Re: [perf-discuss] Any capacity planning tool for Solaris?

[Mike Gerdts]

On 2/23/06, Atul Vidwansa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Performance Experts,
    We would like to know if there exists a capacity planning tool in
Solaris using which, we can predict performance/load characteristics of
a server. Given current load and CPU/Memory configuration of a
server(say V440), we would like to know how much load another server of
different type(say V6800) can sustain? Or how many CPUs/Memory we need
to add to current server to support a certain load?

Any help will be appreciated.

Regards,
-Atul

I almost advised you to go find your Sun sales rep... Instead, look around inside Sun for the "M values" for the various servers.  These are commonly used by Sun's sales force and some customers to perform such sizings.  The interesting thing here is that the mvalues will even take into account that Solaris 10 is faster than Solaris 9 which is faster than Solaris 8 on the same hardware.

Essentially the m-value is a number that comes from a composite of several benchmarks.  Like any benchmark, it may not represent the workload that you are running.  However, in my experience the values that Sun claims for the various systems translates rather reliably into the relative performance of various systems.

I wish that Sun would disclose mvalues without NDA's.  It would serve as a great mechanism for assigning a relative CPU power value to each server that could then be used by workload management software.  FWIW, in my shop I am rolling out resource controls based upon mvalues.  I take the mvalue of a particular V240 configuration and say that has 10 Zone Power Units (ZPUs).  Then, as zones are assigned to a machine each one goes into a resource pool that gets 1 share per ZPU.  For example, if a workload needs roughly half a V240, I would give it 5 shares (advertised to application teams as ZPUs).  I never put more than 10 shares on a V240.  Then, if a workload moves from a V240 to a T2000, I keep it at the number of ZPUs (shares) that it had on the V240.  However, the T2000 can handle a lot more ZPUs than the V240 and as such will likely run a greater number of zones or larger zones.

Mike

--
Mike Gerdts
http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/

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