[THIN] Re: Trend Analysis / Server performance issue
- From: "Bernd Harzog" <berndh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 13:31:19 -0500
Hi Angela,
I used to be the CEO of RTO Software, and was involved in the sale of the
memory management functionality that was a part of the TScale product to
Citrix (which is now the memory optimization feature in CPS 4.0). When I
left RTO I started a consulting company that focused upon the issue of
applications performance, with much of my work centered around those issues
in Citrix environments. I have done work with vendors like Wily/CA, Visual
Networks, Cesura, Knoa Software, and am currently doing a lot of work for
ProactiveWatch. So, unlike pretty much everyone else on this list, I have a
vendor's view of the problem, so I am warning you beforehand that this is
the case.
In my opinion there are basically three categories of things that you can
do.
Option 1 - An Enterprise Performance Management product that understands
Citrix. There used to be a set of very good vendors that focused
specifically upon resource and performance issues for applications running
on Citrix and MSTS boxes. Those vendors included LakeSide Software,
Premitech, eG Innovations, RTO Software, and Reflectent. Pricing for these
programs runs between $1000 and $4000 per server (the higher numbers are in
fact concurrent user pricing of between $70 and $100 per user). These
products are each very sophisticated in their own way (each of them has a
set of really outstanding features). These products also all require some
sort of back end infrastructure that you need to set up and maintain, as
well as setup and maintenance of the products themselves. The big change
here is that earlier this year, Citrix bought Reflectent, whose product then
became Citrix EdgeSight. Citrix has subsequently told the competitive
monitoring vendors that they are not welcome to show their monitoring
products at Summit or iForum, and most of the vendors have reacted this by
shifting gears and focusing less upon the Citrix market.
Option 2 - Free stuff. If you have the right version of Citrix, RM is free.
Perfmon is free. There are many alternatives that try to collect information
on how heavily used the system is, and to infer from utilization, what
performance for the users must be like. At the risk of getting into a huge
semantic argument, it is not at all clear that 90% CPU is worse than 80%
CPU, whereas it is very clear that if you are using up 90% of physical
memory, you are either already having a problem or are about to. So, unless
you have a really good "feel" for where the knee in the utilization curve
correlates with a degradation in end user experience, these tools are not
going to do it for you.
Option 3 - A monitoring service like ProactiveWatch (again, fair warning, I
am currently being paid by this company). ProactiveWatch is a service that
you can use in conjunction with the consultants who work for your VAR to
collaboratively monitor and diagnose your issues. It is simple to install
and use and is also not expensive. If you are interested, shoot me back an
email, and I will be happy to answer all of your questions.
Best Regards,
Bernd Harzog
CEO
Applications Performance Management Experts
www.apmexperts.com
bernd.harzog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
770-475-4249
-----Original Message-----
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf
Of Angela Smith
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 2:30 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Trend Analysis / Server performance issue
Hi
I have an issue where my users (around 270 - 300 concurrent) are complaining
Citrix is slow (intermittently). We have 7 servers running Presentation
Server 4 on Windows 2003. We have around 100 applications running per box
(44 user connections per box with 2-4 apps in use each). Resource Manager
on almost every server is complaining about "Paging File" as each server
uses between 4 - 5Gb of Swap. The other Resource Manager counter that
worries me is "Processor %interrupt time%" which is yellow or red also.
I need to do some performance analysis on these boxes and was wondering what
tool is most appropriate. I need to get information on CPU usage, Memory
Usage, Page File usage across my farm for the past 1-2 months. Im hoping
this information would give me enough ammunition for management to get more
servers added to the farm.
What is the best tool for trending? (it would be great if it was free also).
Ive never really used Resource Manager in any detail.
Would you add more servers or install a product such as Appsense to correct
my performance issue?
Thanks
Ang
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