Learned something new on IIS Compression

Dynamics CRM is a web app, therefore it leverages IIS. Usually IIS compression is enabled by default since we would like to reduce bandwidth usage and also reduce the page load times. The .aspx files sent by the server to the browser is highly compressed by algorithms such as gzip. IIS 7+ offers the ability to cache not only compressed static files, it also compressed dynamic files. Modern browsers have the ability to decompress the incoming files.

IIS Compression uses the CPU to compress the files, I’ve learned that compression is automatically switch OFF when CPU usage is above 90% for Dynamic file and 100% for Static files. It will automatically switch back ON when the CPU drops back to 50% for both Dynamic and Static files. You can modify these limits in the applicationHost.config file which is normally in the C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config folder.

I want to bring this to everyone’s attention because usually during CRM performance testing, we often push the server CPUs to their limits. Please look at your CPU usage on your front end servers to make sure that they don’t hit the IIS compression limits and you will have a more accurate performance test.

CRM 2011 – IE 7,8 9 Hangs

I ran into a problem today that CRM IE7, 8, 9 hangs after 30 minutes because I have many XmlHttpRequest calls on the form.  I found a blog on MSDN that helped me out and I believe all of the us as a CRM developer should pay attention to.  The title of the blog article is Why You Should Use XMLHttpRequest Asynchronously, it’s a good read.

CRM 2011 Performance Tuning Lesson Learned

Oh well, when it comes to tuning the CRM 2011 application, there are many things we can do.  The project that I am working on for the past two years is finally finished with performance tuning, I like to write down a few things that I learned from the tuning exercise just in case that I need to do it in the future.  Thanks to my friend, Grant Geiszler for sharing some of the information with me.

1. Infrastructure
   • Reduce network latency, make sure the network routings to the servers are correct.
   • Make sure the SPNs are setup correct between servers and the different service accounts in used.
   • Make sure the IIS AppPool Recycle time is adjusted.
   • Make sure the load balancer are setup correctly using the correct profile.
     • If using F5 load balancer, please review the Deployment Guide provided by F5. The deployment guide is written for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 however most of the configuration applies to CRM 2011 as well. The profile that we used has the following settings.
       

       ltm profile tcp pr_irpc_tcp_120min {
           ack-on-push enabled
           bandwidth-delay disabled
           defaults-from tcp
           idle-timeout 7200
           nagle disabled
           proxy-buffer-high 131072
           proxy-buffer-low 98304
           receive-window-size 65535
           send-buffer-size 65535
           slow-start disabled
       }
       

2. Customization/Coding Optimization
   • Reduce the # of REST/SOAP calls, consolidate the client-side calls into a server side plug-in.
   • If you are using the REST endpoint to retrieve related information, only return the fields that are needed.  If returning all of the fields from an entity, it’ll drag down the performance because the return page-size.  We have entities storing a lot of data, the return page-size was up to 5MB, after the optimization and only returning the fields that we need, the page-size reduced to KB.
   • Avoid registering too many synchronous plug-ins, try to convert some of the plug-ins to asynchronous when possible.
3. CRM Optimization
   • Enable authPersistNonNTLM.
   • Enable WCF compression.
   • Turn off IM Presence Functionality if not needed by updating the IsPresenceEnabled field to false in the OrganizationBase table.
   • Add EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization (value 2) to the registry under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSCRM.
   • Add MaxUserPort (value 65534) and TcpTimedWaitDelay (value 30) to the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters.
   • Monitor the AysncOperationBase table.  Schedule a periodic job to clean up the AsyncOperationBase table.  More information on removing the records from the AyncOperationBase table and to schedule a job to clean up the table, please refer to KB 968520.
   • Reschedule the CRM 2011 Maintenance Jobs. By default CRM 2011 creates 6 maintenance jobs which are scheduled to run daily.  Depends on when the CRM Organization is created, the jobs may run when users are in the system.  You may download the CRM 2011 Maintenance Job Editor Tool to reschedule the jobs.  More information on the tool and how to use the tool, the premier team wrote a post on their blog.
4. SQL 2008 Optimization
   • Set degree of parallelism from 0 to 1. This disables the parallel execution of the simultaneous operations on the SQL server.
   • Turn Read Committed Snapshot On.
   • Configure the TempDB Drive using the SQL best practice.
   • Validate the Max/Min Memory Configuration.
   • Validate Processor Configuration is set to use Normal mode and not fiber mode.

Anyway, I am sure there are many more optimization that you can do to the Outlook client, IE and the client OS. I hope the above tips can give you a head start.

Slow Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) Performance

I am working on a global Dynamics CRM 2011 project and we are encountering performance issues on Internet Explorer (IE) 7.  I guess there are several options to tackle this problem.

• Option 1: If you customer is ok with upgrading all of the users to IE 8 or 9, they will see performance enhancements for sure comparing to IE 7.  However not an ideal option since enterprise customers are not moving as fast as smaller companies on their infrastructure and on the users’ operating system.
• Option 2: Update 2 IE settings and add a registry key to the user’s machine, I can’t believe what I am seeing.  CRM 2011 performs extremely well after the changes.  Here’s what I did.
  1. Change the Internet Explorer settings
     • Navigate to Tools | General | Tabs (Settings).
     • Unselect Enable Quick Tabs.
     • Select Let Internet Explorer decide how pop-ups should open.
     • Click OK and then restart the browser.
  2. Add the following registry key (by default, IE only has 2 connections)
     • Click Run  | Regedit.
     • Navigate to hkeycurrentuser\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\internetsettings.
     • Add new DWORD MaxConnectionPerServer with Decimal value of 10.
     • Add new DWORD MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server with Decimal value of 10.
     • Close Regedit.

Thanks to my buddy, Jim Wang, for the great tips!