When groundwork is connected to ldap, there are 30-35 ldap calls made out to the LDAP servers. This was causing slowness, sometimes up to 5 minutes connection time when opening cacti web interface, and other applications that are not part of the core groundwork product.
A patch for this was developed for Groundwork Enterprise 7.1.1 under GWME\-7.1.1\-1 \- LDAP Patch. This patch is compatible with 7.1.0 and the steps can be followed as described.