Hi
I'm struggling with a performance issue on Windows Server 2012 R2 for last few days. I've already went through the number of solutions found online as well as couple remote sessions with VMware support.
VMware is convinced that this issues isn't related to the hypervisor, which seems true to me as the issue isn't affecting any of the 2008 servers. Problem is also present on 2012 R2 server regardless of the VM location (any host, any datastore) or VMware hardware
version (tested on 8 - 10).
The issue itself is simple. Whenever any graphically intense content is opened on any of our Windows Server 2012 R2, the refresh rate (or FPS if you like) over RDP is dropping down dramatically. This is affecting all of our 2012 R2 servers, the other boxes running 2008 or SBS seems fine. Two of the affected servers are running Citrix XenApp 7.6 and the same issue can be observed through ICA session (issue doesn't affect ICA or RDP running on Windows Server 2008).
I've already configured 2012 visual effects for optimal performance, disabled task offloading, reduced colour depth, optimised Citrix policies (on servers running Citrix) and few more things including latest Windows Updates. No luck.
Problem is also affecting both LAN and WAN users. Sometimes the delay is as bad as 5-10 seconds and affecting web browsers, Outlook, Word, pretty much anything that is displaying more than couple images and text. For example Google website and search results are OK. Scrolling through the results is almost normal, typing in the address bar also fine. However as soon as anything like MSN.com or BBC website is opened the refresh rate is terrible until the browser window, MS Word or Outlook is closed.
We are using latest RDP and Citrix client software. RDP 8 have UDP enabled, RAM, CPU and disk IOPs on both clients and servers are low and not causing any problems, issue is affecting RDP to Windows Server 2012 R2 from Windows 7 SP1, 8, 8.1, Android and Windows Mobile clients.
On top of that, we are running two different VMware 5.5U2 clusters in two separate data centres. Both are using different hardware configuration and again we only see the problem on 2012 servers. Also the issue doesn't seems to be affecting 3rd party software
such as TeamViewer on 2012 R2. TeamViewer over WAN gives us much better frame rate than RDP over gigabit LAN.
Any help and suggestions would be much appreciated.