ePortal on Citrix XenServer 5.5

[mbyrew]

I am going to cross post this item to two forums.

I am running ePortal (version 09.2 (Build 27)) through IIS on Windows Server 2003 Standard.
All of these have been cleanly installed and fully patched etc.

The Virtual 2003 Server has been allocated 4 cores and 2GB of memory of a new ProLiant BL460c G6 (the symptoms persist on an old ProLiant BL460c G1 server which rules out a hardware issue)

Every so often the processor trace lines when monitored within XenCenter flatline at 50 - 100% causing ePortal to stop responding the only way to resolve the issue is to restart the services or restart the Virtual Server.
[*] Has anyone else come accross a similar issue?
[*] If so, how was it resolved?

Many thanks

Martin Byford-Rew
IT Manager

e: mby@thomasdeaconacademy.com
t: Martin Byford-Rew (mbyrew) on Twitter

[robk]

Do you by any chance have password expiry enabled in eportal?

[mbyrew]

Do you by any chance have password expiry enabled in eportal?

No, we do not enforce any form of password policy at present.

Thanks

Martin

[Ric_]

I don't really know anything about ePortal but it uses MS SQL, yes?

There's settings for SQL to stop it eating CPU and memory quite so much... by default it will grab as much as possible. Is this something that you have investigated?

[DMcCoy]

I am going to cross post this item to two forums.

I am running ePortal (version 09.2 (Build 27)) through IIS on Windows Server 2003 Standard.
All of these have been cleanly installed and fully patched etc.

The Virtual 2003 Server has been allocated 4 cores and 2GB of memory of a new ProLiant BL460c G6 (the symptoms persist on an old ProLiant BL460c G1 server which rules out a hardware issue)

Every so often the processor trace lines when monitored within XenCenter flatline at 50 - 100% causing ePortal to stop responding the only way to resolve the issue is to restart the services or restart the Virtual Server.

How many cores do the servers have? You should try not to assign 4 vCPU VMs to machines with only 4 cores as it can cause issues with the one that controls the scheduler for the VM resources. Sometimes a single vCPU VM will outperform one with multiple vCPUs by a considerable amount.

[Ric_]

How many cores do the servers have? You should try not to assign 4 vCPU VMs to machines with only 4 cores as it can cause issues with the one that controls the scheduler for the VM resources. Sometimes a single vCPU VM will outperform one with multiple vCPUs by a considerable amount.

Also, running SQL Server under per processor licensing will require 4 licenses if you use 4 vCPUs!!!

[mbyrew]

How many cores do the servers have? You should try not to assign 4 vCPU VMs to machines with only 4 cores as it can cause issues with the one that controls the scheduler for the VM resources. Sometimes a single vCPU VM will outperform one with multiple vCPUs by a considerable amount.

The physical servers have 16 available cores, but I'll try limiting the virtual server to a single core and see how that goes. Thanks.

[mbyrew]

I don't really know anything about ePortal but it uses MS SQL, yes?

There's settings for SQL to stop it eating CPU and memory quite so much... by default it will grab as much as possible. Is this something that you have investigated?

The ePortal virtual server connects to another physical server which is the SQL box so this should not apply here. Thank you anyway.

[DMcCoy]

The physical servers have 16 available cores, but I'll try limiting the virtual server to a single core and see how that goes. Thanks.

So the VM is accessible when the CPU spikes, if the CPU usage is reflected inside the VM then its just going to be an application issue rather than a virtualisation one. Can you see which process is using all the CPU?

[mbyrew]

So the VM is accessible when the CPU spikes, if the CPU usage is reflected inside the VM then its just going to be an application issue rather than a virtualisation one. Can you see which process is using all the CPU?

That's the weird thing. The CPU usage in the virtual server is low on all 4 virtual processors but the display on the XenCenter Performance console shows the flatline at 40-50%. Looking at the active processes doesn't help as the busiest one is the Idle process.

[Ric_]

That's the weird thing. The CPU usage in the virtual server is low on all 4 virtual processors but the display on the XenCenter Performance console shows the flatline at 40-50%. Looking at the active processes doesn't help as the busiest one is the Idle process.

Are you using the most up to date version of the XS Tools?

[mbyrew]

Yes I am. Freshly d/l'd from Citrix Ver 5.5.0 (build 15119)