Performance of Migrated HP e3000 Applications Kevin Cooper Hewlett-Packard kevin.cooper@hp.
Can Anybody Answer This Question??? What size system(s) will you need to run your migrated HP e3000 applications on a new platform? 7/22/2008 page 2
The Classic Answer What size system(s) will you need to run your migrated HP e3000 applications on a new platform? It Depends!!! 7/22/2008 page 3
Overview • “Migrating” • Hardware • Software Applications Considerations Considerations • Other Performance Considerations • Sizing Your New System 7/22/2008 page 4
“Migrating” Applications • Move an MPE/iX application to a new platform by: - Replacing it - Rewriting it - Migrating it • “Migrating” means modifying an existing application to run on hardware and software other than the HP e3000 and MPE/iX.
Overview • “Migrating” • Hardware • Software Applications Considerations Considerations • Other Performance Considerations • Sizing Your New System 7/22/2008 page 6
Hardware Options • Architecture • Processor • Number speed of processors • Memory • Disk 7/22/2008 storage page 7
Architecture • HP recommends three options: - PA-RISC running HP-UX - IA-32 running Windows or Linux - Itanium running HP-UX, Linux, or Windows 7/22/2008 page 8
What About Itanium? • “The HP Server rx5670 has produced the world's best TPC-C score for a 4-way system, by a margin of over 40% compared to the next best 4-way system…” http://www.hp.com/products1/itanium/performance/commercial/tpcc.html • Itanium 2 is well-suited for large relational database servers and applications which access lots of data.
What About Itanium? • While typical MPE/iX applications may not show much performance improvement just from running on 64-bit processors… • “The Intel Itanium 2 processor is not only 64-bit, it is designed for parallel performance. It has a number of enhancements like data speculation, advanced prefetch and predication, and a very powerful floating point architecture to ensure it performs extremely well.” http://www.hp.com/products1/itanium/performance/index.
Architecture • You should base this decision more on your future direction than on the processing requirements of your current HP e3000 applications. • The free conversion kits for HP e3000 N-class and A-class systems may be a factor for some in choosing to continue on PA-RISC with HP-UX.
Conversion Kits and Processor Speed • High-end N4000 servers operate at the same CPU speeds after being converted to HP-UX (N4000-440, 550, and 750MHz). • These three processors provide about the same level of performance before and after conversion from MPE/iX to HP-UX. • Keep in mind that processor speed is only one of many factors in looking at the performance of migrated applications.
Conversion Kits and Processor Speed • Converted A-class systems will operate at full speed: - A400-110 and A500-140 convert to 440MHz - A400-150 and A500-200 convert to 650MHz • Mid-range N4000 systems will operate at full speed: - N4000-220 and -330 convert to 440MHz - N4000-380 and -500 convert to 750MHz • These systems will provide extra CPU cycles when converted to HP-UX, from 33% more (N4000-330) to over four times as many (A400-150).
Processor Speed • To compare older HP e3000s with PA-RISC HP-UX servers, multiply the “MPE/iX Relative Performance Units” of the HP e3000 server by 25. • This gives you a very rough estimate of the processing speed equivalent for the HP e3000 system. • For example, a 979-300 is rated at 19.5 MPE/iX units. You can approximate it as 500MHz (19.5 times 25). • If you migrated this system to a 750MHz HP-UX server, you should gain roughly 50% in raw processing speed.
Processor Speed • It is more difficult to compare HP e3000 server speeds to platforms that are not PA-RISC based (such as Intel), because the machine instruction sets are not the same. • In the absence of any actual benchmarks, start by comparing the estimated HP e3000 speed (using the previous slide) with some HP-UX PA-RISC servers. • You should then make adjustments based on published performance benchmarks between HP-UX servers and the processors you are comparing with the HP e3000.
Number of Processors • In general, each processor added to a server provides a little less additional processing power than the processor added before it. • Here are some examples, with HP e3000 systems: - An N4000 2-way system performs at about 1.85 times the N4000 1-way system. - An N4000 4-way system performs at about: 1.75 times the N4000 2-way system, and 3.25 times the N4000 1-way system.
Number of Processors • The amount of diminished returns from adding processors may vary by operating system. • An HP-UX rp7400 8-way server offers 5.44 times the OLTP performance of a 1-way server. See http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/rackoptimized/ rp7400/specifications/index.html#perform • This is about what we would have expected to see if HP had offered an 8-way N4000 HP e3000 system. • So 7/22/2008 the scaling on HP-UX PA-RISC is similar to MPE/iX.
Memory • You will require more memory on your new platform than you had on your HP e3000. • Early benchmark results suggest you will want about four times as much memory: - One application using 1GB on an HP e3000 ran best with 4GB on HP-UX with an Eloquence DB. - Another application using 8GB on an HP e3000 ran best with 32GB on HP-UX with an Oracle DB.
Disk Storage • Newer technologies such as Native FibreChannel and faster disk drives help greatly in this area. • Disk array subsystems such as the XP128 improve processing times for both serial read access and write access through the use of their cache. • Larger capacity disk drives may degrade performance in an OLTP environment, because many small random disk I/Os are competing for the same spindle.
Overview • “Migrating” • Hardware • Software Applications Considerations Considerations • Other Performance Considerations • Sizing Your New System 7/22/2008 page 20
Software Options • Operating system • Language • Database • I/O • User 7/22/2008 and networking interface page 21
Operating System • Early migration results show that the operating system itself does not tend to be much of a factor in the performance of migrated applications. • HP recommends HP-UX for large, mission-critical applications. At the operating system level, early benchmarks show that performance seems to be about the same as MPE/iX. • Both Windows and Linux are also viable options for many applications. A few benchmarks to-date indicate little performance difference from MPE/iX.
Language • COBOL has been the most commonly used language for HP e3000 application development. • This again does not seem to be an area where much performance difference has been detected between the HP e3000 and other platforms. • This should not be too surprising, as some vendors like AcuCorp offer the same COBOL compiler on the HP e3000 as they do on other platforms.
Database • An important database decision: - Use “IMAGE wrapper” technology to access a relational database? - Use the Eloquence database with its built-in conversions from IMAGE? - Convert IMAGE database calls to native SQL calls? 7/22/2008 page 24
Database • One big area of concern is migrating the IMAGE construct DBFIND followed by a chained DBGET. • If these calls are not migrated carefully, they can lead to unintentionally issuing SQL Select statements that read entire relational tables. • In IMAGE terms, that would be doing a serial read instead of a chained read.
Database • Another area requiring attention is the locking strategy. • Many IMAGE applications use predicate-level locking, and only lock around database modifications (not reads). • Relational databases may use page-level locking, and may also lock around read transactions. • Both of these can have a negative performance impact on a migrated HP e3000 application.
Database • Early benchmarks suggest you need about twice as much processing power to run a relational database on HP-UX than to run IMAGE on MPE/iX. • For example, if IMAGE calls are consuming 40% of the CPU cycles on your 500MHz MPE/iX system, plan on THAT PART of your processing doubling. So you need to add the equivalent of another 40% of 500MHz, or 200MHz more.
I/O and Networking • If you are moving from an older Series 900 HP e3000 system using NIO cards, you will get a big boost in I/O performance from going to PCI. • Native Fibre Channel provides big improvements in I/O bandwidth. • Networking code has been more highly tuned over the years on platforms like HP-UX than on MPE/iX. Programs like ftp should perform better.
User Interface • Most applications are being migrated to a client-server environment, with the user interface going to a different computer than the application and database. • Migrating the “screen handling” part of your application to a PC-based front-end or Internet browser will free up CPU cycles on your servers. • The performance impact of most user interface code is small (unless you are doing extensive edits using VPLUS processing specs or a 4GL).
Overview • “Migrating” • Hardware • Software Applications Considerations Considerations • Other Performance Considerations • Sizing Your New System 7/22/2008 page 30
Other Performance Considerations • Are you changing the business logic of your transactions, so they do more (or less) work? • Are you changing the structure of your transactions, so that work is done on multiple clients and/or servers? • Are 7/22/2008 you changing the transaction volumes? page 31
Other Performance Considerations • When you cut over to the new system, have you allowed enough time to migrate your live data? • Have you completed a thorough test of the new application on its new platform, to know what its performance will really be like? 7/22/2008 page 32
Overview • “Migrating” • Hardware • Software Applications Considerations Considerations • Other Performance Considerations • Sizing Your New System 7/22/2008 page 33
Can Anybody Answer This Question??? What size system(s) will you need to run your migrated HP e3000 applications on a new platform? 7/22/2008 page 34
Sizing Your New System • Putting all of this together is like solving an algebra problem with many variables. • The most heavily weighted items should be processor speed and database software. • Make sure you equip your new system with enough memory.
Sizing Your New System • Feedback from some early benchmarks suggests that an overall increase of 25-50% in processing power was about the right amount for those benchmarks. • Each site needs to approximate what will be needed, based on the guidelines found here.
Sizing Your New System • As I stated at the beginning: ”It Depends!!!” 7/22/2008 page 37
Acknowledgements • Thanks to the following HP e3000 application software companies for contributing to this presentation: - Amisys, LLC Ecometry eXegeSys Quintessential School Systems Southeastern Data Cooperative Summit Information Systems 7/22/2008 page 38
