A97 Runtime on MetaFrame XP

[Rick Brandt]

We are seeing performance problems running an A97 app on a new Terminal
Server (Windows Server 2003) with Citrix MetaFrame XP. Our admin indicates
that he has seen messages in other groups that say this is a bad
combination. I'm just wondering if anyone here has experience with it
and/or any suggestions.

TIA

[Tony Toews]

"Rick Brandt" <ri*********@hotmail.com> wrote:

We are seeing performance problems running an A97 app on a new Terminal
Server (Windows Server 2003) with Citrix MetaFrame XP. Our admin indicates
that he has seen messages in other groups that say this is a bad
combination. I'm just wondering if anyone here has experience with it
and/or any suggestions.

What of performance problems? Are users noticing things are slow? Or is it that
the sysadmins figure the CPU usage is high. If the latter it may not be a problem at
all. ACC: Microsoft Access Shows 100% CPU Utilization During Idle Time
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=160819

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

[Rick Brandt]

"Tony Toews" <tt****@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
news:en********************************@4ax.com...

"Rick Brandt" <ri*********@hotmail.com> wrote:

We are seeing performance problems running an A97 app on a new Terminal
Server (Windows Server 2003) with Citrix MetaFrame XP. Our admin indicates
that he has seen messages in other groups that say this is a bad
combination. I'm just wondering if anyone here has experience with it
and/or any suggestions.
What of performance problems? Are users noticing things are slow? Or is it

that the sysadmins figure the CPU usage is high. If the latter it may not be a problem at all. ACC: Microsoft Access Shows 100% CPU Utilization During Idle Time
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=160819

No, these are real performance issues, but I suspect that the CPU "non-issue" is
clouding the waters a bit.

Basically we are in the process of transitioning from two NT 4.0 Terminal
Servers running an older version of Citrix to new servers. The first of these
has been set up with Windows 2003 server and Metaframe XP.

At first we just moved a handful of users over and they reported no problems and
good performance. With those good results under out belts we transitioned quite
a few more last week. The new server had 30 or so users running an Access app
this morning and the users were asking "What did you guys do? Everything is
dragging today."

The old boxes would regularly have 20 - 25 users each simultaneously and this
new box is *way* hotter in terms of the hardware specs so we were expecting it
to be able to handle 50 or more users without a problem. I don't remember the
exact specs, but I think it's in the neighborhood of a dual xeon 3.n with a
couple gig of RAM.

When the complaints came in the admins looked at the task manager and saw Access
chewing up all the CPU cycles and then found a couple entries on the Citrix
forums with similar complaints that were all cured by upgrading to a newer
version of Access. I'm a bit doubtful though because these were a couple of
anecdotal cases and none of them had input from actual Citrix Tech people.

One even claimed that after a few users of Access gobbled up the CPU that others
couldn't even log on afterwards. Our users aren't complaining of anything like
that. Just that (overall) it is dragging along.

We contacted Citrix directly and they just bailed with a "we don't support
Office 97" response which is pretty funny since I found a benchmark white paper
on their site where they used Office 97 (Excel and Access) to run the tests.
--
I don't check the Email account attached
to this message. Send instead to...
RBrandt at Hunter dot com

[Tony Toews]

"Rick Brandt" <ri*********@hotmail.com> wrote:

No, these are real performance issues, but I suspect that the CPU "non-issue" is
clouding the waters a bit.
Agreed.
At first we just moved a handful of users over and they reported no problems and
good performance. With those good results under out belts we transitioned quite
a few more last week. The new server had 30 or so users running an Access app
this morning and the users were asking "What did you guys do? Everything is
dragging today."

The old boxes would regularly have 20 - 25 users each simultaneously and this
new box is *way* hotter in terms of the hardware specs so we were expecting it
to be able to handle 50 or more users without a problem. I don't remember the
exact specs, but I think it's in the neighborhood of a dual xeon 3.n with a
couple gig of RAM.

When the complaints came in the admins looked at the task manager and saw Access
chewing up all the CPU cycles and then found a couple entries on the Citrix
forums with similar complaints that were all cured by upgrading to a newer
version of Access. I'm a bit doubtful though because these were a couple of
anecdotal cases and none of them had input from actual Citrix Tech people.

One even claimed that after a few users of Access gobbled up the CPU that others
couldn't even log on afterwards. Our users aren't complaining of anything like
that. Just that (overall) it is dragging along.

We contacted Citrix directly and they just bailed with a "we don't support
Office 97" response which is pretty funny since I found a benchmark white paper
on their site where they used Office 97 (Excel and Access) to run the tests.

This is going to be a tough one. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that low priority
keyboard mouse low priority thread mentioned in that article does indeed cause
problems. And it may very well be that NT 4.0 handles it better with some very A97
specific code which they've removed in Win 2003 Server.

The IT department at my client was stating the same thing but I wasn't sure how much
was just this polling or was real. Nevertheless I converted the app to A2000 and
they've never complained since. I suspect that may be your only alternative.

FWIW they still have a lot of users running NT4.0 and A97. So whenever I do some
updates I'm converting the FE to A2000 and making an MDE out of it. Then shipping an
A97 MDE and an A2000 MDE.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

[Rick Brandt]

"Tony Toews" <tt****@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
news:8p********************************@4ax.com...

This is going to be a tough one. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that low priority keyboard mouse low priority thread mentioned in that article does indeed cause
problems. And it may very well be that NT 4.0 handles it better with some very A97 specific code which they've removed in Win 2003 Server.

The IT department at my client was stating the same thing but I wasn't sure how much was just this polling or was real. Nevertheless I converted the app to A2000 and they've never complained since. I suspect that may be your only alternative.
FWIW they still have a lot of users running NT4.0 and A97. So whenever I do some updates I'm converting the FE to A2000 and making an MDE out of it. Then shipping an A97 MDE and an A2000 MDE.

Yeah, it was an intermediate range goal to upgrade anyway. I just don't really
have the time to deal with it immediately (and in crisis mode) as we're in the
middle of a major upgrade on our I-Series server and all of my time has been
spent working on that.

I've kludged together a way to make it fairly painless for us to switch back and
forth just on this one box until we're convinced that the Access version really
is the culprit. If it is I guess I'll have to move the Access upgrade to the
top of my priority list.

Thanks for the input.
--
I don't check the Email account attached
to this message. Send instead to...
RBrandt at Hunter dot com

[XMVP]

"Rick Brandt" <ri*********@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2m************@uni-berlin.de...

"Tony Toews" <tt****@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
news:en********************************@4ax.com...

"Rick Brandt" <ri*********@hotmail.com> wrote:

We are seeing performance problems running an A97 app on a new Terminal
Server (Windows Server 2003) with Citrix MetaFrame XP. Our admin indicatesthat he has seen messages in other groups that say this is a bad
combination. I'm just wondering if anyone here has experience with it
and/or any suggestions.
What of performance problems? Are users noticing things are slow? Or

is it that

the sysadmins figure the CPU usage is high. If the latter it may not be

a problem at

all. ACC: Microsoft Access Shows 100% CPU Utilization During Idle Time
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=160819
No, these are real performance issues, but I suspect that the CPU

"non-issue" is clouding the waters a bit.

Basically we are in the process of transitioning from two NT 4.0 Terminal
Servers running an older version of Citrix to new servers. The first of these has been set up with Windows 2003 server and Metaframe XP.

At first we just moved a handful of users over and they reported no problems and good performance. With those good results under out belts we transitioned quite a few more last week. The new server had 30 or so users running an Access app this morning and the users were asking "What did you guys do? Everything is dragging today."

The old boxes would regularly have 20 - 25 users each simultaneously and this new box is *way* hotter in terms of the hardware specs so we were expecting it to be able to handle 50 or more users without a problem. I don't remember the exact specs, but I think it's in the neighborhood of a dual xeon 3.n with a couple gig of RAM.

When the complaints came in the admins looked at the task manager and saw Access chewing up all the CPU cycles and then found a couple entries on the Citrix forums with similar complaints that were all cured by upgrading to a newer
version of Access. I'm a bit doubtful though because these were a couple of anecdotal cases and none of them had input from actual Citrix Tech people.

One even claimed that after a few users of Access gobbled up the CPU that others couldn't even log on afterwards. Our users aren't complaining of anything like that. Just that (overall) it is dragging along.

We contacted Citrix directly and they just bailed with a "we don't support
Office 97" response which is pretty funny since I found a benchmark white paper on their site where they used Office 97 (Excel and Access) to run the tests.

Using Access 97? (Stupid)
Using Jet? (Very stupid)

[david epsom dot com dot au]

A97 loads TS more heavily than it should, because it
does keyboard polling in it's idle loop. (In spite of
being a 32bit Win95 App, it uses Win16 methods).

So the Citrix connection has to support constant
keyboard polling, even when nothing is happening.

It affects heavily loaded networks: it has no
effect on lightly loaded networks.

Also, we find running multiple copies on one PC, that
the file open/file close dialogs can slow right down.
(this is a related problem). It may affect Citrix
clients.

Processor usage will often show 100%, but this only
relates to the two problems listed above: it has no
other known real effect.

There was also a specific problem with Win2K, and
a specific problem with A2K runtime installation.

There aren't any other specific problems that I know
about. I've had no specific experience with MetaFrame XP.

(david)

"Rick Brandt" <ri*********@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2m************@uni-berlin.de...

We are seeing performance problems running an A97 app on a new Terminal
Server (Windows Server 2003) with Citrix MetaFrame XP. Our admin indicates that he has seen messages in other groups that say this is a bad
combination. I'm just wondering if anyone here has experience with it
and/or any suggestions.

TIA

[Rick Brandt]

"Chuck Grimsby" <c.*******@worldnet.att.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:s8********************************@4ax.com...

FWIW, Rick, I've run into this problem as well. A97 (and A2K) on
MetaFrame XP. The company's Citrix Guru spent 3 months trying to
solve it, with no results.

In the end, we resorted to "fixing" things so that when the user
launched the icon, the MDB was copied to the user's local TEMP
directory and then ran the MDB from the TEMP directory. The problems
disappeared. No idea why that worked, but it did.

The "copy to the user's local TEMP dir" part was actually done within
the Access MDB. I think I still have that code around here somewhere
if you need it.

You mean the TEMP folder on the local client from which they are connecting
to the Terminal Server? Seems like it would cause a lot of network
traffic. We use Citrix/TS for our users that are in remote locations so
while they are on our LAN they are connected over a dedicated (T1) phone
connection and therefore have less bandwidth to use.

Anyway, to update... The test today using a A2K file _was_ looking good
until users started experiencing ODBC failures that did not occur with the
A97 version (sigh). We may just have to roll back of off this server until
we can more robustly test an A2K version and then try again.
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I don't check the Email account attached
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RBrandt at Hunter dot com

[Rick Brandt]

"Chuck Grimsby" <c.*******@worldnet.att.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:lb********************************@4ax.com...

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 12:59:20 -0500, "Rick Brandt"
Yes, the user's local temp folder on their local PC is what we used.
A lot of network traffic? Not really. There certainly was an
increase, no way around that, but the application was designed at the
base level to use as little resources as possible in the first place,
so it wasn't that big of an increase. (Everything was unbound. I
designed it rather like a web application, more then an Access
application. But since it was Access, I took every advantage I could
of Access' features!)

The company application was being used by ran over the length of the
Upper Midwest - Upper Western US, from Michigan to Washington state,
and later was in use by people in New York state as well. Some of the
locations used fractional T1's to connect up. No major performance
problems.

I should probably also mention that this application used SQL Server
as it's back-end. No data was stored in the MDB itself, just the
forms, reports, and a few pass-through queries. I made the SQL Server
do as much of the work as possible as well (as I always do), all of
which reduced the network traffic to a minimum.

But it would mean copying the MDE at startup from the TS to the local
client right? That would be a 20 MB file copy for me which is a
deal-killer.
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[Rick Brandt]

"Chuck Grimsby" <c.*******@worldnet.att.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:36********************************@4ax.com...

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 12:47:19 -0500, "Rick Brandt"
<ri*********@hotmail.com> wrote:

But it would mean copying the MDE at startup from the TS to the local
client right? That would be a 20 MB file copy for me which is a
deal-killer.

20 MB?!? Ah, ok, yeah that would be a problem. You may want to look
into spliting your app.

The app is a front end to SQL Server and UDB400 servers (No Jet data except
temp tables).
The MDE is actually around 24MB after converting to A2K.

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