Client Management Suite

Since Symantec Support doesn't seem to want to solve this issue for me (Sorry for being cynical, but after 1.5 weeks of a Critical issue being opened with them and no contact from the support engineer since the ticket was opened, I'm a little irritated)

I am having a problem with my Jobs & Tasks running.  I get a HTTP Error 503 or a message indicating Task Server too Busy.  Also nobody can access the console without having to RDP into the Server.

Everything else in the console works except for Task Server.  I have less than 400 clients on this Server.

If I restart the server or even just IIS, Task Server works fine for about 15-20 minutes, then the errors come back.

Anybody have any thoughts?  I'm stumped on this one!

What do you have the task server client settings at?  If the clients are checking in evry 5 seconds or so, that could put some strain on your server.

That being said it's run that way for over a year without issue.

Are you using task server? Do all you clients have the Client Task Agent? Is the NS Server assigned to the collection of machines it is intended to manage?

After all that, I know 500 clients is the max threshold for an NS in regards to being a Task Server, however I would always have a package server in the site where the NS is, performing those functions.

Last things to think of, have you updated to the latest version, and are you using a proxy (which is a big issue with Task Servers)?

Less than 400 clients shouldn't require an additional Task Server, but it sounds IIS is being bogged down o the box. Perhaps you can create an additiaonl application pool for the Task Server virtual directories and leave the NS in the original app pool? Do you have enough resources and bandwidth on the NS to handle all the traffic?

how much memory do you have available? Have you checked the various table sizes, and server performance reports to see if the task server messages are just the 'tipping point'?

Resources & Bandwidth are not an issue.

Server has 4GB installed with 1-1.5GB free at any given time. 

Jim - I'm not sure what tables you are ferring to or how t determine is the task server messages are at the tipping point.  I just started the Altiris Profiler to run for the next 2 hours - I'll post the findings of that when it completes.

I reviewed the performance logs and cannot find anything unusual, here's a snapshot of the Performance Graph - again nothing terribly high in my opinion?

What is the "Reason String" that accompanies the 503 error?  See http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/55f71614-ef1b-4015-b9c8-a42c1e700c25.mspx?mfr=true

I've had this problem occur.

The issue is likely that the following setting might be too low:

In your coreSettings.Config file, try changing the value on the "SecurityCacheMaximumTrusteesPerItem" to 20000

If you get better performance, but it still fails, raise it higher in increments of 10,000 until you don't get the errors.

Hope that helps,

Jim