AD Authentication Slowness

[Kevin_Danel]

Hello,

My organization recently implemented AD Authentication in our OnBase system and although it is working, my users think that the authentication speed is too slow. I know that this could probably primarily be a network speed issue; however, I am not sure how to go about identifying where the slowness is coming from. Has anyone had a similar situation and has any advice? We mostly use the OnBase Thick Client but the slowness is also seen using the Web Client. Authentication time usually ranges between 15 seconds and 30 seconds.

Thank you,

Kevin Danel
OnBase Administrator
the Chickasaw Nation
Information Technology

[AdamShaneHyland · Accepted solution]

Hi Kevin!

Thanks for the post.

I'm sorry to hear about the network authentication slowness issue you are experiencing.  If you are noticing the issues in both the OnBase Thick Client and the Web Client, the easiest way to troubleshoot is to start by enabling the verbose switch on the OnBase Thick Client shortcut.  Simply add the -V switch.  This will write a verbose log to the users temporary directory (Start | Run | %temp%).  Looking through the verbose logs, you should see timestamps.  Scroll through the log file until you see major gaps in time.  This might help to identify why there are lags querying back to Active Directory.

Additionally, you could enable the LDAP profile within the Application Servers web.config.  This can be done manually by setting the enableMailSlot from false to true and then attempting to login with the Diagnostics Console running.  You might have to enable the LDAP/NT tab to view the messages.  Once enabled you will see the messages generated by a user attempting to authenticate into OnBase.  As well, you should be able to find gaps in time where slowness is being experienced.

If you are not familiar/comfortable troubleshooting using Verbose or other tools such as Diagnostics Console, I would recommend working with your first line of support.

Take care.

[AdamShaneHyland]

Thanks for the follow up. Can you verify if this issue is occurring for all users or only a handful? Also, how many groups do these users belong to?

[Kevin_Danel]

The slowness is being experienced by all of our users. Some more than others. For example, it is taking about 15 seconds on my PC. But one of my co-workers right next to me is getting 24 seconds every time. We are in the same amount of AD groups, which is just 2.

[AdamShaneHyland]

Unfortunately without seeing the logs I'm not able to tell you exactly what is causing the slowness. I can speculate from what you have told me that it is trying to bind to user groups unnecessarily. As well, you are on OnBase 12 which is an early release of the Active Directory (now named Active Directory - Enhanced) authentication method. There have been enhancements to the software which will most likely improve the login times. Specifically, SCR: #149168 available in OnBase 13 and higher improved login times by optimizing the process so that OnBase is not attempting to bind to user groups unnecessarily.

Do you have the same issue in later versions of the software? In a test environment?

[Kevin_Danel]

That is good news. Our next OnBase project is to update from v12 SP2 to v15 SP1 (we plan to upgrade before the end of the year), so I bet that will help. I will be sure to come back to this thread after our upgrade and let everyone know.

[AdamShaneHyland]

Please do. That would be good to know. Or if you have a Test Environment with the same user group configuration, but on a newer version of the database, you can test with that too. To be honest, you could test the OnBase 12 and OnBase 15 clients with the same configuration as long as you have the OnBase 15 database. You should see the issue with OnBase 12, but hopefully not in OnBase 15.

Let us know what you find.