Server 2016 pause when serving Office files

Question

Greetings
I and some of my colleagues have been battling a problem over the last month.
Some of our server 2016s exhibit a 30 second pause at the "Downloading" part of Word or Excel 2019 when serving shared office files.

Our findings so far
All the affected servers show Event 1020 in SMBServer-Operational Event log with the message "
The underlying file system has taken too long to respond to an operation. This typically indicates a problem with the storage and not SMB."
This is corroborated by a Wireshark capture that show a pause between the request of a file and the actual delivery. If I open the same file using Wordpad it is served without interruption, only Word and Excel are affected. If I copy the same file and open it locally on the client the process is immediate. Both clients and servers are only using Defender for protection. The servers are virtual servers with iSCSI based storage and SMB2 is used to serve the files. The clients are Window 10 1909 and 2004.

And now for the horrific part.
Client 1 is on the same subnet as the server X and has a delay when opening the file X.docx
Client 2 is on a different site entirely with a 10-20mbit connection to server X and is served X.docx without delay.
Same server, same file but one of the clients get the delay and server logs the Event 1020.

Please help me understand this

Regards
/Fredrik

Answer 1

Hi,

I have seen this thread and doing research on the issue, it needs some time to do research, if I get any update, I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Best Regards,
Anne

Answer 2

Hi,

The following link could help to troubleshoot Even 1020:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4562940/event-id-1020-warnings-on-a-windows-file-server

If you would like to deep analyze the trace log, it's recommended to open a case with MS, more in-depth investigation can be done so that you would get a more satisfying explanation and solution to this issue.

You may find phone number for your region accordingly from the link below:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/gp/customer-service-phone-numbers

Thanks for your time!
Best Regards,
Anne

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Answer 3

any updates on this. I think I may be running into the same issue.