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Windows 2000 - The Rhetoric and the Reality for Performance Managers

Windows 2000 - The Rhetoric and the Reality for Performance Managers. Des Atkinson Metron Technology Ltd desa@metron.co.uk. Contents. NT 4.0 Performance Monitoring the shortcomings Windows 2000 System Monitor New Metrics Event Trace Windows 2000 Scalability and other issues.

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Windows 2000 - The Rhetoric and the Reality for Performance Managers

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  1. Windows 2000 - The Rhetoric and the Reality for Performance Managers Des Atkinson Metron Technology Ltd desa@metron.co.uk

  2. Contents • NT 4.0 Performance Monitoring • the shortcomings • Windows 2000 • System Monitor • New Metrics • Event Trace • Windows 2000 Scalability and other issues

  3. NT 4.0 PM Shortcomings • All tools were snapshot-based • Process/thread termination between sampling intervals • no accounting function unlike UNIX or a mainframe OS • threads come and go much more than processes, so loss not too great • dependent on sampling granularity

  4. NT 4.0 PM Shortcomings • Per Process I/O Counts • Counters in NT 3.1 returned crazy values • In NT 3.51 values were consistently zero • In NT 4.0 they disappeared! • Can attempt some inferences using PF Delta • If server dedicated to a single app, e.g. Oracle, then data available at that level • I/O reads per user session • I/O writes by the DBWR

  5. NT 4.0 PM Shortcomings • Per Process/Thread per Device I/O • a dream for capacity planning/modelling • not present even on most mainframe or mid-range systems • Workarounds for the above • work it out once then remember • infer by file to device mappings, e.g. from Oracle statistics

  6. NT 4.0 PM Shortcomings • Transaction Boundaries • Mainframes have TP Monitors such as CICS on MVS or TPMS on VME • Block mode terminals with associated message types make transaction boundaries clear, both conceptually and in their metrics • Midrange systems such as OpenVMS or UNIX lack this clarity, as does NT

  7. NT 4.0 PM Shortcomings • Per Process/Thread Hard Page Fault Counts • Which processes are the most memory intensive? • The work of which processes actually result in physical page faults as opposed to logical page faults? • What is the size and rate of these hard page faults?

  8. NT 4.0 Performance Monitor • Good for real-time monitoring • Data logging is not sophisticated • NT Resource Kit has a data logging service (MONITOR.EXE, DATALOG.EXE) • does not pick up new processes • No built-in data manipulation, trending or modelling

  9. Enhanced Disk Performance counters on this system are currently set to start at boot. Note that Logical Disk counters of striped disk sets may not be correct. DISKPERF [-Y[E] | -N] [\\computername] -Y[E] Sets the system to start disk performance counters when the system is restarted. E Enables the disk performance counters used for measuring performance of the physical drives in striped disk set when the system is restarted. Specify -Y without the E to restore the normal disk performance counters. -N Sets the system disable disk performance counters when the system is restarted. \\computername Is the name of the computer you want to see or set disk performance counter use.

  10. New PM Features in W2K • System Monitor • Supersedes the NT 4.0 Performance Monitor • An embeddable component • May be programmed/configured • Performance logs and alerts service • Event Trace as “additional data collection technology” • OS Kernel instrumented since Beta 1 • Active Directory, Exchange etc. “in progress”

  11. System Monitor Architecture User defined VB or HTML application Windows NT Performance Monitor Custom Performance Tool Sysmon log and alert service System Monitor graph control PDH.DLL WMI RegQueryValueEx() Perflib Performance Extension DLL System Performance DLL Performance Extension DLL System Performance DLL Sysmon Log Service Files System Performance DLL Performance Extension DLL Hi-Perf Data Provider Object

  12. System Monitor Interfaces • Methods • e.g. typical user interface tasks such as adding counters • Properties • e.g. data source properties or those of counter displays • Events • e.g. where a control has been changed, such as when a counter has been added

  13. New W2K System Metrics • New PnP DiskPerf • Correct logical and physical counters for FT devices at the same time! • Counters on a per disk or per volume basis • Disk counters • Idle time • Split I/O count • Count of I/Os that were sub-divided internally • Provides an indication of disk fragmentation

  14. System Monitor Counter “Fixes” • For disk counters, Microsoft say you no longer have to run “diskperf -y” to switch these on • confirmed this to be true • Microsoft claim to have fixed the I/O by process counters in beta 3 • confirm these metrics do return values, but they look rather strange (see earlier slide)

  15. What is Event Tracing? • Event trace “is a recorded and ordered set of events” • Provides information to supplement the standard counters • Events traced may include disk I/O, TCP/IP traffic, thread creation/deletion, file I/O

  16. Exploiting Trace Logs • Running a trace creates an event log file (e.g. test_000001.etl) in the PerfLogs directory (6MB in 30 minutes!) • Microsoft talk of “detailed analysis tools or enterprise tools” • BUT nothing in beta 3 will actually look at these .etl files (Jee Pang’s tracedmp.c files not on the CDs!)

  17. Tracing Active Directory • Microsoft claim that every request or transaction may be traced for the following: • LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) • Replication • Kerberos authentication • I have not yet been able to confirm this or measure any overhead

  18. System Monitor vs Event Trace Data • System Monitor Counters • very low overhead • best for continuous monitoring • problems relating system to user • Event Trace Data • higher overhead • best for detailed analysis or capacity planning • good for relating system to user

  19. Microsoft Help Extract: Note Trace logging of file I/O and page faults can generate an extremely large amount of data. It is recommended that you limit trace logging using the file I/O and page fault options to a maximum of two hours.

  20. What Overhead does Event Tracing Impose? • Jee Pang claims that the overhead of the Kernel tracing is “very low” • Decided to test this by running a set of benchmarks and measuring elapsed times before and after. • 3 benchmarks were run (Perl scripts): • I/O intensive • Memory intensive • Compute intensive

  21. # # I/O INTENSIVE BENCHMARK # print "Enter required number of iterations: "; # # Typical number of iterations was 250, with avg elapsed time of 53 secs # chomp($input_var = <STDIN>); $fname = time; $start_t = time; for ($x = 1; $x <= $input_var ; $x++) { for ($y = 1; $y <= $input_var; $y++) { $z = $x * $y; # # Open and close the file each time to increase the I/O overhead # open (OUTF, ">>$fname"); print OUTF "$z\n"; close (OUTF); } } $end_t = time; $tot_t = $end_t - $start_t; print "Start time : $start_t\n"; print "End time : $end_t\n"; print "Elapsed time: $tot_t secs for $input_var iterations\n"; print "Output file : $fname\n"

  22. # # MEMORY INTENSIVE BENCHMARK # print "Enter number of iterations: "; # # Typical number of iterations was 3000000 with average elapsed time of 19 secs # chomp ($iters = <STDIN>); $start_t = time; for ($num=0; $num < $iters; $num++) { $grocerylist[$num]= $num; } $end_t = time; $tot_t = $end_t - $start_t; print "Start time : $start_t\n"; print "End time : $end_t\n"; print "Elapsed time: $tot_t secs for $iters iterations\n";

  23. # # COMPUTE INTENSIVE BENCHMARK # print "Enter required number of iterations: "; # # Typical number of iterations was 5000 with average elapsed time of 45 seconds # chomp($input_var = <STDIN>); $start_t = time; $blob = 0; for ($x = 1; $x <= $input_var ; $x++) { for ($y = 1; $y <= $input_var; $y++) { $z = $x * $y; } } $end_t = time; $tot_t = $end_t - $start_t; print "\nStart time : $start_t\n"; print "End time : $end_t\n"; print "Elapsed time: $tot_t secs for $input_var iterations\n";

  24. Event Trace and Applications • Event Trace has an API that can be embedded in a user-written application • Per process buffer pool etc. • Can be used to measure transaction throughputs/response times • Hey - what about ARM?

  25. Clustering Technologies on Windows • MSCS • 2-node failover cluster • no scalability features • Load Balancing Server • a step-up from DNS or IP load balancing • designed for the middle-tier on HTTP, FTP etc. • 3rd party solutions such as Oracle Parallel Server

  26. Two-node failover database solution Database Database

  27. Oracle Parallel Server on Windows NT Architecture

  28. W2K and Clusters • W2K Datacenter Server will be shipped “90 to 180 days” after rest of W2K • Beta 3 issued early May 1999 so probable shipment date of final release of W2K is October 1999 • Assume therefore that Datacenter Server will ship around April 2000 • Microsoft still ambivalent about what extensions to clustering will be in it

  29. Terminal Server Counters • Terminal Services Object • Session counts (active, inactive, total) • Terminal Services Session • 75 counters available • CPU and memory usage • Many relating to transmission of data • “Protocol Glyph Cache Hit Ratio”!

  30. Windows 2000 - The Rhetoric and the Reality for Performance Managers Des Atkinson Metron Technology Ltd desa@metron.co.uk

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