Slow login performance when using Citrix and DLU

  • 3968059
  • 22-Jun-2007
  • 30-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell ZENworks 7 Desktop Management Support Pack 1 - ZDM7 SP1 Desktop Management

Situation

Large numbers of users in the File System Access Control List (ACL) (typically over 100) for directories used in the DLU File Rights policy can have a significant affect on the Novell Client login times through Terminal Server with or without Citrix when using Dynamic Local User (DLU). The number of files under the directory structure is also a factor, because the permissions propagation to the child objects requires more time to evaluate. The more objects that are being evaluated, the more significant the performance degradation becomes.

Resolution

Keeping the number of users and files in the ACL down will improve login times. Some possible suggestions:
- Using Groups through Terminal Server/Citrix can help. By utilizing groups, the ACL does not get rewritten every time the user logs in; the user only needs to be member of the group.
- Setting up a separate Terminal Server/Citrix server as load increases to the point of degradation.

Additional Information

This chart gives a rough estimate of the affect of the number of users and files in the ACL on login degradation per folder entry in the directory list for the DLU File Rights policy. These numbers may be significantly different based on hardware and network factors.
files 200 400 800 1600
users
125 0.3 0.63 1.2 2.3
500 0.8 1.33 2.37 4.67
1000 1.93 3.33 6.27 12.27
(times are in seconds)