On Tue, 2006-04-25 at 17:32 +0100, Barry Rowlingson wrote: > Gavin Simpson wrote: > > Dear list, > > > > My employer uses a Windows 2000 Terminal Server-based system for its > > college-wide managed computer service - computers connect directly to > > the WTS servers for their sessions, using a Citrix ICA client. When I > > asked them to install R (Windows) on an older version of this service > > the IT guys installed it but pulled it for performance issues. I am > > trying to get them to try again but receiving little encouragement from > > them. > > 'performance issues'? Well, if you have 100 students running MCMC > simulations on one Windows 2000 TS box then you may well have > 'performance issues'!
I think they meant more along the lines of one user running it - doing nothing with R as the guys don't know how to use R - was causing issues, rather than CPU load hitting 100% across all the 4-8 processors per server (and there are lots of servers) > Perhaps the TS service isn't intended for people to do real computer > work on, but is just for Office apps. Then you come along and want your > students to do serious number crunching. At that point the MS Word > writers experience what we used to call 'lag'. The system has SPSS, various Adobe products (Photoshop & Illustrator) and tonnes of other apps I would consider more "number crunching" than R, so I don't think this was a problem. I was deliberately vague as I don't know what the actual problem was - we aren't allowed to know who these IT people R but I have asked to speak to one of the WTS people to see what the problem is. If I turn up anything I'll email R-Devel to see if this is an R thing or a local thing. > > > Does anyone on the list have experience of a similar set-up? If you do, > > I could use that as part of my argument to invest some time in sorting > > these issues out. I really want to get the Windows version of R > > installed for teaching because at the moment I subject my students to > > the rather hostile world of an archaic UNIX session to run R - for them > > at least. > > We have a couple of labs that are similar - we use Wyse Thin Client > Xterminals which boot Thinstation Linux from a server and then connect > to Windows 2003 TS machines using RDP or Ubuntu Linux boxes using XDMCP. > We dont use Citrix ICA. > > 'Performance issues' will depend very much on what you are doing. As a > quick benchmark, last term we had 24 users in a lab all running Windows > and running Matlab, Firefox, that kind of stuff. One dual 2.6GHz Xeon > Dell with 4G Ram never went above 60% CPU usage. And we had another > three similar Dells sitting idle waiting for installation. Sessions with > R run regularly in these labs and we've never had 'performance issues'. Thanks for this Barry - so we aren't talking about an incompatibility per se with WTS. > So possibly your IT support are stalling. Do they regularly say "Have > you tried switching it off and on again?" in response to a support query > [1]? Once you speak to the IT guys themselves they are incredibly helpful and knowledgeable - getting to speak to them is more difficult > > Barry > > [1] Catchphrase of the tech support guys in comedy series 'The IT Crowd' That was a funny show... Cheers, G -- %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% * Note new Address, Telephone & Fax numbers from 6th April 2006 * %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% Gavin Simpson ECRC & ENSIS [t] +44 (0)20 7679 0522 UCL Department of Geography [f] +44 (0)20 7679 0565 Pearson Building [e] gavin.simpsonATNOSPAMucl.ac.uk Gower Street [w] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfagls/cv/ London, UK. [w] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfagls/ WC1E 6BT. %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
