After migrating all our active 2007 packages to 2012, we have approximately 500 deployments (125 packages with install, uninstall, reinstall and repair programs). Software Center takes around 4-5 minutes to populate which is 2-3 times longer than RAP in 2007. Is this to be expected or do we have a performance issue?

I've not seen it take that long.

Is SQL Server on the same box as your SCCM install?

Thank you for your response,

The SQL Server is on the same box as the Site Server. The Management and Distribution Points are on a different server that has an SQL replica.

So the data access is happening on the same box as the console.  

Can you post the server stats?

Ram, CPU, Disk, etc....

Also what is the memory limits set to in SQL?  It should be a minimum of 8 and you can limit it to between and 16 if you have the ram for that.

Here is the how to for that.

http://technet.microsoft.com/library/ms191144(SQL.105).aspx 

It should be specced well above the minimum requirements, Server 2012, a san-based virtual vmware box, 4 CPUs 12gigs ram.

SQL memory limit is set to 8gig.

The environment is still being established so we have no actual users on it and consequently the servers should have little actual work to do.

So the SQL Server data is sitting on the sans?   Can you check your disk io? 

1 gig min for OS

2 gigs min for SCCM 

8 gigs min for SQL Server 

You are pretty close to the minimums.

Yes the SQL is on the San, disk io have been, pretty consistently, fairly low. 

Check it well trying to populate the apps.     Is there any way to increase you ram as well?

There are no visual peaks in anything when a client is polling software center. The ram usage is actually fairly close to 12gig a lot of the time so I will request some extra ram, BUT it is currently allowed unlimited overuse and the worst it has ever been is 12,13gb, so I do not expect it to make much difference.

ok, 

This is on the client going to software center or app cat?

it is while loading content into software center on a client. Software center opens with a little 'Loading' box in the middle for approximately 4-5 minutes before the deployments appear. It is not just on intial load either, press f5 - another 5 minutes. Change show filter - another 5 minutes, etc. making it basically unusable.

Check the built in database re-indexing task.  what is that set too and is it enabled?

I suppose this is 'Rebuild Indexes' ? It is currently not enabled

That might be your issue.   It should be enabled and set to at least weekly.   Every time you add an app without the index being rebuilt it will increase the SQL query time.

http://myitforum.com/myitforumwp/2013/04/19/how-to-determine-if-the-configmgr-rebuild-indexes-site-maintenance-task-is-running/

This site has information on checking the index status of your sccm sql server.

Excellent suggestion and great link. I really thought this was it.

I configured the task and confirmed in smsdbmon.log that it has been executed. I could also see in the log that the indexes were, in fact, very fragmented.

Unfortunately, it did absolutely nothing to the Software Center performance :(

SQL Server perf has nothing to do with Software Center perf. The Software Center is a client local process populated from the client system's local policy which was downloaded previously and stored in WMI and not on demand.

Which client OS are you running on?

Have you compared times between a pre-existing system and a freshly installed system?

Software Center has nothing to do with the SQL database. IOW the client does not contact the MP or database when starting it. It just a matter of reading various WMI classes locally on the client. I've seen environments with >1.500 applications available on a single client and it did not take such a long time to open it. I'd have a look at the performance of the client though.

The clients are running windows 7, they are all fresh installations but they have been provisioned with the 2007 client and then upgraded to 2012, I have yet to test it on a machine that has never run 2007.

It is very interesting that the lookup is completely local, however.

For our 2007 environment we ran a small webservice which basically just returns the content of Run Advertised Programs in a more readable format as a webpage and this webservice actually still works when called from a 2012 client, and it returns the advertisements/deployments instantly. RAP was always a little slow for us as well although not to the same extent (perhaps 1-2 minutes for 500 advertisments) so I always assumed it was pulling it from the server. I guess this means it is a client side issue and possibly a carry-over from our 2007 environment.

Is there a Software Center log somewhere?

_SCClient*.log, _SCNotify*.log (%windir%\ccm\logs) and ConfigMgrSoftwareCatalog.log (hidden somewhere deep in the user's profile direct

Many thanks.

From _SCClient_xx.log I can see that it is the wmi query for CCM_Program that is the culprit.

Logentry: "Executing WMI query: Select * From CCM_Program   (Microsoft.SoftwareCenter.Client.Data.WmiConnectionManager at ExecuteQuery)" takes roughly 2 minutes and it runs at least twice every time Software Center is refreshed.

Running:

get-date;$progs = Get-WmiObject -namespace "root\ccm\ClientSDK" -query "Select * From CCM_Program";write-host ("programs: {0}" -f$progs.count);get-date

in powershell I confirmed that it is the wmi query itself which is taking its sweet time. It takes roughly 2 minutes for 520 programs on a freshly installed beefy laptop.

In comparison,

$UIResManager = New-Object -comobject "UIResource.UIResourceMgr";get-date;$progs = $UIResManager.GetAvailableApplications();write-host ("programs: {0}" -f$progs.count);get-date

Only takes about 20-30 seconds.

And the webservice we used on 2007 was based on this query:

get-date;$progs = Get-WmiObject -namespace "root\ccm\policy\machine\actualconfig" -query "Select * From CCM_SoftwareDistribution";write-host ("programs: {0}" -f$progs.count);get-date

Which takes less than a second to run...SMH

For what its worth, Software Center was horrifically slow for us until SP1. Performance improvement was DRAMATIC once we moved to SP1.  Are you RTM or SP1?

Unfortunately we are already on SP1 CU2 :/

Probably time to contact CSS to delve into what's going on and whether there is an intrinsic issue with ConfigMgr that needs to be fixed.

Maybe an obvious question, but did you deploy CU2 to the clients also?

Yes, some were deployed with CU1 and then upgraded, others were upgraded from the 2007 client to the 2012 CU2 client (using your excellent startup script).

Note that our migrated 2007 packages have not been converted to applications (we plan to leave the 'legacy' packages in their current format and apply the application model to future applications) and it is the CCM_Program query which is causing the hangup. As far as I can tell, CCM_Program contains package data while CCM_Application contains application data.

Is there any reason to think that deployments to packages should perform significantly worse than deployments to applications?