RDS load testing

d_brennen

d_brennen

d_brennen

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Anyone know of a tool that can load up a 2016 RDS/terminal server and log metrics?

I have a wonky RDS server that slows to a crawl randomly when 15-20 or so users are on and someone logs in. System hangs for everyone, opening explorer/programs take an age and some newly logged in users have no shares mapped. Just as soon as it goes FUBAR, everything recovers and users can log in again fine. Nothing in events I can see, CPU/RAM usage is fine... at the end of my tether with it. Similar setup at another site is fine. GPO processing looks fine, seeing the same issues both RDP locally and RDWeb.

Microsoft's tool seems to be limited to previous versions, lots of very suspicious third party sites claiming to do this
 
If it's during logon, I'd be looking at disk performance as already mentioned, and whatever method you use for user profiles.

For user profiles, if you're using old school roaming profiles, it could be the large amounts of data being copied across the network onto the box causing issues. Should really be using modern profiling software at this point (FSLogix, VMware DEM (UEM), etc). Even with older roaming profiles, it shouldn't impact that much with only 15-20 users.

Is your RDS environment virtualised? If so, look at metrics on your backend SAN, or within your chosen hypervisor.
 
Is it a single Session Host Server? Is there a Gateway involved, and if so is the Gateway on the same server, or dedicated. If there are multiple Session Host Servers are they being load balanced correctly?

If there is an issue where newly logged on users aren't getting shares mapped, then I would say Group Policy Processing is potentially one to look at, assuming that your shares are mapped via a GPO. Would need to know more of your setup to advise.
 
ah yes, the joys of working with RDS. I've worked with terminal services / RDS / Citrix since 2000 (yes, I'm old). I'm currently running an RDS 2019 setup of 18 session hosts for 1,500 dumb terminals.
Next year (was supposed to be this year) it's being complimented with some high powered servers for VDI (that'll be fun)....and I'm also talking with Microsoft about getting on the GPU-P beta trial.

anyways, this may not be server related, but there's too little to go on to be sure. List out the components you have (servers, spec, general overview).

My general recommendations for anyone starting out with RDS is the following

1. Brokers, gateways, session hosts all on seperate servers.
2. VM everything (even your session hosts). Trust me! 2 session host VMs sat on a physical server is better than 1 physical session host....so long as your hardware isn't crap.
3. User profile disks out, FSLogix in (now owned by Microsoft, free, and a doddle to setup).

oh, and Microsoft are slowly starting to knock the nails in the RDS coffin so do a bit of horizon scanning and plan for the future.
 
Thanks for the replies. Storage a concern, it's an old SAN with limited network performance. Got a new fibre switch this week. Migrating to vSAN and new hosts next week (woohoo covid remote work budget extension!). We'll see what happens
 
As long as you have the correct latency and are on the HCL you should see massive performance improvements re SAN Metrics / Performance with vSAN in comparison to an older SAN.
 
TheOracle said:
ah yes, the joys of working with RDS. I've worked with terminal services / RDS / Citrix since 2000 (yes, I'm old). I'm currently running an RDS 2019 setup of 18 session hosts for 1,500 dumb terminals.
Next year (was supposed to be this year) it's being complimented with some high powered servers for VDI (that'll be fun)....and I'm also talking with Microsoft about getting on the GPU-P beta trial.

anyways, this may not be server related, but there's too little to go on to be sure. List out the components you have (servers, spec, general overview).

My general recommendations for anyone starting out with RDS is the following

1. Brokers, gateways, session hosts all on seperate servers.
2. VM everything (even your session hosts). Trust me! 2 session host VMs sat on a physical server is better than 1 physical session host....so long as your hardware isn't crap.
3. User profile disks out, FSLogix in (now owned by Microsoft, free, and a doddle to setup).

oh, and Microsoft are slowly starting to knock the nails in the RDS coffin so do a bit of horizon scanning and plan for the future.
Click to expand...

Re: RDS coffin time - how so ?
 
Anyhoo, tomorrow afternnon is D Day, switching over guests from the old datastore to vSAN and some swanky hosts, SSD cache, the lot.

Got donated some nvidia M60 GPUs as well, will have a play with GPU passthrough on one of the hosts, sell the rest. Seem to be worth a few quid
 
CrimsonAvenger said:
Re: RDS coffin time - how so ?
Click to expand...

Rumours were Microsoft were thinking about pulling it from server 2019, they have been itching to for a while. They want a remote desktop service running on Windows 10 rather than a server os.
I doubt it will happen anytime soon, but Microsoft are definately wanting to see the back of RDS. The more I read into it, the more I could see why they wanted it on windows 10.
 
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