[THIN] that question again... performance settings for perceived perform ance...

  • From: "Lilley, Brian" <brian.lilley@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: "'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 17:19:40 +0100

ok, firstly I apologise for bringing this up again, but I never got to the
bottom of this one...

Right.. Windows 2000 had a peformance setting which (according to Microsoft
documentation), affected thread quanta and priority boost.  Supposedly, if the
windows 2000 server was set to foreground, a foreground thread would get 9
(some docs say 6!) quanta and a background thread would get 3 and that the
threads priority is boosted.   Microsoft claims that all terminal server
sessions are affected by this setting, i.e. each session has foreground tasks
for the UI and any arbitrary background tasks as instantiated by the users
session.

Ok, the Microsoft documentation makes sense, all users have foreground thread
and background threads, the multiple user sessions' foreground threads will
each get 6 quanta and their respective background tasks will only get 3 quanta

... so the 'Foreground applications' setting seems like the appropriate
setting for the terminal server...

Not so, say a number of the leading thin client community, claiming that only
the console session is regarded as a foreground thread and so all terminal
services sessions are regarded as background threads, and so, if the
'Foreground processes' setting is chosen, then all term server sessions will
get only 3 quanta and we will have masses of context switching...because 3
quanta is too short??  

and then......the Perceived Performance methodology states that perhaps the
additional 'minimal' overhead of context switching on modern hardware is worth
the effort for producing, not necessarily max capacity computing but certainly
much 'smoother' gui experience for multi-users on an MS terminal server... 

Ok, so now I am still none the wiser for win2000, my question to the community
is,  have Microsoft reengineered this for win2003?  What should the settings
be for  1. 'Programs over background services' and  2. 'allocating memory for
programs over system cache?'

I understand that the beta version of 2003 provided configurable quanta
settings?  has anyone any testing results?  has anyone uncovered any Microsoft
documents recommending the settings for Term Servers or should I just find
better things to do with my time?

Like Brian Madden said,  does this really make a difference in the real world?
So, all I want to know is, for Windows Office apps on a Windows terminal
server... can't someone just tell me what the setting should be...


thaBrianos



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