Filemaker slows with Citrix XenApp 6.5

[Dermot]

Hi Folks,

Hope you're all keeping well !!

Not sure where else to post this so here goes .. 

We have a database being served to >100 users from a VM machine and served using Citrix XenApp 6.5 

We use Filemaker server advanced 12 and filemaker pro 12 ...

The issue in question, which only started 2 weeks ago is as follows:-

Users who are using the Filemaker database every day are experiencing slowness when they log on through their own Citrix account and then go into filemaker .. From that same PC, if they then log on to Citrix with another users account (who doesn’t use filemaker regularly) and then go into filemaker (again with their own password) it is very fast..

 Very strange I know but I was wondering if Filemaker is caching a lot within citrix somewhere or what else it could be :-/  .. just cant think of a good reason for this to be happening ??

Filemaker have recommend moving to v13 or v14 as they "officially" support XenApp 6.5 but I dont think this is the problem as its been working with the same software 100% now for almost a year .. the problems only started a couple of weeks ago and no one is sure why .. Also, the IT folk say there have been no changes/additions to the setup.

Any thoughts or ideas will be much appreciated folks

Thanks

Dermot

[Wim Decorte]

Should be easy enough for IT to compare the profile of a "bad user" and a "good user" I think.

FM itself does some client-side caching in the temp folders but nothing that should build up over time.  Clean out the temp folder though and see if it speeds things up.

[Dermot]

Hi Wim, 

Thanks for the response .. They seem to think Citrix is not the problem but I cant see how it isnt .. They are talking to their Citrix provider tomorrow so hopefully there will be some light shed on this..

Regs

Dermot

[Lee Smith]

Thanks, keep us posted.

[Dermot]

I Will ..

The response I got back from their IT was as follows...

"I would agree it might be citrix apart from the fact that if two people sign in, one a new account and the other an old account ( citrix setup exactly the same ) then the experience is different when using filemaker. (the new account is fast and the old account is slow)

 

We have tried on both Citrix Xen app and Citrix Desktop."

Thanks

Dermot

[Wim Decorte]

We can just as easily turn their argument around: it can't be FM's fault because it works for one citrix account and not for the other.  That kind of knee-jerk / defensive reactions get us nowhere.

I don't think it is Citrix as a product that is doing this, but I think there is something fundamentally different between the Citrix and/or Windows profile of those two accounts.  And it should be relatively straightforward to do a comparison between those two profiles: disk space, settings, ...

This is exactly the same kind of situation as if one user's machine runs FM very slowly but if you create another Windows account on the same box it runs well:  that points to something in the user's profile that is running interference.

 

[Dermot]

Hi Wim,

Yes I totally agree and "hopefully" their Citrix providers will come to the same conclusion .. They are evaluating the situation today and I will let you know what the outcome of that is..

Thanks again

Dermot

[Dermot]

We can just as easily turn their argument around: it can't be FM's fault because it works for one citrix account and not for the other.  That kind of knee-jerk / defensive reactions get us nowhere.

I don't think it is Citrix as a product that is doing this, but I think there is something fundamentally different between the Citrix and/or Windows profile of those two accounts.  And it should be relatively straightforward to do a comparison between those two profiles: disk space, settings, ...

This is exactly the same kind of situation as if one user's machine runs FM very slowly but if you create another Windows account on the same box it runs well:  that points to something in the user's profile that is running interference.

 

I meant to say Wim, that it doesn't seem to be affecting any of their other programes .. just Filemaker !!

Reg
Dermot

p.s. Still waiting on the Citrix experts to com e back to us..

[Dermot]

Hi Wim et al ..

The Citrix guy has just sent this message to IT.... (Katie is one of the "heavy use" slow machines)

"I am currently going through all of the XA servers and backing up Katie’s profiles, these are taking a while to copy out and check for temporary files. These are almost all checked and backed up, if you could ask Filemaker if there is a particular type of file which builds up? Also where it is by default? Those answers would be much appreciated."

Again, any info much appreciated

Thanks

Dermot

[Dermot]

p,s. as far as im aware NO files build up

[Wim Decorte]

 

p.s. Still waiting on the Citrix experts to com e back to us..

That's totally irrelevant; FM is not like any other program or application.  It's totally different so you can not compare it to Word's or Exel's performance.  FileMaker is a Client/Server platform that has no equivalent to any other typical desktop application.

Hi Wim et al ..

if you could ask Filemaker if there is a particular type of file which builds up? Also where it is by default?

FileMaker uses the regular windows temporary folder.  No special type of file that builds up, the FM files are named with the prefix "FMTEMP".  These can get as big as the real FM files depending on the user activity.  If the Citrix admins have provisioned a very small "profile space" allocation for the users then performance may be slow because the profile does not allow for sufficient space and FileMaker client and FileMaker Server have to spend a lot of time sending data to and from that could otherwise be cached.

Basically the equivalent of a normal user running out of disk space.

[Dermot]

Thanks Wim, you've been a big help ...

I'll forward this info to their IT & Citrix folk right away.

Cheers again

Dermot

 

[Dermot]

Hi Wim, Lee and all ...

The update to this issue above is that no matter what we did it made no difference .. until .. we moved everyone up to the FM14 app ... Once we installed FM14 on the XenApp 6.5 servers, everything went much much faster with no lags and basically everything worked a treat .. well almost, we then started having issues with creating emails from filemaker in outlook which had to be resolved by updating outlook to the 64bit version .. it had to be comparable to the 64bit FM14..

Anyway, thanks folks for the info above .. just thought Id let you know what happened in the end..

Cheers

Dermot

[Fitch]

Thanks for the update. I'd have guessed the same as Wim, something to do with temp files and disk space.

[Wim Decorte]

Thanks for looping back on this, Dermot.