VA 7.3 Slow Application Loads

[Quentin]

Hi,

I'm new to VA 7.3 , working on a server that is on the other side of the globe. 

In a browser, when I open the main VA link, I see the "loading" page for 35 seconds before it opens.

When I click Data Explorer it takes 1 minute 10 seconds to load.  If I go back to home and click Report Designer it takes >1 minute to load.  Back to home and click the viewer, it takes >1 minute to load.

After everything has loaded, I can switch back and forth between the apps, and performance is fine.  And once I'm in an application, performance making charts etc seems fine.

I use a BI server in the same cage, and it feels a bit sluggish, but not painful.  But makes sense that VA is more network intensive than SPWA.

I discussed with the admins, and they said they had contacted tech support, and that when each application opens, it is downloading a ton of data (because it's using Flash?), and that there isn't a way to cache this data.  The hope is that when we upgrade to 7.4 it will be all HTML5 and will load faster than Flash.

Just wanted to ask the group if that sounds reasonable, and if others have had slow responses when opening applications on a VA server that is distant in geographic and/or network space.

I was hoping to switch some of my EBI reporting over to VA.  But I hate the thought of trying to sell my users on the new fast solution, and the first thing they notice is staring at a company logo for a minute, wondering if their browser has crashed. 

That said, if the answer is "it's crazy to work with a VA server on the other side of the globe because it is too network intensive," I'm happy to go back to our admins and ask them to put an instance in my hemisphere. : )

Thanks,

--Q.

[Joy_SAS]

Hi Quentin,

Performance is not my area of expertise.  However, I wanted to clarify something about SAS Visual Analytics 7.4.  It's not a full HTML5 release (unlike the new 8.1 release on SAS Viya).  In the 7.4 release, the modern SAS home page and the modern SAS Visual Analytics Viewer are HTML5 based.  However, the rest of SAS Visual Analytics (including the classic home page and the classic viewer) are still Flex/Flash based.

-Joy

[Quentin]

Thanks @Joy_SAS, that is helpful to clarify that not all of 7.4 are HTML5 based. Hopefully we'll be on Viya before too long. : )

[JuanS_OCS]

Hello @Quentin,

I have seen similar behaviour before, although caused due to many reasons.

One of them is while using a VPN, the VPN had 2 entrance points and every request to the server had to go to both.

Another time, was due to a reverse proxy with bad configuration: several IPs on the same machine had the web server having problems with the load balancing of the network, and some sessions were actually lost.

I personally think that is worth a second look of the package reaction on the network. Perhaps with some network tuning the performance can be increased, a lot.

I am wondering. If a person access from the right side of the globe, does the VA server perform better?

The remark from @Joy_SAS is a good one which resolved confussion. Something else that is worth to try is the SAS Mobile BI app for Windows 10 (if you have windows 10): http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings17/SAS0640-2017.pdf

Also, if you upgrade to VA 7.4, I think it is worth the try: classic will be ok and there are many improvements into the modern view, for report viewers. Do not miss this hotfix in that case: http://support.sas.com/kb/60/665.html

Hope it helps a bit

[Quentin]

Thanks @JuanS_OCS, appreciate the tips. I will try to find someone physically closer to the server to test the connection times. There is definitely some unusual networking going on (which I don't understand), so it's definitely possible that network bottlenecks are the underlying problem.

[SASKiwi]

Another option to consider would be to remote into a virtual PC or interface like Citrix close to where VA is hosted. 

[Quentin]

Thanks @SASKiwi.  That would be the ideal test. 

Ironically, I log in to a terminal server next to the VA server to use all the SAS clients.

But unfortunately,  for browser login, we use an ID card with a chip in it to authenticate and since I can't put my card into a virtual card reader, I can't authenticate.  And actually, I'm not even logged into the terminal server as me, it's a different account.  So I can't connect to VA or even SPWA, even though I can run DI studio, EG, SMC etc.  Sigh.

[JuanS_OCS]

@Quentin good luck with that. My best recommendation at this moment: that analysis might take quite some time if you are not lucky, because of the added network complexity to the complexity if the different SAS components.

In case that would be true and it takes too long, the best investment mony/time is to get a SAS technical consultant/architect in house to make the analysis, and align him with your internal IT architects and administrators. If communications are open and there is availability aligned between all parties, it would be the best.