1 / 20

The Performance Management of Large Windows NT System

The Performance Management of Large Windows NT System . Des Atkinson Metron Technology Ltd desa@metron.co.uk. Contents. Introduction Scalability NT and mixed workloads Capacity planning of large NT systems Management issues Conclusions/questions. Scalability. Clusters MSCS

frisco
Download Presentation

The Performance Management of Large Windows NT System

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Performance Management of Large Windows NT System Des Atkinson Metron Technology Ltd desa@metron.co.uk

  2. Contents • Introduction • Scalability • NT and mixed workloads • Capacity planning of large NT systems • Management issues • Conclusions/questions

  3. Scalability • Clusters • MSCS • Other offerings • Symmetric multi-processing • Large memory systems • Application scalability • NT v5.0 enhancements

  4. Clusters • Microsoft Cluster Server • Shared-nothing, failover model • 2 non-identical nodes • Includes application failover • Scalability of MSCS lies in the future • Other providers, e.g. Digital Enterprise Cluster

  5. Symmetric Multi-Processing • Standard product supported up to 4-CPU systems • NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition took this up to 8 CPUs • More scalable versions available from OEMs • Asymmetry of NT SMP implementation

  6. Large Memory Systems • NT is a 32-bit OS • Supports up to 4GB of virtual memory • 2 GB for users • 2 GB reserved for system • Enterprise Edition increased user share to 3 GB • NT 5.0 will offer 64-bit VLM

  7. Application Scalability • Exchange Server v5.5 • Removal of 16 GB limit on size of the Message Store • Support for automatic failover in MSCS • SQL Server v7.0 (“Sphinx”) • Full dynamic locking • Parallel threads • VLM support • Support for automatic failover in MSCS

  8. NT v5.0 Enhancements • Active Directory and DFS • Support for I2O • Event Trace Facility • Discussed more fully later • Microsoft Management Console • Disk quotas, Kerberos, IPSEC etc.

  9. NT and Mixed Workloads • NT Server not a Mainframe OS • No GOAL mode as in MVS • No tools at the OS level to arbitrate between workloads • Plenty of tweaks available at the application level

  10. Capacity Planning • NT Performance Monitor • Shortcomings in PerfMon itself • Shortcomings in underlying metrics • NT v5.0 Event Trace • Capacity planning of clusters

  11. NT Performance Monitor • PerfMon is an application - users can write their own • Metrics have shortcomings • Log facility is nearest you get to an historic performance database • No built-in planning capability

  12. NT 5.0 Event Trace • Comes with NT 5.0 Beta 2 • Programming tool to allow applications to be instrumented • Will give lots of new metrics • Overhead “very low”? • To be part of WBEM

  13. Following Slides based on talk given at US CMG ‘97 Authors are Jee Fung Pang and Melur Raghuraman of Microsoft

  14. Data Requirements for CP • Process/Thread Termination between sampling intervals • Per Process I/O Counts • Per Process/Thread per device I/O • Transaction Boundaries • File Based Collection • Per Process/Thread Hard Page Fault Counts

  15. NT 5.0 Instrumentation • Events traced • Process/Thread Create/Delete • Physical Disk I/O and Page Fault • Detailed Metrics can now be derived • Detail metrics for process, threads and disks • Allows per device metrics for every thread and process • Bottleneck analysis tools • e.g. hotfiles, hotdisk, topcpu with drilldown

  16. Trace for Applications • API available • Allows event tracing to be built into the application • Can provide data such as: • transaction response time, throughput • transaction-level metrics of CPU and I/O • Will Microsoft include these in their servers, e.g. SQL Server?

  17. Capacity Planning of Clustered Systems • CP of clusters has already been provided on OpenVMS and UNIX • Unit resource usage • Tracking “transactions” • Multi-tier client-server configurations

  18. Running the Enterprise on Windows NT • Account management issues • Dealing with Microsoft • Support issues • What channels are available • Technical manageability • Internal support issues • Compaq/Digital and others • The new one-stop suppliers?

  19. Conclusion • Until now, Windows NT was not ready to run the enterprise • NT v5.0 should represent a major advance in the enterprise • Wise to wait until SP2 is out unless you feel very brave (early 2001?) • How will the competition respond?

More Related