Application launching Performance on Full Layer Images

[terranovashipping]

I am new to App Layer and still trying to optimize it.

 

There is a performance issue on a full layer image that applications which run for the first time takes enormous time to open.
E.g. for Word or Excel it requires 10s+ and many times users click multiple times the same icon which occurs for the same application to open 3 - 4 times.

Is there a guide or suggestions how to optimize the performance of the applications.

There is already a topic referring to this issue and the comment to that topic was that a delay is expected but I need to understand the whole mechanic behind it so I can try to optimize it as much as possible.

[Rob Zylowski]

Its normal for some applications to take longer to open if elastic layering is enabled on the image.  This is because file present in the layers cannot be modified directly first they have to be copied to the writable layer on the desktop. So if an app modifies a bunch of files when it starts that makes the launch slow.  So whether your situation is abnormal or not is hard to tell. If there are no performance issues after the app is open I would assume your issue is normal. 

[terranovashipping]

Is there any suggested method/script to pre-load/cache/copy the most required applications in order to optimize this behavior?

 

I'm mostly concerned about Excel/Word/Chrome

[Rob Zylowski]

Is this desktops or session hosts. On session hosts any user can open the apps so you could script an autologon user that opens each app with a logon script and the app can run a macro that will wait a minute then close.   Its not simple to do so most customers just let the first user take a little longer to open the app. 

[terranovashipping]

It's for Desktops, so there is not much that can be done.

 

Bad thing is that all users always have the behavior to close the app rather than close the file, and in many cases it leads to delay when opening a new file  or searching the correct content within multiple files.

 

Thanks for the detailed overview.

[terranovashipping]

I was discussing with a colleague and trying to explain the process.

 

Please correct me if wrong.

 

Even in the files are being copied for an application to the User Layer, there is "cached" size location for those files?

Is there a cache purge process or does it have a policy to delete the files when other applications are being called and the process is not being running anymore?

 

In some cases we see performance benefit if the user has the required applications already opened. 

E.g. open a PDF attachement it takes some time, the second attachment will open in a very short time since reader is already running.

If he closes the application and re-open it will not delay.

In some random event it is unclear to us re-opening the same application will eventually take a good time of time to re-open.

[Rob Zylowski]

The issue I am talking about should only happen for the first launch of an application.  Once the files that are opened for write are copied to the writable layer they will remain there for the entire session so if you open, lets say Word a second time it should be the normal speed.  If its not you have something else going on and maybe your architecture  needs to be modified.

 

There is no purging so after the first launch the time should be consistent and faster than the first launch but only within a single session.  If you log out and log in to another machine you are back to the first launch.

[terranovashipping]

17 hours ago, Rob Zylowski1709158051 said:

The issue I am talking about should only happen for the first launch of an application.  Once the files that are opened for write are copied to the writable layer they will remain there for the entire session so if you open, lets say Word a second time it should be the normal speed.  If its not you have something else going on and maybe your architecture  needs to be modified.

 

There is no purging so after the first launch the time should be consistent and faster than the first launch but only within a single session.  If you log out and log in to another machine you are back to the first launch.

 

Thank you for your time.
We have a permanent machine for each user in our environment and no machine rotation.

But we restart machines if a session is logged off so all lets say the application "caching" is being cleared.

 

I need to investigate more and evaluate the feedback I receive from my users since it might be misleading.