New DS Settings - 300% Faster Imaging... - Page 3

Nick · 01-30-2006, 05:34 PM

Welcome to the forums Mike!

coateshire · 02-06-2006, 11:56 PM

I have changed ip address of our pxe server, also, I have modified the DHCP options to look at new ip address of the server. I have modified the Initial Deployment options to look at the new IP address, but when I try to boot pxe and choose initial deployment, it comes up badly formed ip address. Any advise to resolve this issue will be helpful.

Thanks,

Manoj

Nick · 02-07-2006, 09:02 AM

Check THIS Knowledge Base Article and see if it helps you out.

coateshire · 02-07-2006, 04:52 PM

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the update, but I am using DS6.1 not DS6.5, also, I have moved the deployment server to a different subnet. I have tried to recreate the pxe bootfiles from pxe configuration utiltiy, and when I boot up a computer to pxe using initial deployment it comes up to bad command file and goes to A:>\ prompt.

Please advise.

Regards,

Nick · 02-08-2006, 07:44 AM

So you are getting a machine to see the pxe server (getting menu) but it fails when a menu option is selected?

coateshire · 02-08-2006, 05:11 PM

Yes, that's right. When I choose for example: initial deployment to load the image on the machine, after downloading the boot files and going through its diagnostics it comes to a: prompt with "Bad Command File" error message.

Regards,

Nick · 02-09-2006, 07:51 AM

And you have tried to rebuild the boot files? If you have, I have heard of people having similiar problems when the source files they used for one reason or another caused the problem. When they used an alternate source things started working.

JAustgen · 02-12-2006, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by coateshire

Yes, that's right. When I choose for example: initial deployment to load the image on the machine, after downloading the boot files and going through its diagnostics it comes to a: prompt with "Bad Command File" error message.

Regards,

Are you able to map the express share? Can you see the files in f: if you do a dir /w?

JeffreyJRiggs · 06-15-2006, 10:35 AM

well this doesnt work for ds 5.5... just tried it...
tcpwindowsize does not exist in my protocol.ini... so I added it...

HAH THAT WAS FUNNY!!!!! boot machine.. hit F8.. choose boot option.... and it will start then just reboot...

thank god this is in our non production environment...
hopefully Monday I will get to start building my test environment for the new version.. so this will be on my list to try and see if it helps...

when you say max number of servers you can connect to simultaneously... is that number of servers or concurrent connections?

dmrazor · 11-05-2007, 05:46 AM

Hi,

Quick question: I assume you need to adjust these settings for each of the protocol.ini / tcputils.ini files under the different driverdirectories in the dos bootimage?

Thanks,

MFWorld · 03-24-2008, 11:40 AM

Thanks for this solution. I tried and it is true that I won time to create an Altiris image and deploy it on DOS mode.

Tanman · 05-28-2008, 02:31 PM

Does this fix still apply to version 6.9 of DS?

dmrazor · 05-29-2008, 02:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tanman

Does this fix still apply to version 6.9 of DS?

I guess so, since it addresses a DOS TCP setting in the bootimage, not something inside DS.

Raz.

adkozak · 06-16-2008, 10:55 AM

Jeremy,

I do not use boot floppy/CD. All I have is Altiris DS 6.9 with the multiple images on it(img files) and the client workstations. Could you please tell me where do I need to go to change MTU/RWIN settings?
Currently I have the speed 150-190 MB/min while placing the image on the existing image(re imaging) and 200-220 MB/min while placing the image on the blank HD. It takes me 1h.30m to 2h.30m to image one HD. I need to improve the distribution speed.
Sorry if I missed something, I just started to work with Altiris two weeks ago, and don't have a lot experience

Thank you very much,

AVD

tmsmith2 · 06-25-2008, 02:39 PM

Where do I make the changes?
Is it in the Altiris Boot Disk Creator?
Do I just change the tcpwindowsize=2900 to 11600?

By the way I did not see a Word Doc with instructions.

Where do you do this in WinPE?

dmrazor · 11-27-2008, 07:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmsmith2

Where do I make the changes?
Is it in the Altiris Boot Disk Creator?
Do I just change the tcpwindowsize=2900 to 11600?

Yep, that's where you do that.

Beware though that when you add a new networkcard the settings for all the protocol.ini files seem to be reset to their default values. You probably fix this by changing those values in the protocol.ini in the driverlib.

Cheers,

bgonyea · 03-09-2009, 11:53 AM

Hello,

I made the changes according to the first post and it did make pushing images out much faster, however, after those changes, gathering an image takes much longer. Does anyone have any tips for speeding up image gathering?

Thanks,

tmsmith2 · 03-13-2009, 02:21 PM

Tried it and got a TCP error. Seems networking has to be on board with this for it to work.

sunshine · 05-28-2009, 09:24 AM

I'm currently running 6.9 SP1 and I would love to speed up our Image Deploy times. I ran across this article while I was searching on making PXE Image deploys faster with Altiris. I'm getting some different speeds from 100 MB/MIN to 20 MB/MIN. I'm using Linux automation to deploy the images via PXE. Any tweeks or information regarding making this process faster would greatly be appreciated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick

I can validate that these settings do garner an increase significant enough to warrant inclusion.

I have tested it a few times and am pleased with the results.

TCP Performance Tuning in DOS
1 Apr 2005

Summary
When deploying an image to a DOS-based client via a mapped drive, one of the underlying protocols used to get the image file to the client over that mapped drive is TCP. The TCP parameter that controls how much data the DOS-based client can receive at a time is called the TCP Window Size. This parameter controls how much data can be sent to the client before waiting for an acknowledgement from that client that it’s ok to send more data. The default size for this window if nothing is specified in PROTOCOL.INI is 1450 bytes, which is the size of one network packet. This is the default for DS 6.1 and earlier releases. This means that for each and every packet sent to the client, the server must wait for an acknowledgement packet back from that client before it can send another packet. The higher the latency of the network, the more this will degrade speed. Increasing this parameter can dramatically improve performance especially on networks with high latency.

One problem we encountered as we tuned this parameter is that Microsoft’s TCP stack can only take up 64k of RAM including both code and buffers. These buffers are duplicated for every server connection that we can possibly make. This means that in order to increase the size of the TCP window, we must decrease the number of servers we can simultaneously connect to, or the TCP stack will run out of memory and refuse to load. If you only need to connect to one server, you can increase your window size more than if you need to connect to 2 or more servers. Note that you can map multiple drives to shares on one server and all of those drives only count as one server connection.

Below is a chart of parameter values we have changed to improve performance without running out of memory. Also below is a Microsoft knowledge base article that discusses this in greater detail.

DO NOT INCLUDE COMMA'S IN VALUES WHEN ENTERING INFORMATION