Improve System Center Console Performance

Q: I'm getting poor performance using System Center consoles from remote locations--what can I do to improve them?

A: All of the System Center 2012 R2 management interfaces can be run remotely from the actual System Center management server. However, some of the consoles transfer large amounts of data to and from the management server and database, especially consoles such as Service Manager. If the console is running over a high latency link, then the performance of the console may be poor.

For the best performance, the latency between the console and the server/database should be less than 100ms.

Any time the latency is between 150-200 ms, the console will experience lag. In the example of Service Manager, this is a 40 percent degradation in response time. Anything above 200ms, and the console will generally be considered unusable.

One possible solution is, instead of running the console on the remote machine, instead configure a Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) in the same datacenter as the System Center servers and database.

On that RDSH server, install the System Center consoles. On the remote machines, use Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and go to that server to run the consoles. RDP is designed to handle high latency links, and additionally the amount of screen updates sent by the consoles is fairly low. This should give a good experience for remote users, even over a high latency connection.