HP (Hewlett-Packard) BL465C G7 manual

Performance of HP ProLiant BL465c G 7 with AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors in 32 - and 64 -bit HP SBC environments Technical white paper Table of content s Executive summary ............................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ..............................[...]

2 Executive summ ar y Designed for virtualization yet flexible enough for an y business applicati on, t he HP ProLiant BL465c G7 server blade combines best- in -class features to help reduce netwo rk sprawl and lo wer infrastructu re costs. Multi-core AMD Opteron ™ 6100 Series processors with u p to 16 DIMMs provide t he performance needed for de[...]

3 Introduction Figure 1 sho ws the HP ProLiant BL465c G7 s erver blade. Figure 1 . The H P ProLiant BL465c G7 server bl a de, illustrating a un ique dra wer design th at allows y ou to service h ard drive s independently G7 technologies Seventh-generation AMD Optero n-based HP ProLian t servers such as the BL465c G7 server blade feature the foll ow[...]

4  HP Integrated Lights -Out 3 (iLO 3)  Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)  Thermal logic The following secti ons of this paper desc ribe testing per formed by HP to characteri ze the performance and scalability of an HP ProLiant BL465c G7 serv er blade in 32 - and 64 -bit HP SBC environments . Test methodology HP continues to upgrade existing HP [...]

5 Table 1 . Compon ents of TSScaling Component Description Automation tool s Robosrv.exe Drives the server-s ide of the loa d simulation Robocli.exe Helps drive the client-side of th e load simulation Test tools Qidle.exe Determines if any scripts have f ai led and re quire operator interventi on Tbscript.exe A script interpr eter that help s drive[...]

6 Test scenario To characteri ze its sc alability, HP tested the HP ProLiant BL465c G7 server blade in 64 - and 32 -bit HP SBC environments wh en runni ng a workload based on the User pro file described above. Note: As recommend ed by HP for m ost applications, the FBWC was conf igured with 100% write for all testing. Use the BIOS t o adjust the re[...]

7 Test topology Figure 2 illu strates the HP SBC test environm ent. Figure 2 . The tested envir onment (6 4-bit implementation sh own) Note: Test environmen ts such as that shown in Figure 2 are available to cus tomers at HP Solution Centers to help solv e a wide v ariety of bus iness probl ems.[...]

8 Configurations This section ou tlines the configurations of servers and clients u sed in the test environm ent. Table 3 presents inform ation on system c onfigurations; Table 4 provides a sy stem su mmary. Table 3 . Syst em configurat ions Server Configuration HP SBC server 2P HP ProLiant BL465c G7 server blade with:  AMD Opteron pr ocessor Mo[...]

9 Table 3 . Syst em configurat ions (continued) Server Configuration Domain controller 2P HP ProLiant DL3 60 G5 s erver with:  Dual-core Intel Xeon p rocessor (3 . 2 GHz)  2 x 2 MB L2 cache  2 GB RAM  Four 72 GB 15,000 rpm SAS hard driv es  Integrated Smart Array P400i controller w ith RAID 5  NC373i Multifun ction Gigab it Server[...]

10 Table 4 . Syst em summary for the bare-metal HP ProLiant BL465c G7 server bl a de (continued) Component Description Boot device DeviceHardd iskVolume1 Locale United States Hardware abstract i on layer 5.2.3790.3959 (srv0 3_sp2_rtm .0702 16- 1710) / 5.2.3790.1830 (srv03_sp1 _rtm.050324-1447) User name Not available Total physical mem ory Model [...]

11 The following sc enarios were tested:  Server blade conf igured with the AMD Opter on process or Model 6174 , 6164 HE, 6136 , and 6128 HE  HP SBC test environment s – 64 -bit: 6174, 616 4 HE, 6136, 6128 HE – 32 -bit: 6174, 613 6 Configured with pro cessor Model 6174 An HP ProLiant BL465c G7 server blade featuring the AMD Opteron pr oce[...]

12 Figure 4 sho ws normalized Perfm on values. Figure 4 . Ther e were no st opped sessions when 48 7 Heavy Users wer e logged on With 487 users ac tive, there were no sto pped sessions. The processor became saturated with approximately 5 00 users lo gged on, which coincided with th e marked increase i n processor qu eue length shown in Figure 3. Th[...]

13 Canary times Figure 5 sho ws sample results fo r the tested server when ru nning a typical canary script. Indi vidual user response times a re shown in blu e, with a yellow line depi cting average res ponse times. HP analyzed this figure to determine when response tim es began to inc rease markedly and consistently over a baseline level, indicat[...]

14 Figure 6 . % Pr ocessor Time values – show ing that 141 Heavy U sers were su p ported when system PTEs became exhausted The optimal nu mber of Heavy Users support ed by the HP ProLiant BL465c G7 server blade was 141 . Configured with processor Mo del 6164 HE An HP ProLiant BL465c G7 server blade featuring the AMD Opteron pr ocessor Model 6164 [...]

15 Figure 7 . % Pr ocessor Time values – show ing that 447 Heavy U sers had been able to log on when process or utilization reached 80% Thus, as many as 447 Heav y Users were supported when pro cessor utilizati on reached 80%. Figure 8 sho ws normalized Perfm on values.[...]

16 Figure 8 . Although 447 Heavy Users were able to log on , tw o session s had stopped With 447 Heavy User s – the number of users logged on when processor utilization reached 80% – there were two stopped sessions. Thus the opti mal number of users is (447 – 2); that is, 445.[...]

17 Canary times Figure 9 sho ws sample results fo r the tested server when running a typical canary script. Individual user response times are shown i n blue, with a yellow line depicting average res ponse times. HP analyzed this figure to determine when response tim es began to inc rease markedly and consistently over a baseli ne level, i ndicatin[...]

18 Figure 10 . % Process or Time values – sho wing that 411 Heavy Users were supported wh en process or utilization reached 80 % The optimal nu mber o f Heavy Users supported by the bare-metal HP ProLiant BL465c G7 ser ver blade was 411 . Canary times Figure 11 sho ws sample resu lts for the tested server when ru nning a typical canary sc ript. I[...]

19 Figure 11 . Canary time v alues show that user respon se times starte d to become un acceptable when 475 Heavy Users were active Response times wer e acceptable when 411 Heavy User s – the optimal number – were active. 32 -bit test environment HP ran a perfo rmance test using a wo rkload based on the Heavy User profile. Figure 12 shows selec[...]

20 Figure 12 . % Processor Tim e values – showing that 161 Heavy User s were supporte d when disk utilizat ion began to incre ase exponentially Disk utilization increased exponentially du ring this test ru n due to lack of system PTEs. The optimal nu mber of users suppo rted by this HP ProLian t BL465c G7 server blade was 161. Configured with pro[...]

21 Figure 13 . % Process or Time values – sho wing that 380 Heavy Us ers were sup p orted when pr ocessor utilization reach ed 80% The optimal nu mber of Heavy Users support ed by the bare -metal HP ProLiant BL465c G7 ser ver blade was 380 . Canary times Figure 14 sho ws sample resu lts for the tested server when ru nning a typ ical canar y scrip[...]

22 Figure 14 . Canary time v alues show that user respon se times starte d to become un acceptable when 406 Heavy Users were active Response times wer e acceptable when 380 Heavy Users – the optimal number – were active. Test analysis su mmary Figure 15 su mmarizes the test results. Figure 15 . Optim al numbers of Heavy Users supported by the H[...]

23 Important: As with any labor a tory benchmar k, the perf ormance metr ics quoted in this performance bri ef are ideali zed. In a production env i ronment, th ese metr ics may be impacted by a variety of factors; for more information, ref e r to Appendix B – SBC solution sizing . HP determined that there were no disk or net work bottlenecks in [...]

24 Recommendations This section pro vides general r ecommenda tions for im proving the performance o f HP SBC servers. x64 platforms Since x64 platforms allo w you to better utilize memory an d multi -core processors, the bottleneck you are most likely to encounter 8 would be assoc iated with the di sk subsystem. While a detailed analysis of disk I[...]

25 Note: HP has not yet ch aracterized FBWC per formance in the HP SBC environment. Howe ver, testing perf ormed using BBWC demonstr ates that , typically, improv ements from write cache are most signif icant when the HP SBC server is performing l og-intensive operations and/or when sign i ficant page file write operations are necessary, such as du[...]

26 Note: For more inform ation on be st practi ces associate d with virtuali zation, r efer to the HP white paper, “ Best pr actices for depl oying Citrix X enApp on XenServer .” Conclusions When planning an x64 HP SBC environment, you should select servers equipped with multi -c ore processors to help maximize scalabili ty. If your budget allo[...]

27 Appendix A – U sing Microsoft Window s Serve r 2003 x64 Editions Microsoft off ers operating systems that support both 64 - and 32-bit applicati ons, as well as existing 32 -bit deployment and management too ls – all on the same platform. These operating systems provide an evolutio nary path to 64 -bit techno logy, allowing 64- and 32-bit ap[...]

28 Appendix B – SBC soluti on sizing As with any laborato ry benchm ark, the perform ance metrics quoted in this performance brief are idealized. In a production environment, these metrics may be i mpacted by a variety of factors, including th e following:  Overhead Agents and services ( virus s canning, bac kup and restore, provisioning, secu[...]

29 Figure B-1 . Home page for th e HP Citrix XenApp an d Microsoft T erminal Serv ices Sizing Tool Based on informati on provided by the cu stomer, the sizer can provide a quick, consistent mechanism for identifying the “best - fit” server f or a par ticular HP SBC environment and generat e a Bill of Materials (BOM) f or that server.[...]

For more inform ation HP ProLiant BL465c G7 server blade http://www.hp.co m/servers/bl465c HP ActiveAnswers sol ution area f or HP SBC , including C itrix XenApp and Microsof t Terminal Services http://www.hp.co m/solutions/activean swers/hpsbc HP ProLiant Sizer fo r C itrix XenApp and Microsoft Wind ows Server 2003 Term inal Services http://h71019[...]