Poor performance (slow login/disconnection) under heavy load

[gman42]

We have a couple of Hyper-V VMs running TSPlus 8.30.7.9, with tons of resources assigned to them (12 cores and 24GB each) running Server 2012R2. Almost all our users connect with Microsoft RDP client.

I notice that when there are more than around 30 users logged in, users start complaining about very long login times (over a minute) which sometimes don't succeed at all, and other logged-in users complain about getting disconnected unexpectedly. Note that there's still under 30% CPU usage and plenty of memory available when this happens. Later in the day, after some users log off, the problem goes away again.

Not sure if it's related, but I'll often see "orphaned" user sessions in Task Manager, with no username listed but four processes running. If I terminate the Windows Logon User Interface task (logonUI.exe) then the session finally disappears.

I've opened a couple of cases with support already, and the only solution offered was to completely uninstall and reinstall the product, which hasn't been successful. Follow-up emails on the last case seem to have been ignored, so currently I'm not very happy with this product and its support. It was my understanding that it could handle a much higher user load than this.

Has anyone else had the same experience? Any suggestions?

[admin]

Hello,

The best way to contact support is to open a support ticket, or send a mail directly to support@terminalserviceplus.com. Support ticket sent to other email address may be ignored.

Experiencing slow connections on a server can come from multiple cause and is not easy to diagnose. Here are a few hints that might help you figure this out :

1- When 30 or more users do log on and the server starts to hang, open a task manager and click on the process tab. Sort
2- Sorting processes by CPU usage can help to isolate who or what is consuming the most CPU usage.
3- Sorting processes by memory can help to isolate which process is using the most memory.
4- Right click on "My computer" and click "Manage", then check out the system and application event log. They can also give you some information on where the problem is located.

In the AdminTool, click on the Server tile and click on "Group Policies (GPO)"

Check the "Allow users reconnection when sessions are disconnected."

You can also set up a timeout for disconnected sessions which will cause a disconnected user session to automatically logoff after a while.

If you want your disconnected sessions to terminate quickly, type in 0.5 for 30 sec. This will prevent your server from having too many disconnected sessions on your server.

If your server is the member of a domain, this strategy may need to be set directly on the domain controller.
Open your domain strategy object editor (gpedit.msc) and locate the following strategy :

Computer configuration / Administrative Template / Windows components / Remote Desktop Services / Remote Desktop Session Host / Session time limit /

You can also make sure your domain controller do not prevent local strategies to be executed. This strategy needs to be disabled and is located in :

Computer configuration / Policies / Administrative Template / System / Group Policy / Turn off Local Group Policy objects processing.

Either solution should work, choose the one that fits your preference.

[gman42]

See, this is the problem. Every answer I've ever gotten from support is this generic troubleshooting that has nothing to do with the issue.

I know how to check task manager and look for processes eating CPU cycles. I already said in my earlier message that CPU usage is fairly low when this occurs, but you went ahead and copy/pasted what's obviously a message that you send as a catch-all to anyone having problems that seem remotely relevant.

The last support case we opened with you for this issue is #146289, I sent a detailed response on 7/16 and haven't gotten a reply since. Can you confirm that you received my reply?

[admin]

Hello,

I always use these "canned responses" to help provide you with as many hint as possible, as I do not know the background and technical level of the person posting in here. I cannot confirm having received any messages from you since all I know is your gman42 user name here.

I forgot to mention the need to add GDI and User objects to your task manager. On a big server such as yours, Windows can hang if too many GDI or user objects are loaded on your server. This is however not easy to diagnose and treat and a published application or service may in cause here.
More information about this can be found here : blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2010/02/24/3315174.aspx

The best solution in such case may be to have two TSplus servers in loadbalancing with 25 users each. I could split your license if you decide to do this.

[gman42]

I obviously didn't expect you to know me by my username, but I thought that posting my actual support case number would allow you to look it up.

It's my understanding that load balancing is only used for web connections and not regular MS RDP connections, which would make it useless in our case. If I'm wrong, please let me know.

I do appreciate the link and will investigate these other possible issues.