document on an NT4 Workstation running Office 2000 with latest service pack. I will try Office XP with latest service pack as well. Is it a fair test to use the same .ppt file with these Office suites? What I mean is this, is it possible that the 9mb Powerpoint97 document will reproduce the same latency when opened on Office 2000/XP due to the fact that the file was originally created using Powerpoint97? Perhaps I should create a new 9mb Powerpoint document using Office 2000 or Office XP natively? Is the Find Fast utility found in any other location aside from the 'Startup' folder? I always remove the shortcut to 'Find Fast' when I find it there. Thank you both for taking time to reply to my question!! I will post the results as soon as I can.

 

[TheLad]

I think you're on the right testing track. As long as the document will open, it should not matter what version of Office it was created in if you believe Office 97 to be the culprit.

Also, are you running the latest Service Pack for Office 97? I understand from the MS site it is SP 2b and can be found at the link below:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/office97pro/sr2bof9/SR-2b/WIN98/EN-US/sr2bof97.exe

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"It's true, its damn true!"
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[Jetter]

Hi,

Just wondering if you ever solved this problem. We too have exact delay of nearly 30 seconds when trying to access of a file of any type from the SYS volume. The delay only occurs when the volume has not been accessed for about 10 or 15 minutes. It is driving us crazy!

Thanks,
Shawn

 

[TheLad]

What hardware are you using for your server? Does it incorporate any "sleep" modes? -----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
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