Performance issues

Question

As we have begun to go into production with Adaxes and we are noticing that it is becoming increasingly slower. Our installation is a VMware VM running 2008 R2. It originally had one 1 CPU assigned to it, but we noticed that the CPU would spike on the queries, so we added another CPU and 2 more GB of memory to upgrade it to 6GB.

An example of the slowness would be when we would type the first name of a user in the Quick Search field on the home tab, the browser will start to spin, but it will take another 20 - 30 seconds for it to go to the search page and then once there another 20-30 seconds to show results.

I have also checked the resources on the domain controllers and found nothing there indicating resource problems.

Is there some recommendations or something I could look at to try and figure out what is slowing down the pages?

Adaxes is helping us manage two forests. The first forest has a total of 4 domains and the second forest is a single domain. There is no trust between the forests. Adaxes is using two separate accounts to manage each forest.

Thanks

Comments

Hello,

Most probably, the issue is in your Security Roles. Some Security Role assignments require resource-intensive operations and may cause similar issues.

To check whether the Security Roles are the issue, please do the following:

1. Login to Adaxes Web Interface using the credentials of the default service administrator.

2. Try performing a search for a user in the Quick Search field. The default service administrator has unrestricted access, and security checks are not performed. So, if the issue lies in Security Roles, the search should be performed much faster.

3. If the issue is in Security Roles, you have two options:

   • Try disabling your Security Roles one by one until you find the roles that cause the issue.
   • You can back up Adaxes service configuration and send the backup file to our support email (adaxes@softerra.com). We will take a look at your Security Roles configuration and see, which roles cause the issue.
     See Backup/Restore Service Configuration on how to back up Adaxes service configuration.

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Not seeing a difference when I use the service account. It still takes 30 -50 seconds to go to the search tab and then another 30-50 seconds to retrieve the information.

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Then, to help us troubleshoot the issue, can you perform a similar search in the Adaxes Administration Console? To do this:

1. Open Adaxes Administration Console.
2. In the Console Tree, expand the service node that represents your service.
3. Right-click Active Directory.
4. Click Find...
   
5. In the Find dialog that appears, activate the Simple Search tab.
6. Select User in the Type field.
7. Type the first name of any user in the Name field and press Find Now.
   

Is it slow in the Administration Console as well? Also, when you are performing the search, is CPU usage high on the computer where Adaxes is installed?

Do you have any remote sites in your Active Directory with slow connections to them?

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I get very quick responses from the console with minimal CPU usage, but the same query from the web page is slow and CPU spikes for the Softerra.Adaxes.service.exe process for the time that you are waiting for the response on the web page.

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Hello,

Please make sure that you test searching in the Administration Console using the credentials of the same user that you use to test searching in the Web Interface.

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Yes. I tested with the same credentials. I am starting to think that this is not a search latency. I am finding that just going from the Basket tab to the Home tab takes up to a minute and a half to load. Using F12 on the browser I found that it is taking 40 - 50 seconds for default.aspx to load and then it is taking 40 - 60 seconds for GatewayService.asmx (ProcessCallbackRequest) to then complete. I have some approvals in my queue and they finally show up when that last process finally completes.

What could be delaying these two pages?

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Hello,

To help us troubleshoot the issue, please enable tracing in Adaxes Web Interface:

1. On the computer where your Adaxes Web Interface is installed, open the folder that any of Adaxes Web Interface sites are installed to. By default, Adaxes Web Interface sites are installed to the following folders:

   • Administrators:
     C:\Program Files\Softerra\Adaxes 3\Web Interface\Admin\
   • Help Desk:
     C:\Program Files\Softerra\Adaxes 3\Web Interface\HelpDesk\
   • Self-Service:
     C:\Program Files\Softerra\Adaxes 3\Web Interface\SelfService\

2. Find the Web.config file.

3. Find the following lines:
   <!--- Trace settings -->
   <trace enabled="false" pageOutput="true" requestLimit="40" localOnly="false" mostRecent="true" />

4. Change trace enabled="false" to trace enabled="true" and save the file. This will enable tracing in this Adaxes Web Interface site.

After you've enabled tracing, login to the Adaxes Web Interface site for which you enabled tracing and try to load one of the pages that causes slowdowns. When the page loads completely, some tracing information will be available at the bottom of the page. Save this page as an HTML file and send this file to our support email (adaxes@softerra.com). We'll see what we can do about that.

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Further troubleshooting found that the issue is with the Panel and a componet(s) under it. I removed them all and the pages are working now. What I found is that every time the page came up, the panel was still processing (GeatewayService.asmx) and when you did anything, the cancelling of that process also took time. So if you went to the home page and started a quick search, you had to wait for the process to cancel before you went to the search page and then that panel process slowed up the actions on the search page.

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Hello Robert,

We need some time to study your trace file. I'll update this topic as soon as we come up with something.

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I think I have narrowed it down to the My Approvals component. I created a duplicate site and with all the components, I had the same issue, but when I removed My Approvals, the performance issue went away.

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Robert,

OK, we'll think of a way to resolve the issue, thank you for the information.

Answer 1

Hello Robert,

What could cause the issue is that you have too many Approval Requests (over 1000). To check the number of pending Approval Requests:

1. Launch Adaxes Administration Console.
2. In the Console Tree, expand the service node that represents your Adaxes service.
3. Select Approval Requests.
4. In the Result Pane, select All requests in the Show field and Pending in the Status field.
5. Press the Apply Filter button.
6. The number of pending Approval Requests will be shown at the top of the Result Pane.
   

Comments

The Inactive Computer Deleter! We have a lot of old computer accounts in our AD, but this was running every night. I don't believe I had anything less than 5000 pending requests to disable computers. I had scheduled this back on the Dec 12th and never saw anything in the history to indicate that it was doing anything, so I put it on my to do list to check out when I had time not knowing that it was building the pending approval queue to create a debilitating experience. Every night that it ran, it duplicated an approval request. I noticed a request for the same computer for each night that it ran.

I have learned to make sure I understand and read what exactly the process will do.

I would like to ask that something be put in to stop the scheduled processes and draw attention to the fact that the pending approval queue is too high.

Thanks for help!!

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Hello Robert,

To remedy the issue, you can find all inactive computers in your Active Directory using the Inactive Computers Report. Then, you can disable them, for example. Also, you can move your inactive computers to a certain OU and then exclude the OU from the activity scope of the Inactive Computer Deleter Scheduled Task. If you want to receive a notification each time the Scheduled Task creates an Approval Request, you need to include yourself to the list of approvers of the Disable the Computer account action of the task.

To find all inactive computers in your Active Directory:

1. Login to Adaxes Web Interface.
2. Select Reports from the Top Navigation Menu.
   
3. On the page that appears, select Inactive Computers under Computer Reports > Account Status.
   
4. Specify the number of days during which a computer should be inactive to match the criteria and click Generate.

On how to exclude a certain OU from the activity scope of a Scheduled Task, see Step 10 of the Schedule Tasks for Active Directory Management Tutorial.

To receive notifications whenever the Inactive Computer Deleter Scheduled Task creates an Approval Request:

1. Open Adaxes Administration Console.
2. In the Console Tree, expand the service node that represents your Adaxes service.
3. Navigate to Configuration \ Scheduled Tasks \ Builtin.
4. Select Inactive Computer Deleter.
5. Double-click the Modify the computer: disable the account action.
   
6. in the dialog box that appears, click Add... in the Get approval for this action section.
   
7. In the dialog box that appears, select your own user account and click OK.
8. Double-click the Delete the Computer action.
9. in the dialog box that appears, click Add... in the Get approval for this action section.
10. In the dialog box that appears, select your own user account and click OK.
11. Click OK again and save the Scheduled Task.
    Now you will receive notifications on Approval Requests created by the Inactive Computer Deleter Scheduled Task to the e-mail specified in the Email property of your user account.