Damn Slow

Notes Dev team:Client 85 install

It will take forever to install because of all the eclispe crap, in some instances… a hour!!!

Client load times:

Most of the times… it’s slow, but it does load.

Sometimes, it keeps “loading” and stays on the loading screen. After 2-3 minutes the splash screen disappears, but Nothing shows up.

Reinstall of the client is required. It’s all the eclipse crap that you preload, whether it’s being used or not. Widgets, RSS, blah blah.

I have seen it… “checking for new mail” on load and after the splash screen disappers… nothing. Why in the heck would you check for new mail on program load? The is a individual function. When Notes load fully, THEN check mail, not before the shell even loads up!!!

I’ve about 30 corp users as a test install and we had plans to rollout this version, but the number one complaint - slow load times… slow responsiveness… The UI is nice… but it’s just too damn slow.

If I start the same client use the -basic switch…BINGO…were in immediately.

Designer… OMG, where do I start?

It will take forever and a day just to load a app that exists on the local PC. “Refreshing…” - uh… what the hell for?.

In fact the designer wants to refresh everything it sees. It flickers alot and resets/refresh whatever design element your in…(uh…why?)

It should only refresh when I tell it.

Looks like 8.5 is IBM’s version of Vista.

I love the UI, but it’s just too damn slow all around.

Now I’m off to reinstall my Admin/Designer/Notes client AGAIN!!! (today makes about 10 times in the last 45 or so days - yes really… and I’m being conservative)

and yes…I am ticked off.

Brett

Subject: Our very preliminary experiences with 8.5

Disabling Anti Virus is a MUST for installs. We have been seeing installs in the 10 min range with AV off. AV on was taking about 1 hour.

I have been getting about 1 slow startup with my 8.5 client a week. Other times its pretty fast loading up. I always log out of Notes and do a Start - Shutdown in Windows. This is a MAJOR improvement over 8.0.2 where it would take 5 min to start every single day.

However, 8.5 has its quirks. There are little glitches that occur that just shouldn’t happen.

With that said 8.5 is what 8.0 should have been in regards to .0 releases of a client.

Will be looking forward to 8.5.1 to squash some of these bugs.

Subject: Client doesn’t start

“Sometimes, it keeps “loading” and stays on the loading screen. After 2-3 minutes the splash screen disappears, but Nothing shows up.Reinstall of the client is required.”

I solved this problem twice by deleting the data\workspace folder.

Subject: Client doesn’t start

thanks for the tip.I’ll try that the next time it repeats this…

thanks again

Subject: I agree…

I have to say I agree with everything you just said…and I’ve voiced the same concerns on here a few months back. You know how I spent my morning today? Reinstalling clients because of the exact same thing…it takes forever for it to load and then it just disappears, even though you can see the processes running in the task manager. Nothing corrected that but a reinstall…and this on several machines where it works for a few days and then kaput. Another thing that bugs the crap out of me is how if I want to open a database on another server, how I sometimes have to do a Ctrl+Break to stop it from clocking, then hit Enter and PRESTO, it’s not connected to the server. Why couldn’t it just connect the first time?

The number one complaint from our over 500 Notes users? How fricking slow it is…we’re now a global company and are now finiding it necessary to put domino servers wherever we open up a new branch. Funny how we don’t have to do that for our Oracle and SAP apps.

And I agree, don’t get me started with the designer.

Subject: Actually way faster than 8.0 … sure you did double check with virus scanner switched off?

At Lotusphere I heared that due to tons of little eclipse files, some virus scanners cause trouble - might be worth checking (I would be interested to hear what you find).

P.S. I Personaly love it - Client, Designer. Well worth waiting a little bit longer to come up for me. maybe I have more current hardware (But I did not buy a computer in 2009 or 2008).

Subject: It is better than 8.0

But it’s still slow…and I always disable the virus protection when doing the installs, but what are you supposed to do when it’s taking forever to open, even if the virus protection has an allow rule for Notes? Does IBM recommend a specific virus protection then because I’ll gladly switch if that’s the case. And I doubt it’s a hardware issue when I’m talking it’s slow on brand new out of the box laptops, desktops and servers.

Subject: I was suggesting to switch off on start (not just installations) for test reasons.

Not sure if there is a formal official suggestion at all.

Subject: Client damned slow - not all the time

While inspecting ND8.5 BETAs we made similar experiences: The splash screen pops up, we enter a password, waiting … nothing, just some processes etc. And the client seemed somekind of “slow”…

But the officially released version of the ND8.5 client works fine. OK, I myself got a brand new machine at the same time and there is no impression of slowness (I didn’t test the Designer client so far) on this machine.

The only odd behaviour I recognised so far is, that the client seems to freeze sometimes for some seconds without any hint why. The LAN-connection flash icon in the status bar doesn’t show any network traffic, no agent was started. So what? Mostly it happens, when I close a tab showing a web-site e.g. after I opened a RSS feed. Afterwards the tabs can be opened/closed without delay.

But we are very doubtfully for using the new client in a Citrix environment due to the ressource consumption awaited. Has anybody experiences to share with such an environment?

Subject: Citrix

Have a look at this posting here from the Domino Blog. In it they claim a Citrix server that could host ~35 Notes users in 7.x went down by up to 60% on 8.0.

However they targeted Citrix in 8.0.2 and allegedly in testing they took a Citrix server that was handling 40-60 users and with the new settings have increased it to 140 users.

Posting: http://www.dominoblog.com/dominoblog/dblog.nsf/dx/making-notes-rock-on-citrix

Whitepaper: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/notes/d-ls-notesxenapp/

Subject: I also agree

The 8.5 Notes client is terribly slow.

The designer client is even worse. Sometimes it takes over a minute to open a database in designer. You know it’s a bad sign when you’re given the option to complete a task “in the background”.

Opening a database in designer used to be nearly instantaneous in all prior versions.

And to what benefit?

Is the UI so much more appealing? I’ve given it a chance, and I find that it tries too hard to be “cool” and forgets how to get things done.

Subject: It could be worse

I was having the same problems, plus I was getting java errors all the time. So I reinstalled Notes and now it won’t load at all. I’ve done the reinstall three times since yesterday, including deleting all the folders and registry keys, but no client.

Subject: One other thing that troubles me…

We have a server here in our corporate office and several servers in our data center several miles away. All the servers are in the same cluster…but why is that when I open a database on the server here and try to open a document, it tries to connect to another server in the data center? Then the document will open and if you look at the properties, it’s still on the server here in the office, but the delay in opening the document makes me want to pull my hair out! I don’t understand what causes that other server connectivity.

Subject: It may not be much relief, but…

I’m operating on a single, local server. The delays are significant. It may be that while your delays appear to be related to the distant server, they actually have nothing to do with that.

If I were starting from scratch, I’d have all applications web browser only and drop the Notes client completely. Unfortunately, I’d still be stuck with the Eclipsified Designer client to work with. But at least that’s a smaller user base.

Subject: where is the admin server for the database?

The ACL has a property called the admin server.If you have document locking turned on for the database, Notes will contact the admin server to check if the document is “locked” - opened for editing by another user.

You want the admin server to be your local server for best performance.

Jim.

Subject: I have a problem on locking

Steve,

Have you seen my problem?

when the stationery has been used for sending email, it is locked. other user cannot open it for sending email. They got error message “The document is being locked by xxx” and it is opened for read only. When the locker has close its client, the stationery is unlocked.

The database has not set the admin server and the allowing document locking is not checked.

Please help on my problem. THX!

Subject: Have you tried disabling cluster replication?

From Admin Help: “A cluster over a wide are network (WAN) works the same way as a cluster on a LAN. However, if you have a low-speed WAN, you should consider disabling cluster replication. Instead, use scheduled replication more frequently than usual, such as every hour. This reduces WAN traffic, bottlenecks, and the cost of continual transmission.”

Subject: Not practical for us…

That won’t work for us, unfortunately…We do everything in lotus notes from expenses to sales to time reporting to help desk applications. We have to have the cluster replicating to keep things in “real” time.

Subject: Improving installation and client speed

  1. Installation time is much shorter if files are already unzipped. We use an “msi” installation over a LAN. Installs on slow Pentium 4 2.0 machines running XP take about 10 minutes.2. Turn off "Check Subscriptions and “Check for Unread” in Preferences > Basic Notes Client Configuration.

  2. Change the password encryption to 128 RC2 strength as described in Technote #1331108.