Hi All,
Over the past several weeks, have had a handful of users complaining slowness at random times when connected across a WAN to an 2008 R2 RDS Server running on Hyper-V. Users in the same location as Hyper-V's server don't see any slowness (though also don't use RDS, just the VM that does DC/DNS/File Sharing).
Let me know what else maybe be useful/needed info of course, but some quick specs:
Host Server (2012 R2 Standard):
- HP ML350p Gen8;
- (2) Xeon ES-2620 @ 2Ghz;
- 56GB RAM;
- Smart Array P420i controller w/:
(6) HP 500GB 7.2K 6G SAS drives in RAID-10 Config;
2 Volumes: 1 “System” of 100GB (69% free); 1 “Data” of 1.27TB (59% free);
VMs:
VM1– [DC, DNS, File Shares, etc;]
- OS = Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
- vCPU = 1
- RAM (dynamic) = 16GB (startup); 4GB (min); 1TB (max); 4GB (assigned);
VM2– [RDS]
- OS = Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
- vCPU = 2
- RAM (dynamic) = 32GB (startup); 4GB (min); 1TB (max); 4GB (assigned);
- Apps = MS Office 2013 (primarily Word, Outlook, Excel); Avionte (run via Citrix web app, managed by 3<sup>rd</sup> party); Chrome; Firefox; Skype; Adobe Reader XI;
- About 11 Users
Network/Internet:
- Host server location = 5meg up/down
- RDS user location = Unsure as it is a location managed by a shared building IT department who are not the most communicative, and each company has their own office(s), but best guess is min. 20meg up/down if not faster.
Not long after standing up this server and getting everyone connected, the RDS users, all in another city, complained of slowness. Ultimately, kicking up the internet speed to 5meg up/down in the host server’s location quelled that for quite a long time. Only recently, in the past several weeks have people again started complaining of slowness.
To further muddy the waters, some users report no/minor slowness while others report “moving at snail’s pace”, or “so-and-so can barely use their remote desktop” – all while connected at the same time.
I’ve checked internet speed at the reported times of slowness and the host city will be at 4.5meg up/down, while the RDS user’s location will show 22meg down/45meg up. So that doesn’t seem to be the issue.
I’m in a different city than either location, and when remoting in to either the Hyper-V host or the RDS server via LogMeIn I see no slowness whatsoever – snappy and responsive all the way around. If I connect via RDP as Admin and use Word or Outlook, it can sometimes be a tad slow, but nothing as horrible as is described. However, I don't have the same day-to-day tasks to test out that the users do. All the same, beyond some general "office documents" type stuff, fairly sure they are not doing anything power user/resource intensive. What I've seen in Task Manager/Resource Monitor, appears to support that - making it all the more confusing.
I’m the only admin, and can confirm no changes beyond HP and Windows updates, and general troubleshooting (e.g. disabling offload on the NICs, applying hotfix in regards to Inactive TS Port issue - http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2012/03/06/performance-issues-due-to-inactive-terminal-server-ports.aspx, etc;)
All users connecting via RDS are running Windows 7 x64 on fairly recent machines. I've asked them to try to keep a close eye on when things slow down/speed up - for example, when someone logs out of the remote session, leaves for the day, etc; but they're not always the most observant.
Beyond that, please let me know what else I should be looking for/at, or can further detail for you - and/or if you notice anything above that seems misconfigged somehow.
Thanks a million, driving us all mad!