Intermittent delay on login to c8.3 - Please help!

[FateAccompli]

Hi all,

We have installed and configured a new Cognos 8.3 installation amd it was running fine, until a few weeks ago we began getting an intermittent login delay, taking around 3 mins to get from Cognos splash screen (default.htm) to the login screen (username and password entry boxes).  It appears that when this delay is occuring all users trying to login at that time will hit the delay for the remaining time.  I.e. person 1 gets 3 min delay, person 2 hitting the service a minute later gets 2 min delay etc.  Once delay has cleared all users login and system is perfect...  Until it happens again :-(

Environment:
2 x Virtualised (VMWare) Windows 2003 Enterprise servers with 8GB RAM and 4 x 2.3Ghz CPU, storage on Dell Equalogic SAN.  These servers have identical installations of Cognos 8.3 and patch 1038.
1 x Virtualised (VMWare) Windows 2003 Enterprise servers with 16GB RAM and 4 x 2.3Ghz CPU, storage on Dell Equalogic SAN.  This server is the content store (SQL 2005) and LDAP (SunOne/Access Manager) server.
There is a firewall between the front-end and backend servers which has ports 1433 (SQL) and 389 (LDAP) opened.

I can provide further information on request....

Any suggestions what to check?

[CognosAdmn]

Not sure what to check, but would you be able to set up single signOn to bypass the login screen? 

[MFGF]

Hi all,

We have installed and configured a new Cognos 8.3 installation amd it was running fine, until a few weeks ago we began getting an intermittent login delay, taking around 3 mins to get from Cognos splash screen (default.htm) to the login screen (username and password entry boxes).  It appears that when this delay is occuring all users trying to login at that time will hit the delay for the remaining time.  I.e. person 1 gets 3 min delay, person 2 hitting the service a minute later gets 2 min delay etc.  Once delay has cleared all users login and system is perfect...  Until it happens again :-(

Environment:
2 x Virtualised (VMWare) Windows 2003 Enterprise servers with 8GB RAM and 4 x 2.3Ghz CPU, storage on Dell Equalogic SAN.  These servers have identical installations of Cognos 8.3 and patch 1038.
1 x Virtualised (VMWare) Windows 2003 Enterprise servers with 16GB RAM and 4 x 2.3Ghz CPU, storage on Dell Equalogic SAN.  This server is the content store (SQL 2005) and LDAP (SunOne/Access Manager) server.
There is a firewall between the front-end and backend servers which has ports 1433 (SQL) and 389 (LDAP) opened.

I can provide further information on request....

Any suggestions what to check?

What database are you using to host your content store?  I remember seeing something similar after upgrading a large content store database - in the end I exported the content, created a new content store database, and re-imported the content into this.  It seemed to fix the problem for me.

MF.