This sounds like a question for a MSDN/TS list/newsgroup with some
monitoring tools thrown in as you do your tests.
I can tell you that in our little networks, things like smb signing
enabled on our DCs add about a 20 to 40 percent overhead to file
transfers and apps (ergo one of the reasons we're a bit insane to be
making our DCs file servers).
We've also seen speed issues affected by NIC drivers....and the
selection of a static speed versus auto-sense on the nic.
Just reading that laundry list of what that app is having to go
through.. each possibly needing a little tweak here or there...sounds to
me that a test, perf mon and other such monitoring is needed to
determine if he's right?
Matheesha Weerasinghe wrote:
Basically the reason I am inquiring this is because of performance
issues which were blamed on application redirection. The appdata was
on a cluster in this particular instance. Siting the fact that there
are more components involved in the data path when appdata is accessed
from a cluster , the PSS guy basically didnt personally seem to
approve the design. And it seems like quite a few guys share his
opinion. As he explained, in a normal file server the client will go
through the file server's nic, the ide/scsi controller and then to the
disk(s). In a cluster environment, the client goes through the cluster
node's nic, the node's HBA, fibre switch/hub, SAN controller, and
finally disk(s). And in the case of small files the SAN was not very
performant especially with big volumes with lots of files.
In the webcast I mentioned in the original email, in slide 22 of the
presentation available at
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/itsshowtime/sessionh.aspx?videoid=26 for
group policy tips and tricks Mark Cribben recommends against it. I
would say the main reason for that recommendation is network latency.
We are designing some file servers at the moment for the client and we
have some design considerations and fears. Basically we are wondering
whether to do away with appdata redirection altogether and leave it in
the profile itself. One of the suggestions is that we may take a hit
in logon time to download profiles , but app performance will be good
as the files are cached locally during the TS session.
We would like to use appdata redirection if at all possible. But we
dont want to sacrifice app performance for it. i.e. We dont want to
wait too long while the app is looking for ini files etc..
Thoughts?
M@
On 7/8/06, Susan Bradley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Sorry read the original post and saw it was specifically about TS.
TS is one of those things that if the application loves the TS
environment,
I don't think we've seen too many issues... and that's usually the
key...
there are some applications that just don't work well and the vendor
states
so in a TS/Citrix setup and would have problems redirecting.
I know that we redirect 'normal' stuff like My Docs folder all the
time over
a TS... but apps like Word and Excel don't have to maintain a constant
connection to a data file.
Susan Bradley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Please correct me if I'm wrong.. but in the era of Howard/LeBlanc and
Howard/Lipner's Secure Coding and SDL books.... currently written
software
from Microsoft is indeed following their "best practice" guidelines.
(Which my only complaint wtih both books is that they are paperback
and not
hardbound and thusly when I throw them at crappy app developers like ...
oh.. say.. I don't know....Intuit... the bruise on the head of the
Dev folks
there will be slightly lessened.... the SDL book so far is very
interesting....)
Older software that they purchased .. granted that statement cannot be
made...
And isn't your situation solvable with having on your patch test
matrix a
check box that says "ensure app data redirect is still functional"...
and of
course testing that patch before it's globally deployed?
Matt Hargraves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I believe the reason they recommend against this is because all
applications
are different. Another problem is that there is no guarantee that the
application will remain the same. Patches and updates can change
more than
just a file here and a file there, they can change settings such as
these
and trying to redirect the location for that data can end up with a
situation where the application during an update is trying to pull your
information from %userroot%\appname and it's really at a completely
different location.
If all application vendors use MS best practices for programming, it
would
be great, but unfortunately not even MS always uses their own best
practices.
Redirecting application data can work fine for months or even years, but
then you get an update to an application and *bam* everything's
broken and
you don't really know why and you spend days (or worse, weeks) trying to
figure out why everyone's broken and realize that your problem is
that the
application data is being redirected and that's the source of the
problem.
Matt
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