Citrix 1.x - CPU Utilizatioin always 0%
| Lenny Davis | Running MFXPe and FR3 with all latest FR3 hotfixes from http://www.citrix4ge.de/tipps/fr3fix.htm. CPU Utilization and server user load are the only 2 settings used in our bespoke Load Manager Evaluator. The Load Evaluator is applied to all 6 servers in our farm rather than applications. However Load Manager Monitor always reports 0% CPU utilization even though HP Insight Manager and the Resource Manager % Processor time graphs show processor utilization to be over 40% for the last hour on some servers. The Server User Load always reports correctly in Load Manager Monitor. Why is the CPU utilization reporting incorrect information? Because of this our servers aren’t load balancing properly. Any ideas would be welcome.
Thanks Lenny |
| f16gash | KISS -
Keep is simple… use the default load evaluator until you have a better understanding of the theory of operations of load evaluators. It will make your life a whole lot easier! Message was edited by: f16gash |
| jpitsch609 | Keep in mind the way that load balancing works. It takes the higher value from either evaluator and makes the decision based on that.
Jeff |
| Lenny Davis | Been using Citrix for 5 years so I fully understand the theory of load evaluator operations. The default load evaluator specifies 100 server users and we can’t have more than about 20 users on each server because of a processor intensive java application so that’s why we need a bespoke load evaluator. I want to use a combination of Server User load, application user load (for the processor intensive app only) and CPU utilization. Quite simple, only 3 variables. However it doesn’t work properly because the load evaluator stats always report 0% utiization which is incorrect. |
| jpitsch609 | Are you ready for this?
With custom load evaluators, the highest value of the rules is retured as the value for the server. What are the thresholds set for CPU? Jeff |
| Lenny Davis | I have set the CPU thresholds to:-
Report no load when the processor utilization percentage is less than equal to 1. Report full load when the processor utilization percentage is greater than 70. When you look at the load manager monitor graphs, CPU Utilization is permanently stuck at 0% which is incorrect. The Server User load and Application User load graphs but report correct utilization right up to 100% when reaching their thresholds. I have monitored the graphs over a period of 1.5 hours. We know the processors on our Metaframe servers are being hammered because of the HP Insight Management charts and also the % Processor usage graph on the Resource Manager tab within CMC. Incidently, most of the other load evaluator variables such as Disk Data I/O, Disk Operations, Page Swaps and even Memory Usage are permanently stuck at 0% if I add them to our custom load evaluator, so I really don’t know what’s going on. Lenny |
| f16gash | Your server user load for the default load evaluator is set to 100 however the user load metric is based upon %’s and is only a number used to compare the number of connections to other servers.
With that said, if you want your servers to max out @ 20 users or if you want a particular server to max out @ 20 users, you should create a load evaluator based on user load that would max out @ 20 users based on the # of users on the other servers. So, here is an example: |
| Lenny Davis | The load metric isn’t based on % at all it’s based on the number of users connected to that server. It says that in the help in CMC. I have limited the numner of users to 20 in my bespoke load evaluator and applied it to all 6 servers in the farm. If I have 10 users connected to a particular server the load montor says 50%. If I have 18 users connected it says 90%.
Anyway this is all getting away from the poiint of the original question of why does the CPU utilization constantly say 0%, of which no-one has been able to answer. |
| jpitsch609 | You said none of the metrics seem to be working, can you go into perfmon and get reading from that?
Jeff Message was edited by: jpitsch11 |
| Lenny Davis | Good suggestion.
I can read the CPU utilization quite happily from within performance monitor and also the memory usage. CPU utilization typically 10 - 30% with an average of just under 20%. Still nothing in the load evaluator though. Just sits there at 0%. |
| jpitsch609 | Have you actually assigned the load evaluator to the server?
Jeff |
| Lenny Davis | If I hadn’t assigned the load evaluator to the server I wouldn’t have been able to seen the constant reporting of 0% CPU Utilion in Load Monitor for the server.
A further update:- If I go into Resource Manager Reports, Current Processes, and run a report for CPU, Memory and Times the average CPU utilization is 1.9% with a min of 0% and max of 71.5%. Interestingly enough from the memory point of view the report shows the Average Page Faults per second as 71. I have added Page Faults per second to the load evaluator with a min and max of 0 and 200 respectively and that sticks permanently at 0 too. Unless someone can actually place a reply on this discussion stating that they have CPU utilization working for them in a load evaluator I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that some of the load evaluator parameters are a complete bag o’ nails and have never worked in the first place. Lenny |
| jpitsch609 | Well you’d be completely wrong. I have used CPU many times throughout the different incarnations of XP. Just because you have problems doesn’t mean the entire product is broke.
Try doing a repair of your installation. Sheesh. Jeff |
| Lenny Davis | Theres absolutely jack wrong with any of our installations. It was you yourself who said Quote “Load evaluators are not quite as great as they’re made out to be” so I took that to mean that they are problematic, which they clearly are. If you’ve had it working then that’s great and that’s all I wanted to know, that I might eventually get it working. The fact that the citrix documentation doesn’t distinguish the definitions between a full default load evaluator and a full custom load evaluator (which you explained to me) suggests there is more documentation missing which would help me troubleshoot the problem. Have decided to log it with citrix as I cannot afford to waste any more time on the issue. |
| Lenny Davis | Found out what the problem was, and apologies to Jeff for offending him with a previous post but I really was tearing my hair out as we desparately needed this to work.
In the Extensible Performance Counter List application (exctrlst.exe) from W2K Support Tools the Perfdisk Counter was disabled on all servers. Even with this disabled we were still able to read all CPU and disk performance counters from Performance Monitor. So therefore Load Evaluators and Load Manage Monitor require Perfdisk counters to be enabled but Resource Manager does not. |
