Very long query times

[Guest]

Howdy

I’m hoping someone can shed some light on this. I’m experiencing fairly lengthy delays when executing the ALL users object. The domain in question is a windows 2000 AD domain with roughly 2,500 user objects. I've tried Hyena 4.5 -> 6.0 rev C

Object Manager Configuration A:
File -> Manage object View
Type - Windows 2000/2003 domain
Name, ADSI path/server setup correctly

And execute the all users object, Hyena appears to freeze/not respond for 3-5mins. It does return eventually will the correct user accounts.

Object Manager Configuration B:
File -> Manage object View
Type - Windows domain
Source controller and PDC name setup correctly

And execute the users object, Hyena roars forward listing all the user accounts within 5-10seconds.

I've changed the full directory ADSI paths/server to reference local DC's that are GC's, and even tried referencing the DC with the PDC emulator. All to no avail.

It should be noted that all other query objects listed in configuration A do come up quite quickly. Navigation through the Containters/OUs to the users is also very snappy.

DCdiag/NetDiag report all ok.

Ideas please?

[cmccullough]

Re: Very long query times

What format is your domain in your ADSI Path? Is it the FQDN for that domain?

As a test remove the ADSI Server and see what happens without one specified.

[kstanush]

Re: Very long query times

Make sure that you only have the basic fields (attributes) for the All Users query. Adding terminal server attributes can really impact performance. If you remember, what are the attributes that you are retrieving now for All Users ?

[Guest]

Re: Very long query times

The ADSI path and FQDN for the domain work are ok.

Only the basic user attributes was being searched on.

What I have found is that Hyena (tested with v5.5+) takes a long time (in some cases over seven minutes) to retrieve the list of users in a Windows 2000 domain with many (over 30 000) contacts. The time appears to increase exponentially as more contacts are added.

Approx 3,000 users and no contacts - took 3s.
Approx 3,000 users and 50,000 contacts - took 7mins 5secs
I then proceeded to remove contacts (in 5,000 batches), the net result being the Hyena all users query became quicker with every subsequent batch removal.
Approx <30,000 contacts seemed to be the optimal threshold

My guess is that Hyena includes all contact objects in the search query filter even though it only needs user objects. Turning on w2k NTDS diagnostics when running Hyena's All users query results in an event id 1643/1644 (Source - NTDS general; Event Catagory - Field Engineering indicating the search was considered inefficient.

Help!

[Guest]

Re: Very long query times

The ADSI path and FQDN for the domain work are ok.

Only the basic user attributes was being searched on.

What I have found is that Hyena (tested with v5.5+) takes a long time (in some cases over seven minutes) to retrieve the list of users in a Windows 2000 domain with many (over 30 000) contacts. The time appears to increase exponentially as more contacts are added.

Approx 3,000 users and no contacts - took 3s.
Approx 3,000 users and 50,000 contacts - took 7mins 5secs
I then proceeded to remove contacts (in 5,000 batches), the net result being the Hyena all users query became quicker with every subsequent batch removal.
Approx <30,000 contacts seemed to be the optimal threshold

My guess is that Hyena includes all contact objects in the search query filter even though it only needs user objects. Turning on w2k NTDS diagnostics when running Hyena's All users query results in an event id 1643/1644 (Source - NTDS general; Event Catagory - Field Engineering indicating the search was considered inefficient.

Help

[kstanush]

Re: Very long query times

I think you are experiencing a poor design problem on Microsoft's part, but I'll verify with Microsoft that there isn't much that can be done to fix this. I'll explain.

Microsoft designed AD to have users and contacts both considered "people". Hyena always builds its AD queries to access objects by their indexed attributes first, then other attributes. Unfortunately, this means asking AD for "people", then "users". We've asked Microsoft about this before, but we'll ask again if there is a better or more efficient way to ask for just 'users'. But I think that we are doing it the only way that it can be done.

You will note that MMC does not really easily support this, as you have to manage by OU. If you were to put all of your user accounts into an OU/Container and your contacts into another, you would be able to manage by that way and not have any delays.

Also note that the filtering is done by AD and not Hyena. Hyena just builds the query and sends it to AD for processing.

One thing we might add in the next release is an "All Contacts" object and an option to "show contacts with users". If we were to show the contacts with the users, it would not have to filter out the data.

I'll let you know what Microsoft indicates on this problem.

Thanks

[Guest]

Re: Very long query times

Does this show????

[Guest]

Re: Very long query times

Does this show - ignore this. I was experiencing a problem with upstream proxy.

Some more AD information regarding my little predictament.

Approx 3,000 users - 90% in one ou - 3rd tier of directory
Approx 53,000 contacts - 3 different ou's - 3rd tier of directory - (different branch to the one above)

In the testing that I did, it didnt seem to matter at which level the users/contacts where in the directory structure. It simply came down to out right sheer numbers of them.

[kstanush]

Re: Very long query times

Verify that you are using the All Users query in Hyena and that if you go through the OU itself and show everything in the OU, the query performance is what you expect it to be.

[kstanush]

Re: Very long query times

Microsoft has suggested a possible workaround to the "All Users" query performance problem that you were experiencing. If you would like to test this, you can download:
http://www.systemtools.com/download/hyena62.zip

Once downloaded, rename your existing hyena.exe file and unzip this file and replace your copy of hyena.exe with the copy in the zip file.

Run your user query like you have and see what the performance difference is and let me know.

Thanks for all of your help and patience.