Mark Minasi's Reader Forum
Mark Minasi's Reader Forum
Home | Profile | Register | Active Topics | Active Polls | Members | Search | FAQ | Minasi Forum RSS Feed
Username:
 Password:
Save Password
Forgot your Password?

 All Forums
 Email, Databases, Sharepoint and more
 Exchange
 outlook 2007 pegging EIGHT cpus on terminal server		  New Topic  Reply to Topic
 Printer Friendly
Author Previous Topic Topic Next Topic  

wlazara
Honorable But Hopeless Addict

USA
2607 Posts
Status: offline
Posted - 08/05/2008 :  12:00:27 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Previously we had 6 dual-core terminal servers (citrix win2003) hosting roughly 25-30 users each. Outlook 2007 in online mode connecting to our exchange 2007 server through a netscreen firewall.

Since moving to four 8-core terminal servers (citrix win2003x64) we now see 100% cpu utilization much of the time with around 55 users. Four times the cores, not even twice the users.

I have moved the citrix servers into the same network as my exchange server to negate the netscreen's interference - no dice. I have removed the static port mappings on exchange and the GCs since they are no longer necessary without the firewall inbetween - no dice.

Any ideas? Could it be some interaction between outlook and x64 windows? Could it have been some outlook patch that is making it spin its wheels? It is taking users 20-25 seconds to open emails during these periods of spiking. External clients using rpc/http (in online mode) do not have this issue, and the Exchange server (also 8 core) isn't even breaking a sweat, so it seems to be something on the outlook side.

any ideas would be greatly appreciated, i'm losing a lot of sleep on this one!!

-Wes

wlazara
Honorable But Hopeless Addict

USA
2607 Posts
Status: offline
Posted - 08/05/2008 :  6:57:15 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
As I sit on the box with Outlook and Task Manager open, I can press the up and down arrow keys to move between emails. Every time I move to a new email, the cpu handling my outlook instance pegs for a second or two as it renders the email in the preview pane. This used to be pretty much instantaneous and doubt it pegged the CPUs previously since we only had 2 on our old citrix servers!

When I do the same thing on one of my previous dual-core citrix servers (x86, not x64) the cpu jumps to between 20-35% (10-17% of a single cpu).

Is there something seriously wrong with Outlook 2007 on x64?
Go to Top of Page

mitachu
Honorable But Hopeless Addict

United Kingdom
1768 Posts
Status: offline
Posted - 08/06/2008 :  06:05:17 AM  Show Profile  Click to see mitachu's MSN Messenger address  Reply with Quote
I'm running Outlook 2007 on Server 2003 x64 and don't have any problems. I'm not running within Citrix or terminal services though.
Tim
Go to Top of Page

NMDANGE
Honorable But Hopeless Addict

USA
1688 Posts
Status: offline
Posted - 08/06/2008 :  11:40:41 AM  Show Profile  Visit NMDANGE's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Can you try installing x64 Windows on one of your older terminal servers?

What cpu model/number/speed are we talking about on the old and new servers?
Michael D'Angelo
MVP-MIIS, Pace University Accounts Administrator / DBA
(MS)NMDANGE
PhoeniX WorX Systems Administrator. If you play Total Annihilation, please join us. http://www.phoenixworx.org
Go to Top of Page

wlazara
Honorable But Hopeless Addict

USA
2607 Posts
Status: offline
Posted - 08/06/2008 :  11:46:57 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
both the old servers and the new are poweredge 1850s... the only difference is that the older ones have a single dual-core cpu and the newer ones have two quad-core cpus. last night I finally got a chance to rebuild one of the x64 ones from scratch rather than using my RIS template -- and I didn't install any office patches at all -- and before installing citrix I tested with my account just using RDP. jumping around in outlook in a similar fashion pushed the cpu usage to 5-7% (about half of what I was seeing before) which is promising -- now i'm installing citrix and I'll see if anything changes...
Go to Top of Page

wlazara
Honorable But Hopeless Addict

USA
2607 Posts
Status: offline
Posted - 08/06/2008 :  6:12:48 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
users on the freshly rebuilt server (minus any office 2007 patches) are reporting speedy outlook performance today even under load... perhaps a somewhat recent office/outlook patch makes similar changes to office sp1 which cause similar performance issues?
Go to Top of Page
  Previous Topic Topic Next Topic  
 New Topic  Reply to Topic
 Printer Friendly
Jump To:
Mark Minasi's Reader Forum © 2002-2009 Mark Minasi Go To Top Of Page
This page was generated in 0.14 seconds. Snitz Forums 2000