slow response adding users

[jim-stewart]

unity 3.14 (built from 3.11 update patch) on a mcs 7835 platform with gig of ram...sql2k with svc pack 1 and appropriate hotfix, exch2k with svc pack 2 all on box...this is a vm only install where unity has been joined to their ad - they are not an exch shop, so unity was the first and is the only exch...

when i go to add users manually it takes a solid minute or longer from clicking on the add button before the window populates to begin the add process...if i then click to import existing it takes another minute or more before i can click on the find button...once i do click on the find button the waiting starts all over again...this problem is inconsistent in that every now and again it will take only 10 to 15 seconds before these screens come up...

also, considering this is a vm only, and unity is the only exch box, when i go to import existing user (from ad) apparently it will only show me users that i have created the exch account for right?

as always, your humble servant...

jim

[lindborg]

This is a known issue with the SA import… short story, it’s not overly bright about how it finds users in AD. Longer story…

When you go to find an existing Exchange user (more accurately a mail enabled user in AD) the SA goes through the directory service provided by the DOH which starts at the root of the forest and goes down through all containers and subcontainers pulling together a list of all mailboxes that match your search string criteria. If you just have * in there and you have a bunch of containers and/or mailstores and/or domains in your forest this can (and does) take a while…. Even if you don’t have a lot of users in your directory.

The SA crew is working on going right to AD for this instead of going through the DOH directory service which will help a lot but this wont be available for a while (probably not until 4.0 later this year, but that’s not decided yet). As such the Customer Applications Team is working on qualifying the next version of the Global Subscriber Manager application (http://www.answermonkey.net/App_GlobalSubscriberManager.htm) that will allow imports of standing mail users on 3.1(3) systems and later. It’ll basically let you navigate to the container in question (very much like ADUC) and import one or more users in that container quickly and easily. By having you navigate to the container instead of doing a huge recursive traversal of the entire forest, it’ll be considerably quicker and less prone to delays for large directory structures. The down side is to do the subscriber import function you have to be running GSM on the Unity box in 3.x (4.x will allow for off box). But it should be available on AnswerMonkey for download in the next few weeks… I’ll post a note out here when it’s ready since I’ve gotten a number of inquires about it of late (you’re not the only person to have noted this issue).

[maslaga]

I put out a post regarding this issue before.

On the original installation of the Unity server, 3.1.3 with exch2k, I placed the default subscriber location on an Exchange server that had 20 message stores. Pulling up the add user screens were intolerably slow.

I rebuilt the server from scratch and pointed the default subscriber location to a different exchange server in the same domain that only housed a single message store. Now when I pull up the add user screens they are almost instantaneous.

Given that the exchange servers are all in the same adminstrative group, in the same domain, why does the IDC run much more efficient just by pointing to a different server's message store? I guess I'm just a bit confused on exactly how the IDC works depending on the exchange server pointing to.

[lindborg]

I'm unsure why the IDC would respond so differently in that scenario.

Short story, the SA is rewriting the import component to go right to AD instead of going through the IDC (which was originally designed to wrap Ex55 directory info). They're working on it but it'll take some time.

The Customer Applications Team has just released to beta a new version of the Global Subscriber Manager tool that allows imports of users in AD. It takes a completely different approach to user imports that doesn't have any issues with large numbers of users, containers, mailstores etc... the down side is it has to run on the local Unity server to import users. If you want to kick this around, email me at lindborg@cisco.com and I'll send you a copy to look at.