Window NT 4 Scaling/Performance Tests

HEP NT Days Window NT 4 Scaling/Performance Tests Alberto Di Meglio CERN IT/DIS/NCS

Introduction • Windows NT has usually a bad reputation for scaling to large environments • NICE is currently based on NetWare, but situation could/has to change in the future • The NICE Web Services needs some answers now HEPNT Days at CERN

Windows NT Load Tests • We have started a series of tests on Windows NT as a NICE application server • The test has involved one server and (in principle) about 3800+ clients running W95 (80%) and WNT (20%) • The tests have been run in two rounds for three weeks each. Only the middle week has been considered for statistics (curve is bell shaped) HEPNT Days at CERN

SRV5NICE SRV1_NICE SRV2_NICE SRV3_NICE SRV4_NICE SRV0_NICE Users Migration • Users are normally distributed on the NICE replicas at logon by looking a list of the available servers • The list has been modified for all NT and W95+Microsoft Networks clients HEPNT Days at CERN

Server Specifications • Digital Server 5000 • 1x Intel Pentium II 300MHz • 256 MB RAM • 2x 9GB/1x 18 GB HD on 2x F/SCSI controllers (no RAID) • 1x DC2104 FastEthernet card • 2 partitions: C: (2GB), D: (16GB) with NTFS • Swap file: 256 MB HEPNT Days at CERN

System Specifications • WNT 4 SP3/4 • Home/Profile server with 3000+ exported shares • Performance/Network/Disk Monitors • Real-Time anti-virus scanning • Backup client with daily backups • IIS4 (running, but not used) • Standard server services (server,browser,RPC,etc.) HEPNT Days at CERN

A Simple Simulation Test • A simple user creation program used to artificially increase sessions • Program was running from 6 clients, going through a loop to login a user onto the server and move a few NB of files • From Wednesday 22:30 to Thursday 24:00 HEPNT Days at CERN

Test Areas and Items • Server (Sessions, Open Files) • Processor (%CPU, Interrupt/sec) • Memory (Available Bytes, Committed Bytes, Pages/sec read) • Logical Disk D: (%Disk Read Time, Average Disk Read Queue Length, Disk Read Bytes/sec) • Network (%Network Utilisation, Bytes Total/sec, Bytes Transmitted/sec) HEPNT Days at CERN

Server • Max sessions • (R) 1050 • (S) 2703 • Avg. sessions • (W) 762 • (D) 592 • Max Open Files • 18039 • Avg. Open Files • (W) 14485 • (D) 10563 HEPNT Days at CERN

Memory HEPNT Days at CERN

Processor • Max %CPUs • (R) 46% • (S) 100% • Avg. %CPU • (W) 29% • (D) 19% HEPNT Days at CERN

Logical Disk • Max %Disk Time • (R) 100% • (S) 100% • Avg. %Disk Time • (W) 35% • (D) 21% HEPNT Days at CERN

Network • Max %Utilisation • (R) 9.1% • (S) 8.5% • Avg. %Utilisation • (W) 6% • (D) 4% • Max Total Byte/s • (W) 1.2 MB/s • Avg. Total Byte/s • (W) 0.25 MB/s HEPNT Days at CERN

Comparisons: NT/NetWare • Sessions: 450-550 • Memory: varies with disk size and VLMs, requirements can be high • %CPU time: 15-20% • %Disk Time: 40-60% • %Network utilisation 20-30% HEPNT Days at CERN

Comparisons: NT/UNIX ? • Difficult to compare: the systems work in different ways • Sessions are defined in a different way: • terminals with users using all of the server: a few tens • NFS nodes for file sharing, but not permanent connections: 1000+ registered clients, but how many users? • We are performing tests to evaluate AFS servers as file and application servers, show some performance penalties, but hardware is less performant, still not enough users to have comparable session figures HEPNT Days at CERN

Conclusions • WNT4 has at least the same performance as other NOS and probably better memory management than NetWare • Loading applications from 95/NT client is a bit faster than NetWare (but we’re talking of 2-3 sec) • The right hardware is needed, but scalability not a problem even for large environment (up to 600-800 users/server) HEPNT Days at CERN

Window NT 4 Scaling/Performance Tests