armadillo Posted January 6, 2009 Posted January 6, 2009 Hi, we have had 25 thin client terminals (HP 5735) and 1 win 2008 enterprise server installed and since then we had nothing but trouble. Very slow logging on, freezing up, randomly the tool bars in word or excel goes grey and you can't click on and you have to reboot for it to work again and usb stick not mounting and got to mount eventually but we can't open documents directly from it unless you copy the file onto the user area first then open, etc etc...the list is long. It's a first thin client trial hence the small amount of hardware, the srver is a dual quad core processors, 8GB of RAM, running 100Mbps NICs, user profile on the same server and domainis win 2003 R2. Any suggestion will be appreciated and thanks in advance for your comments.
localzuk Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 First thing I would say is that 100Mbps NIC is too slow, you need a 1Gbit card at least. Is the link between the room of machines and the server short? ie. from switch -> switch -> server or is it longer than that? How about network traffic in general, is it busy? Have you tried running performance monitors on the server to see what is using up what resources? Next, are the users using the same roaming profile as windows XP machines? If so, I believe you may have issues between the 2 (not completely sure though, just remembering there was an incompatibility between the 2 in XP and Vista, and as 2008 server is based on Vista, i'm extending that issue to here). Is the machine running 64bit windows? Also, is the machine running an active virus scanner of some form?
nut-ed Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 (edited) What happens if you make an RDP connection from a PC to the server. This would go a long way to letting you know if the problem is server or TC related. On the HP website they specifically don't mention W2008 for this model, but do specifically mention all previous OS's... What do HP say - don't they provide support, maybe there is a later version of rdesktop you need to install...? Edited January 7, 2009 by nut-ed bug
Ric_ Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 You should also check the event logs to see why logon is taking so long - usual culprits are missing scripts or failing group policies. Of course profiles play a big part too! The terminals, all be them the worst that HP have ever made, generally work OK. Just make sure that you have the latest firmware to remove the chance of any problems.
kestrel1 Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 If this system was installed professionally, I would be getting back on to them & complaining. We have a large thin client network, we only have two quad core servers at present & the rest of the application servers are about three years old. We don't have any issues like you describe & never have. What speed are your switches? are they up to the job. If you are thinking of going down the thin client route I would suggest that you try the same company that we use: Precedence Technologies - Welcome Precedence Technologies have their own thin clients & are very knowledgeable of the whole thin client network system.
Butuz Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 I am sure I remember reading about some kind of incompatibility issue between some HP thin clients and Win2k8 server. Possible updating the BIOS on the thin clients will fix this? Butuz
Axel Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 If you want to eliminate the the Linux based terminals we would be happy to loan you a couple of Axel ultra thin clients. Our products are certified for W2008, and as a manufacturer we do offer direct technical support so we have resources to assist if you still experience problems....
Oops_my_bad Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 (edited) I doubt the TC themselves would be causing an issue - it is afterall just a citrix/rdp session. I think you need to begin with your server. Did you not get anywhere by disabling RSOP in group policy? Edited January 7, 2009 by Oops_my_bad
nut-ed Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 I agree - it is just an RDP session - but it uses RDesktop - which is an Opensource product, and it depends if 'someone' has upgraded it for W2008, so is a potential cause and something to investigate/eliminate. Unlike Windows based terminals, where Microsoft obviously support and upgrade the RDP client as necessary, the upgrade responsibility for the Linux based Rdesktop is not so clear... Citrix is different - as Citrix are not interested in desktops (their interest is in servers) they DO produce a fully supported ICA client for Linux. I am definitely not knocking Opensource - but it is important users know who is 'responsible', and don't assume "someone" else will always pick up the support tab... Some manufacturers are reluctant to directly support Linix (mentioning no names) as any improvements they make they are obliged to publish for all - so losing a competitive edge gained from the R&D investment they put in....
localzuk Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 Some manufacturers are reluctant to directly support Linix (mentioning no names) as any improvements they make they are obliged to publish for all - so losing a competitive edge gained from the R&D investment they put in.... Just have to say, that that is not true. They would only need to 'publish for all' if they use an open source license - or use code from an open source licensed project. There are plenty of proprietary programs on Linux (the citrix ICA client is an example).
armadillo Posted January 7, 2009 Author Posted January 7, 2009 First thing I would say is that 100Mbps NIC is too slow, you need a 1Gbit card at least. Is the link between the room of machines and the server short? ie. from switch -> switch -> server or is it longer than that? How about network traffic in general, is it busy? Have you tried running performance monitors on the server to see what is using up what resources? Next, are the users using the same roaming profile as windows XP machines? If so, I believe you may have issues between the 2 (not completely sure though, just remembering there was an incompatibility between the 2 in XP and Vista, and as 2008 server is based on Vista, i'm extending that issue to here). Is the machine running 64bit windows? Also, is the machine running an active virus scanner of some form? The TS server both NICs are on 1000bps, the lik between the server and the room is within the required ranger (room to switch is 40 metres max and switch to server is 5 metres max), the netwrk traffic is OK all the rest of PCs work fine, added more memory and put the user profiles on the TS server in the second disk therefore server/network monitor is showing all OK, the users are using separate roaming profiles as I mentioned above, the server is a 64Bitwin 2008. Thanks for your help. Sophos onaccess scan is disabled.
armadillo Posted January 7, 2009 Author Posted January 7, 2009 What happens if you make an RDP connection from a PC to the server. This would go a long way to letting you know if the problem is server or TC related. On the HP website they specifically don't mention W2008 for this model, but do specifically mention all previous OS's... What do HP say - don't they provide support, maybe there is a later version of rdesktop you need to install...? I connected via RDP from a couple of PCs and it was fine but again even on thin client we only see the problems when more than 10 terminals or 25 at a time are used, I noticed that it doesn't mention anything about them being compatible with win 2008 server on the HP manuals, I think the engineer had a problem connecting to the server initially but he overcome that by upgrading the linux rdp version. Thanks for your help
armadillo Posted January 7, 2009 Author Posted January 7, 2009 You should also check the event logs to see why logon is taking so long - usual culprits are missing scripts or failing group policies. Of course profiles play a big part too! The terminals, all be them the worst that HP have ever made, generally work OK. Just make sure that you have the latest firmware to remove the chance of any problems. Thanks for your help- I will get the engineer to look for a newer firmware version if there is one. I today emailed (I sed yousendit as they were huge) the event logs to the company who set them up, wait and see what they come up with.
armadillo Posted January 7, 2009 Author Posted January 7, 2009 I am sure I remember reading about some kind of incompatibility issue between some HP thin clients and Win2k8 server. Possible updating the BIOS on the thin clients will fix this? Butuz Thanks for you support- I will get the bios version checked.
armadillo Posted January 7, 2009 Author Posted January 7, 2009 If this system was installed professionally, I would be getting back on to them & complaining. We have a large thin client network, we only have two quad core servers at present & the rest of the application servers are about three years old. We don't have any issues like you describe & never have. What speed are your switches? are they up to the job. If you are thinking of going down the thin client route I would suggest that you try the same company that we use: Precedence Technologies - Welcome Precedence Technologies have their own thin clients & are very knowledgeable of the whole thin client network system. The switch connecting the room where the thin clients is a 100 Mbps one, I asked the engineer to try to test with a gigabit switch for the thin client but the TS server is already on 1000Mbps both of it's NICs. I have chexked the company out and looked on their website and yes it looks good and they seem to know about their products. Thanks for your help.
armadillo Posted January 7, 2009 Author Posted January 7, 2009 I doubt the TC themselves would be causing an issue - it is afterall just a citrix/rdp session. I think you need to begin with your server. Did you not get anywhere by disabling RSOP in group policy? Before disabling RSOP the users couldn't even logon, but at least now they can logon but not stable. Thanks
armadillo Posted January 7, 2009 Author Posted January 7, 2009 I agree - it is just an RDP session - but it uses RDesktop - which is an Opensource product, and it depends if 'someone' has upgraded it for W2008, so is a potential cause and something to investigate/eliminate. Unlike Windows based terminals, where Microsoft obviously support and upgrade the RDP client as necessary, the upgrade responsibility for the Linux based Rdesktop is not so clear... Citrix is different - as Citrix are not interested in desktops (their interest is in servers) they DO produce a fully supported ICA client for Linux. I am definitely not knocking Opensource - but it is important users know who is 'responsible', and don't assume "someone" else will always pick up the support tab... Some manufacturers are reluctant to directly support Linix (mentioning no names) as any improvements they make they are obliged to publish for all - so losing a competitive edge gained from the R&D investment they put in.... Thanks for your advice- I will definately look into that aswell, check if here is a new an RDesktop version for those terminals to connect to win2008 server.
CyberNerd Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 rdesktop issued a fix for windows server 2008 in May last year: SourceForge.net: rdesktop-announce according to their website, 2008 server is supported
armadillo Posted January 13, 2009 Author Posted January 13, 2009 I thought I keep you updated- most of the problems above were sorted eventually after tweaking the GPOs, some settings on the HP clients and installed a few firmware updates for the RAID controllers and the HDDs; but I ogt another problem with these beasts and it's when we have 20 odd users/ students logged in and they try to copy a small folder with 5 documents including an access database, the whole folder is only about 450 KB so not an issue when transferring the folder using the fat clients by the same students as we had the move classroom today- so go to the point: the clients freeze all at the same time, the question now is there a known problem with transferring a database file from a shared area into the users home folder. By the way the shared area and home folders are both locate on the same NAS server. Any advice or help is appreciated- thanks in advance.
armadillo Posted January 15, 2009 Author Posted January 15, 2009 What Specification is the NAS server? Butuz Hi Butuz, sorry forthe delay- the NAs ie Dell PowerVault 770N. We got no problems when using fat clients all runs smoothly. Thanks
srochford Posted January 15, 2009 Posted January 15, 2009 Can I just check a couple of things. From what you've said, I think you're saying that it's OK with a small number of clients but it starts to get slow as you up the number of clients? If that's the case, then I suspect that the software on the client is probably basically OK and it's something to do with the server or the network. You now need to do some step by step troubleshooting (and that's always hard when everything seems to be falling to pieces!) If you look at performance monitor on the server, how much CPU is being used when it starts to go slowly? You've got 8 cores so you ought to be seeing all 8 in use - if something weird is going on then you might be seeing 1 core running at near 100% and the rest doing nothing (don't expect that!). If you're seeing all 8 cores looking busy then that suggests that the server is not up to the job - add another one (although I appreciate that's a shed load of money you might not have) Have a look at the network bandwidth into the server - add a trace for network interface bytes received per second and bytes sent per second; do it for each card. Given that you've got a 100Mbit switch between the server and clients, you're not going to see more than 100Mbit but you might be seeing close to that. If you're seeing 50-60Mbit then that suggests that the network is saturated - you need to put in a gigabit switch. Back in performance monitor, look at Physical Disc and check the average disk queue length. This should be tiny (less than 1 normally; if it gets to 10 then the world is about to end :-)) I'd be surprised if this is the problem but you haven't said anything about the discs so it's conceivable that they're too slow. You can also look at RAM used on the server but this is often confusing - Windows will use all available RAM for caching etc so just because you see all RAM in use doesn't mean you need more. (If it's 32 bit Windows then you can't have more than 4Gb; if it's 64 bit then you can put in loads but it may not help) Hope that helps but you really need some metrics to indicate what's going wrong. Good luck!
armadillo Posted January 15, 2009 Author Posted January 15, 2009 Can I just check a couple of things. From what you've said, I think you're saying that it's OK with a small number of clients but it starts to get slow as you up the number of clients? If that's the case, then I suspect that the software on the client is probably basically OK and it's something to do with the server or the network. You now need to do some step by step troubleshooting (and that's always hard when everything seems to be falling to pieces!) If you look at performance monitor on the server, how much CPU is being used when it starts to go slowly? You've got 8 cores so you ought to be seeing all 8 in use - if something weird is going on then you might be seeing 1 core running at near 100% and the rest doing nothing (don't expect that!). If you're seeing all 8 cores looking busy then that suggests that the server is not up to the job - add another one (although I appreciate that's a shed load of money you might not have) Have a look at the network bandwidth into the server - add a trace for network interface bytes received per second and bytes sent per second; do it for each card. Given that you've got a 100Mbit switch between the server and clients, you're not going to see more than 100Mbit but you might be seeing close to that. If you're seeing 50-60Mbit then that suggests that the network is saturated - you need to put in a gigabit switch. Back in performance monitor, look at Physical Disc and check the average disk queue length. This should be tiny (less than 1 normally; if it gets to 10 then the world is about to end :-)) I'd be surprised if this is the problem but you haven't said anything about the discs so it's conceivable that they're too slow. You can also look at RAM used on the server but this is often confusing - Windows will use all available RAM for caching etc so just because you see all RAM in use doesn't mean you need more. (If it's 32 bit Windows then you can't have more than 4Gb; if it's 64 bit then you can put in loads but it may not help) Hope that helps but you really need some metrics to indicate what's going wrong. Good luck! Hi Steve, Thanks for your help with this- the engineer from european electronique has checked the disks, memory and network activity and they all seem OK now- well after he had installed all firmware updates for the RAID, disks and SCSI. He now thinks it could be one of the CPUs (dual quad core CPUs on server and 8GB RAM) he's coming in the morning to replace it and if that dosn't work he remove win 2008 enterprise server 64bit and install win 2003 R2 instead. I will keep you all posted after that, I hope it'll get sorted otherwise they're going to have the whole lot back as we haven't paid yet. Regards
armadillo Posted January 20, 2009 Author Posted January 20, 2009 (edited) Hi guys- just to let you all know that the ightmare is now over and everything is running smoothly and as it should; we had to scrap win 2008 server enterprise 64bit and re-installed win 2003 R2 server and now all is much better, faster and very stable too. Thanks for your help. Edited January 20, 2009 by armadillo
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