Outlook XP and Citrix CPU Utilization 1

[pszoke]

I have been fighting this for months now and am running out of ideas.

Setup

Two load balanced Citrix servers with dual 1.4 Ghz processors, 2GB of RAM, mirrored 18GB, 10,000RPM SCSI drives, MF XP SP3/FR3, Windows 2000 SP3. Have Outlook setup to NOT use Word as E-Mail Editor through an administrative template policy on both servers. Outlook XP installed with SP2 applied. 20-30 users on each server although problem occurs with as few as 5 users on each system...

Problem

Periodically the server CPU jumps to 50% utilization with Outlook.exe for approximately 5 secs or so. All other users complain then of a delay in typing and screen changes. I can watch this all day long. CPU is going along at 1-2% utilization and then all of the sudden 40-50% utilization with Outlook.exe! Does anyone have any advise before I buy another server which I don't even know will help the issue?

Thanks

 

[JohnTcolo]

You might try giving Outlook a lower CPU priority. Do this thru the CMC and the applications properties.

 

[xs4citrix]

Disable alternative text input:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;282599

http://www.printingsupport.com

Free citrixprinting support

 

[pszoke]

xs4citrix,

Already did that. I feel that I did correctly by the fact that CTFMON does not load for everyone along with Citrix as it used to. It seemed to help a little but these spikes are driving me nuts. They last anywhere from 5 -10 secs. and Outlook.exe is the service that I am watching. Anything else I can try?

 

[Ogi]

How many Exchange Servers do you have?

Have you considered putting the IP Address and Computer name in the Hosts file and doing the same in LmHosts and loading them?

This may reduce the spike as it will remove some of the network dependancies that Outlook "may" be making on the system!

Cheers,
Carl.

 

[ascotta]

Anyone got any personal folders in strange places like their own c drive ?

Can you link it down to a specific user using task mangler ?

Then go and look at theri specific config. Data Files etc.
They may have added some other e-mail accounts that you don't know about (Yet!!).

I have been running Outlook in all guises for a long time now on lots of different servers and only had one forms related issue.

You could try breaking mirror on one server. Is the mirror hardware or software ?

Have you partitioned the disk. (Don't if you haven't).

I am from the "no need to backup the citrix server easier and cleaner to re-install brigade" Therfore 1 spindle for OS 1 for apps and one if your feeling flush for page file.

Not suggesting you do it but worth thinking about.

Cheers
Scott

Cheers
Scott

 

[pszoke]

The Mirrored drives are hardware based and I see other programs running great on these two system. It is only Outlook that seems to have a problem. But Thanks for the suggestions of seeing if it was anyone in particular.... it got me looking a little closer at the users of the processes in Task Manager.

I think I traced the problem to e-mails with attachments. I watched as various people opened Excel documents (12K,22K and 56K in my three excel tests) and the Excel.exe would go to 15% for a second. No big deal. Closing out of the Excel attachment would send the processor again to 10-15%. No big deal. Back in the e-mail though after closing Excel, the processor goes and stays at 35%-50% for 5 to 10 seconds while closing the e-mail that has the attachment. I then tested the same theory with Acrobat files of 12K and 3K and had the exact same results. Then I tested it with an HTML attachment which was 15K in size. Same results every time. I've called people right after seeing when they spiked the processor and asked what they were just doing. They had just closed an e-mail that had an Excel spreadsheet as an attachment. We've got Office XP with SP2 applied. Alternative Text input disabled, Word as e-mail editor disabled,provide feedback with sound set to off, Dispaly notification when new mail arrivces is set to off, Play sound and briefly change pouinter set to off.
My obsession continues.

 

[DDILL]

I had alot of success with performance management using Aurema's Armtech or Appsense's Performance manager. I went with ARMTech.

 

[paintballer]

Wyse also has a product called Expedian, like the website name but different...
I like ArmTech better also, but they all manage the resources in a slightly different way.

http://www.aurema.com/

http://www.appsense.com/

http://www.wyse.com/products/software/wyseexpedian.htm

Pick whichever fits your needs the closest.

If anyone else uses any of these products, some feedback would be great.




*Uhm, yeah, I'm going to need you to go a head and come in on Saturday...*

 

[bran2235]

You may want to check out T-Scale (by RTO soft). Brian Madden has had a lot to do with this software... It allows you to shape your traffic and set policies which will automatically adjust your processes hitting your CPU! It will set priority levels and allows you to set rules (i.e. If Processor 0 runs at >50% for more than 20 seconds, do this:... etc.) It will also let you give CPU priority to more critical apps (like Outlook)... It also manages your context switching too (makes adjustments to your RAM, thus allowing more users to log on). They say you can count on an increase in user load anywhere from 30 - 40% more users...

http://www.rtosoft.com

I am running a demo version now... really sweet software!

Hope this sounds interesting~

Brandon

 

[A2U]

First off T-scale and WYSE expedian are one in the same. They both are very limited in comparison to Appsense and Aurema. All T-scale does is lower the priority. You can do that by setting the priority at startup. Don't waist your time with T-scale.