App Stacks merge slowly after login

[jeffrobinson85]

Hello,

I'm currently running into an issue with App Volumes 2.11 where app stacks merge slowly once logged into Windows. What I mean by this is after log in you can see the CVApps VMDK's listed as hard drives in my computer and then after about 3 to 5 minutes they finish merging and disappear. This is for Windows 7 x64 App Volumes Manager is 2.11, App Volumes agent is 2.11, App Stacks were provisioned with the 2.11 agent and 2.11 template. Curious if anyone else has seen this issue.

Thanks

Jeff

[Ray_handels]

How long does logon take? And do you happen to have the VolWaitTimeOut setting applied??

In the 2.11 build they tried to fix application response and startup times. Unfortenately there was an issue attaching appstacks that came along.

I must say that I never saw it taking that long. About a minute after log on was the max amount I saw.

[jeffrobinson85]

Ray,

Thanks for the reply. Login is about 1 minute. When we were using App Volumes 2.9 we were using VolWaitTimeOut. After upgrading the manager and agent we noticed the 2.9 app stacks mounted an d merged slowly. So I opened a case with VMware. They recommended installing Microsoft Hotfix KB2614892 and rebuilding our app stacks with the 2.11 template. They said the reg settings were not necessary. What should I set the VolWaitTimeOut to, 0?

Thanks

Jeff

[Ray_handels]

They were somewhat right .

There is no need to set the reg key for 2.11 but than your logontime could be extended to almost 4 minutes. If your logontime is 1 minute and that's what you expect it to be I wouldn't change the value indeed.

What can you see in the svservice.log when you look at the clock and the time in the logging? And what kind of applications are you trying to load?

[jeffrobinson85]

Ray,

We are seeing this in the logs. This seems to take about 4 minutes.

[2016-11-11 13:29:29.633 UTC] [svservice:P6832:T6824] Finished refreshing environment succesfully

[2016-11-11 13:29:41.586 UTC] [svservice:P828:T6372] ReplicateFonts_Install: No fonts in {ad6c58f8-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50}

[2016-11-11 13:30:11.697 UTC] [svservice:P828:T6460] ReplicateFonts_Install: No fonts in {ad6c5914-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50}

[2016-11-11 13:30:41.745 UTC] [svservice:P828:T6492] ReplicateFonts_Install: No fonts in {ad6c591e-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50}

[2016-11-11 13:31:11.805 UTC] [svservice:P828:T6536] ReplicateFonts_Install: No fonts in {ad6c58ec-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50}

[2016-11-11 13:31:41.860 UTC] [svservice:P828:T6576] ReplicateFonts_Install: No fonts in {ad6c5922-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50}

[2016-11-11 13:32:11.940 UTC] [svservice:P828:T6608] ReplicateFonts_Install: No fonts in {ad6c5928-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50}

[2016-11-11 13:32:41.922 UTC] [svservice:P828:T6644] ReplicateFonts_Install: No fonts in {ad6c5902-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50}

[2016-11-11 13:33:12.006 UTC] [svservice:P828:T6672] ReplicateFonts_Install: No fonts in {ad6c592e-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50}

[2016-11-11 13:33:42.083 UTC] [svservice:P828:T6700] ReplicateFonts_Install: No fonts in {ad6c58f2-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50}

[2016-11-11 13:34:11.966 UTC] [svservice:P828:T1020] New volume event (startup): "\Device\HarddiskVolume7" GUID {ad6c58f8-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50} Hive \REGISTRY\MACHINE\SnapVolumes-{ad6c58f8-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50} (1 logged in, SystemVolume 0, VolumeType 2, Hide 0)

[2016-11-11 13:34:11.966 UTC] [svservice:P828:T1020] UpdateMountedVolume "\Device\HarddiskVolume7" SnapvolType 2 Hide 0 Updated 0

[2016-11-11 13:34:11.966 UTC] [svservice:P828:T1020] Checking for scripts on "\Device\HarddiskVolume7" (event startup)

Creating mount point at "\SnapVolumesTemp\MountPoints\{ad6c58f8-a7be-11e6-8f6c-0050568a4c50}\"

[nevgeo01]

Jeff ,

We were having a slow merge of App stack and VMware support has suggested upgrading the Esxi hosts to Update 2 . Please give it a shot as it has improved the performance for us.

[Ray_handels]

My guess is that you were on the 6.0 ESX Vanilaa right?

There was an issue with this version (and the U1) were it took 3 seconds per appstack to reconfigure the machine when logging in and attaching appstacks. You can quite easily see if this is the case.

With newer version (U2 or the hotfix VMWare created) it should take about 2 seconds to recobfigure the machine. If you dont have the patch as said, it will take 3 seconds per appstack (we saw reconfigure times of over 20 seconds).

[alsmk2]

Apologies for resurrecting  an older post, but I'm also seeing this issue with 2.12 and ESXi U2 - this wasn't the case with 2.11, although that had its own flaws too.

I'm currently updating the hosts to U2a to see if it removes the issue, and am waiting on support to get in touch. I'll update the thread later on after I've had a chance to test, but if anyone has any ideas what else it could be, please let me know.

Our log files look pretty much identical to the above:

[2016-12-11 08:48:33.028 UTC] [svservice:P6864:T6868] Finished refreshing environment successfully

[2016-12-11 08:48:47.836 UTC] [svservice:P1156:T6628] ReplicateFonts_Install: No fonts in {36762267-bf7e-11e6-9358-005056bed268}

[2016-12-11 08:49:17.884 UTC] [svservice:P1156:T6852] ReplicateFonts_Install: No fonts in {3676226d-bf7e-11e6-9358-005056bed268}

[2016-12-11 08:52:50.829 UTC] [svservice:P1156:T1436] MeasureTime::RecordCenter: Start recording  GUID:{f9450295-6b72-11e6-b7cd-806e6f6e6963} Type:1

[2016-12-11 08:52:50.829 UTC] [svservice:P1156:T1436] New volume event (startup): "\Device\HarddiskVolume2" GUID {f9450295-6b72-11e6-b7cd-806e6f6e6963} Hive \REGISTRY\MACHINE\SnapVolumes-{f9450295-6b72-11e6-b7cd-806e6f6e6963} (1 logged in, SystemVolume 1, VolumeType 1, Hide 0)

[2016-12-11 08:52:50.829 UTC] [svservice:P1156:T1436] Sending reply to SVCMD_ID_NEW_VOLUME (Message 4)

[1000000]

Hi,

I've been seeing this exact issue with the ReplicateFonts task taking several minutes and causing appstacks to not be availabe for up to 10 minutes.

Did you find any solution to this issue?

thanks

[Ray_handels]

If you do see this issue and applications aren't available for ten minutes I would suggest removing the fonts from the appstack and just adding them to the golden image (or just copy them during logon using a logonscript).

[Sravan_k]

also run optimization tool on your parent image using "app volume template"

[1000000]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Silly question but how exactly do you remove the fonts from an appstack?  The fonts are just stored along with all the fonts in the windows/fonts folders though If I attach it as a drive I can see that there are 44 fonts in the directory then.

VKMR - do you mean the App Volumes Packaging machine template?  And do you just mean to run that on the App Capture machine prior to creating the appstack?  If I have an existing appstack that I wanted to clean  up could I update it on the capture machine after running that optimisation or would I need to create the appstack from scratch in order to cut out the unnecessary files?

[Sravan_k]

Hi 1000000,

Yes, what I mean is run the app vol template in optimization tool on packaging machine, and troubleshoot like update the app stack/ re-create app stack and so on as you said...

I am just recommending the latest app vol template, it may helps you

Thank you.