Can .NET Really Scale? 653
swordfish asks: "Does anyone have first hand experience with scaling .NET to support 100+ concurrent requests on a decent 2-4 CPU box with web services? I'm not talking a cluster of 10 dual CPU systems, but a single system. the obvious answer is 'buy more systems', but what if your customer says I only have 20K budgeted for the year. No matter what Slashdot readers say about buying more boxes, try telling that to your client, who can't afford anything more. I'm sure some of you will think, 'what are you smoking?' But the reality of current economics means 50K on a server for small companies is a huge investment. One could argue 5 cheap systems for 3K each could support that kind of load, but I haven't seen it, so inquiring minds want to know!"
"Ok, I've heard from different people as to whether or not .NET scales well and I've been working with it for the last 7 months. So far from what I can tell it's very tough to scale for a couple of different reasons.
- currently there isn't a mature messaging server and MSMQ is not appropriate for high load messaging platform.
- SOAP is too damn heavy weight to scale well beyond 60 concurrent requests for a single CPU 3ghz system.
- SQL Server doesn't support C# triggers or a way to embed C# applications within the database
- The through put of SQL Server is still around 200 concurrent requests for a single or dual CPU box. I've read the posts about Transaction Processing Council, but get real, who can afford to spend 6 million on a 64 CPU box?
- the clients we target are small-ish, so they can't spend more than 30-50K on a server. so where does that leave you in terms of scalability
- I've been been running benchmarks with dynamic code that does quite a bit of reflection and the performance doesn't impress me.
- I've also compared the performance of a static ASP/HTML page to webservice page and the throughput goes from 150-200 to about 10-20 on a 2.4-2.6Ghz system
- to get good through put with SQL Server you have to use async calls, but what if you have to do sync calls? From what I've seen the performance isn't great (it's ok) and I don't like the idea of setting up partitions. Sure, you can put mirrored raid on all the DB servers, but that doesn't help me if a partition goes down and the data is no longer available.
- I asked a MS SQL Server DBA about real-time replication across multiple servers and his remark was "it doesn't work, don't use it."
Hmm so Linux is cheap (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm so Linux is cheap (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems to me swordfish is going to be coding it anyway. I'm sure he can figure out how costly it is to retrain him to program Unix/Java.
Having said that, colleges/universities are churning out Java programmers at an alarming rate. And seeing how unemployment is only rising (lots of experienced people on the market) newcomers are really, really cheap! (They're used to living like.. well.. like students!)
Also, is programming for this new-fangled
Now, I agree that finding reasonably adept administrators for windows is much easier, and cheaper, than finding ace Unix admins. But that doesn't say anything about coders.
If swordfish is doing a feasibility study on this, for Pete's sake, suggest an alternative with less Microsoft in it! Any reason why that server should be
Re:Hmm so Linux is cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL. Newcomers are the most expensive programmers there are because they draw a salary, but don't write usable code.
Re:Hmm so Linux is cheap (Score:3)
Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Works for me.
Any more information? (Score:2)
Re:Any more information? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Any more information? (Score:3, Informative)
Christ, those machine figures! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm deploying systems right now (some buzzword compliant, some (more efficient ones) on lowly little open source, that scale to an order of magnitude higher transaction volume at a fraction of the cost. No, none of them are windows.
No wonder my company has been doing well in a downturn. (Oh, sorry, we're "recovering" now.)
Re:Christ, those machine figures! (Score:5, Informative)
Not even a hiccup. then the bright guy tried to do that on windows 2000 for another customer.. choked at about 100.
I'll take good performance with low spec hardware over the ability to scale on 10+ CPU systems anyday.
Re:Christ, those machine figures! (Score:3, Informative)
Linus has a policy of not allowing multi CPU improvements to lower performance on single CPU. It doesn't get the cool press releases but those of us without million dollar IT budgets thank him for it.
Re:Christ, those machine figures! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not trolling; I'm curious.
What the web app doing? (Score:2, Interesting)
What is the web app going to do? All the hardware in the world, and even open source won't help you much if you're trying to do the wrong things on a single machine. Database driven site? Commerce? HEavy read, heavy write, or both?
well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Barring that, my recommendation would be to split the web front end and database, spending about $10k on each (using dell or hpq). I can almost gaurantee that you aren't going to get 100 concurrent connections for less that $80k to $100k without doing some sort of load distribution. If you strip down the amount of dynamic content and say script a refresh of a static page, you might be able to do it, but we don't really know what the app is going to be doing.
Jerry
Not a really good answer (Score:2, Insightful)
But first let me apologize for all the nutheads who say "drop MS - use Linux" and all the derivitives thereof. That doesn't help anyone, and doesn't answer the question. Might as well say "use a dustmop, works great on my floors!".
My advice would be to *try* and use a cluster of some sort instead of the one server approach. Sure, you can get some great big reliable iron - that is wicked fast... But what I have found is that scaling really nee
Re:Not a really good answer (Score:2)
My advice would be to *try* and use a cluster of some sort instead of the one server approach. .... Of course, the more machines - the more licenses... Good luck!
What part of this did you not understand?
the obvious answer is 'buy more systems', but what if your customer says I only have 20K budgeted for the year. No matter what Slashdot readers say about buying more boxes, try telling that to your client, who can't afford anything more.
Go away.
Re:Not a really good answer (Score:2)
And why, exactly, is this a nuthead reaction? Our original poster has hit some major problems with a lump of technology that are, essentially, entirely financial in nature. Basically he's saying "we've developed in
Yes, they've been bait'n'switched - and he'll probably do better technology assessments next time, and as you point out th
"but the commercial said!" (Score:2, Funny)
I can see it now- after commanding the drones to switch to Windows 2.003k, they look at the price tag- the jump in overtime, the additional hardware for that "faster" version, the new software licenses...
President:"But...but...that commercial said it would be cheaper, and it had lots of pretty people doing neat things, with nice music in the background! And the nice representative at the golf tournament said I'd get to have employees walking around with little handheld things that showed our inventory!
You've got bigger issues. (Score:5, Informative)
1. Why are you wed to C#, especially in regards to triggers? How many tiers exist, and are you pumping a lot of data back-and-forth.
2. Your scaling numbers are low already, especially under ASP and static HTML.
3. You never really define concurrent requests. For some people, it means simultaneous requests, and for others, it means simultaneous transactions. But you really are looking at fairly low numbers there, in either case.
4. Scaling this should involve looking at where you choke. One common choke point that keeps killing people is in open database connections. Are you running a pool? How large? How many connections does a page take? The single most common problem I've seen in scaling is poorly implemented connection pooling, thereby causing a ton of stuff to wait. Check this, check, then check again.
5. Sync versus Async shouldn't really be coming into play yet on the db.
6. When designing for light-weight systems, you want to minimize the tiers, and minimize the data passed back and forth. Just by reading this, I'm worried that you created a very elegant, but impractical, system that isn't suited to the hardware limitations.
Can my car go really fast? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I bought a 400 car from my dealer, who said it could go 0-1200 in 57, but I talked to an auto mechanic and he said that the rpm throttled at 4.5 billion, so I don't know if I should get a turbo charger which would at least boost the speed to 1295!!"
If you are talking about 100 concurrent request per second: Any DB worth its salt should handle that IFF the database queries aren't too complex. If they are, your schemas suck. This is doubly true on a 3 GHz machine.
Re:Can my car go really fast? (Score:3, Funny)
theres no way a 400 can do that in 57, i slapped a new module in my 400 and i could barely do it in 35. you may need to replace your module, just grab it by the flat side and push it your right, your right, not mine.
Hey! Let's save this guy the cost of MS support! (Score:2, Troll)
Then why are you using
Are you asking about .NET, or something else? (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't sound like you're talking about
3. SQL Server doesn't support C# triggers or a way to embed C# applications within the database
Embedding applications in the database violates basic scaling principals: you need to separate out into n-tier, right? You don't want the database server doing anything but serving databases. Now, having said that, Yukon (the next version of MS SQL) will indeed let you do certain things in the database with
9. I asked a MS SQL Server DBA about real-time replication across multiple servers and his remark was "it doesn't work, don't use it."
Sounds like it's time to get a more informed consultant who can demonstrate failure or success beyond a throwaway line. I'm not saying replication does or doesn't work, but you can't base your enterprise plans on a single line from a single guy - let alone strangers like me on Slashdot. Furthermore, this isn't a
It's easy to make big decisions if you break them up into a series of smaller ones. Look at each of your questions and decide if it pertains to
Re:Are you asking about .NET, or something else? (Score:3, Interesting)
Oracle 9i and maybe 8 allows you to use Java for stored procedures.
It has some performance improvements over PL/SQL but I never really thought that it was useful. More like "another shiny button" added to a product.
Re:Are you asking about .NET, or something else? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for MySQL being "reliable", you need only look at the history of Slashdot to see that MySQL's "reliability" is, at best, a fairly recent innovation, and still open for debate.
You aren't exactly wrong regarding databases... (Score:3, Insightful)
You are simplifying when you say to not 'embed applications' in the DB. I will interpret 'embedding applications' in the DB as doing business logic in the database.
Many times it is more resource efficient for the _database server_ to perform some of the business logic in the _database server_.
It can be more efficient for the database to do some operations which results in a relatively small result set rather than pushing a lot of data up to the application server.
The
Extended stored procedures (Score:2)
Actualy, SQL lets you embed actual binary code in the database, using 'extendedstored procedures'. You load up a DLL and the code runs inside MSSQL's memory space. (using a dll) Obviously its risky, but probably pretty fast. You could probably write a
.NET Benchmarks (Score:5, Informative)
I have been Developing a
Specs Are as Follows:
App Server:
Duron 800
512 MB RAM
40GB HD 7200RPM
DB Server:
Celeron 500
640 MB RAM
20GB HD 7200RPM
As you can see, these are not server class machines, but they seem to run the app alright. I ran a simulation of this application based on the IBS Portal www.asp.net [asp.net] running 150 Concurrent Requests Per Second:
The average Requests per second on this app were 98.51. So, IMHO on low quaility hardware, the
Scale the Requests Down (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless the transactions are really long, "100+ concurrent requests" as a sustained rate is a lot of activity for a small business. So, that begs questions:
-- What percentage of these Web service requests are read-only "query" style, and can you use application-aware caching to return results out of RAM instead of having to hit disk for each one?
-- What is the client to this application, and can there be ways to help induce a smoother load from them (e.g., discount rates if the application is used in off hours or on weekends)? Or is the 100+ concurrent requests going on 24x7?
-- Do all the requests have to be filled by the server, or can you blend in some P2P concepts so the clients can absorb some of the load?
-- Can you increase the amount of data handled per transaction (perhaps by switching to document-style SOAP or REST instead of RPC-style SOAP) and thereby reduce the number of requests and excessive message parsing and marshalling?
There's probably a bunch other things to do as well, but those came to mind off the top of my head.
I doubt your client (Score:2)
Re:I doubt your client (Score:2)
Two other thoughts:
swordfish told them to use .net, asp, etc for whatever reason, and is now discovering the error of his ways.
swordfish got into a contract where he was told "use .net and make it work or you won't get paid, or get the bonus, or whatever."
What are you planning on doing? (Score:3, Insightful)
You mentioned db issues, what type of access are you doing with your databases? Are you thinking replication to deal with scaling across a server farm? Is this data being constantly updated by the servers, or is it mainly static? If you have simple primarily read only data, then something like mysql would be a far better choice, you just don't need the overhead of a full blown db server (like sqlserver, or oracle or even postgres).
Really what you need is to identify what your requirements are and tailor the end result to the systems that best meet those requirements. This also includes support and things like backups (e.g. can the db you choose do online backups if that's a requirement, etc).
Probably, better question is how much do you need? (Score:3, Insightful)
2, Cache as much as you can of the dynamic content
3, try to stay away from bloated protocols
1: Java,
2: Maybe doesn't help much with scalability, performance will go up though - and maybe you might get good enough scalability too. Database access is always slower than a hashmap lookup (if said hashmap can stay in ram ofcourse)
3: Web-services etc etc are maybe good in theory but at the moment those technologies are a duck in a pond when it comes to scalability and performance. Use a highperformance
Also investigate how much you can make your site use asynchronous notifications, more is better - even if ms messaging client is too bad, you can write your own asynchronous "protocol".
On any properly implemented system... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, it's not what you're using to do it, it's how you're doing it. If you're just pumping out files to clients on modems, 100+ concurrent requests isn't much. If those requests are all CPU-bound, I hope they're all niced or set to a low priority, otherwise you won't be able to log into the machine in a reasonable amount of time. If it's 100+ concurrent connections, but those connections aren't necessarily waiting for a response (just idle until the user does something) then you might not even care.
How many whatevers you have must always be qualified by knowledge of what those whatevers are doing. Otherwise your whatevers won't fit in your $20k thingamajig. And then Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset.
Of course, whether .NET is a properly-implemented system is a separate debate...
Ackward Worries, Threading and Responsiveness (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway. If you can't support 100 requests a second on 50k of modern hardware, you have huge design issues and other problems. Just from your short description of the project, I fear you have crawled into over-engineered land because alot of the technologies are much more useful on seperate boxes/distributed enviroments.
Good Luck. Remember that C# Web apps can be multi-threaded, and remember to optimize the parts of your application that MATTER. A wise man once said "Premature optimization is the root of all evil". Find the slow parts, fix them, get the most bang for buck. Also, remember to keep those pieces loosely-bound to each other, no C# code in the DB!
--MetaCosm
P.S. I hope you haven't over-engineered this tool as badly as it sounds like you have
Re:Ackward Worries, Threading and Responsiveness (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of folks are lambasting this guy because he wants to do C# inside SQL Server. Most are saying, like you, that he just doesn't get it because you should separate the database from the application. That's true but it doesn't invalidate the need to have stored procedures (in any language you want be it PL/SQL or C#).
The idea behind a stored procedure is that your application may actually scale better by putting some of the logic "close to the data" because there is less contention for machine resources other than CPU.
For scalability, it's *generally* true that you want no processing to happen on the database because database servers are generally more expensive to scale. However, moving selected bits of logic to the database tier can result in huge scalability improvements.
It's not one-size-fits-all and unless you have a good working understanding of the problem, which is impossible with the data given, it's probably not a good idea to yell "WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT" at someone. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt.
If you think that stored procedure in C# (or any
This works... (Score:2, Informative)
Two cheap boxes, one running the server and the other SQL server, will outperform a single box by a wide margin. SQL Server's a pig and doesn't share well with the other children. Use back to back NICs to the connect the SQL box so there's no network overhead...
Check the check boxes when you compile your .Net components. Threading models matter. And a stateless contiuously instantiated module is the only s
MS SQL replication (Score:3, Insightful)
We are running transactional replication on several large databases (6-14 GB) on a Media Metrix top 50 website with no problems. It needs to be set correctly (batch size, timeouts, etc) but it does work quite nicely. The DB machine is heavy hardware, but it it able to keep up with 12-15 front end webservers, all with applications hitting the DB.
Re:MS SQL replication (Score:3, Informative)
Proper choices (Score:4, Insightful)
As an aside, I have to say that I have avoided
But more to the point, your customers don't seem to have the budget to succeed in any domain. If you can't afford more than 20K for a machine and licenses, surely you can't afford to pay the programmers an adequate salary either. So does that mean open source? Heck no... you still have to pay the programmers! I don't think I have *ever* seen a project where the programmers were *cheaper* than the hardware.
some advice (Score:2, Insightful)
Some hints:
1. Google builds its own servers...
2. Google then chooses the best OS DB combination..
You're asking the wrong question (Score:3, Insightful)
I am the network admin at a large .Net website (5+ million unique visitors each month) and we often handle hundreds of tens of simultaneous requests. The entire site runs on 6 webservers and two database servers that run at less than 50% capacity during peak times.
If you can't scale above 100 connections on a 3GHz system then you are doing something wrong. Check your code, check your databases.
Your question is about as useful as "I have a piece of string that is not long enough, what can I use instead that is longer?"
Middleware said it could. (Score:2, Interesting)
hth,
Bill
Yes, .Net can scale--IF... (Score:5, Informative)
Hi!
Executive summary:
Yes.
Boring details: .Net (mostly C#, some components in VB), including Windows forms and ASP.Net web pages. (Why both? The project incorporates multiple applications for different kinds of users.) As part of pre-shipment testing we're in the midst of extensive testing, including load testing.
I'm goofing off, perusing SlashDot at the end of a dinner break. We're shipping a big project to a customer on Monday--the project is written in
The Windows applications communicate with the data tier using SOAP/XML, using synchronous messaging. Practically every message involves a database transaction with SQL Server 2000. Across a range of loads we are seeing round-trip message responses (from receipt of the inbound XML message to return from the web service) averaging less than 90 ms per message. That 90 ms average can be misleading--some of our messages involve extensive processing and/or lots of data. Some of the transaction work we're doing with SVG images involve SOAP messages with payloads greater than 1 MB, so the average gets dragged out.
Based on our testing, we anticipate supporting hundreds of simultaneous users--in a near-real-time environment--from a single web service. As we scale out on larger projects we may need to scale the number of web servers (although IIS on Windows 2003 is supposed to be substantially faster--YMMV), but we won't need to scale the database. Using a similar messaging architecture for a different client I have a project supporting 400+ users on a single SQL Server.
This is SlashDot, after all... .Net. And recommending it. But you asked, so I'll answer: .Net is scaleable in terms of the final application, and .Net is scaleable in terms of the size of the development team that is involved. This project involves 19 developers (a total of 60+ individual projects in the nightly build) and we're able to manage the entire thing remarkably well. Developing web service applications with .Net is remarkably easy to do; developing sockets apps is unbelievably simpler than using WinInet.dll. And the web developers are extremely happy working in ASP.Net--I don't know where you heard that ASP.Net is slower than ASP, but that's simply not true. ASP.Net is significantly faster.
Obviously you're going to get a lot of "why not use...?" posts, and I'm sure I'll get flamed for having the temerity to admit to using
With regard to other comments .Net Remoting. Quick to prototype, barks in production. Like OLE, it's a great way to make a Pentium 4 box emulate an original 8086 IBM PC. (Far smarter to manage communication with XML-based messaging. It just takes more coding.)
I'm the data/messaging architect on the project: I can speak to the comments about messaging, reflection, and SQL Server. As with any Microsoft-based development project, you have to think carefully, and think critically, about how to design your application. Microsoft will always give you a quick! easy! fun! way to rapidly produce a prototype. You have to dig deeper, and think harder, to produce a scaleable application. The quick! easy! fun! technology du jour is
That SQL Server doesn't permit triggers to be written in C#--so? Transact-SQL is suitable for database development. We could ask for more (such as integrating stored procedures and other database code into Visual SourceSafe). There is talk that the next version of SQL Server will permit coding in .Net languages--that'd be cool, but I'll wait and see.
The single most compelling argument for .Net .Net Framework. You might look into this particularly for clients that are choking on server pricing--but you might also pay careful attention, because a robust Mono project will encourage/force Microsoft to compete on features and functionality, instead of a take-what-we-give-you mentality. That's a Very Good Thing.
Mono [go-mono.com]--an Open Source implementation of the
Re:Yes, .Net can scale--IF... (Score:3, Insightful)
oxymoronic (Score:4, Funny)
It depends (Score:3, Interesting)
Long answer: It completely depends on what you are doing. As one person pointed out, if you are performing very complex queries, then scalability would go down. There's plenty of room for bottlenecks.
One of our ASP.NET applications benchmarks at about 90 concurrent requests on a dual proc 1Ghz xeon. That's with several database reads per request.
Your question is if ".NET scales", but really you could break your problem into at least three questions:
1) Does
Yes. It scales extremely well, provided you follow best practices and design a scalable app.
2) Does SQL Server scale well?
Well, but probably not the best. Again, depends greatly on the design.
3) Does IIS scale well?
Well, but definitely not the best. IIS is designed for extensibility and scalability. Obviously they made trade offs in each area. Other servers are be more scalable, but less extensible.
Given that, I would recommend doing some very simple benchmarks: Write a webservice that returns a hard-coded string. Test that. Next write a service that connects to a database and returns or adds a single record. You get the idea. You can use MS Application Stress Test for this.
Another option is to use programs like RedGate ANTs and Query Analyzer to track down any bottlenecks in your code and SQL.
You may also consider options like remoting or even writing your own multithreaded server if you think you can squeeze better performance by implementing a thinner transport...
Finally, while you may not want to change the web server or development platform, you do have fairly wide range of choices as far as databases go. You could use MySQL backend, or any database you thought was better\cheaper than SQL server.
In the end, I think this question is too complex to simply blame on ".NET".
Good luck.
Yes (Score:5, Informative)
What im saying here, is that you are not the first person to ever consider how
Re: SQL server 2000
SQL server 2000 has more performance then you know what to do with, even on non-ridiculous hardware. Give it processors with lots of L2 cache (xeons) and lots of ram, and read all the docs about keeping MDF and LDF files on separate volumes (as well as tempdb) and you'll find that life is thrilling.
Data point: On a quad HT P4 Xeon with 8GB of ram and 12 spindles (a significantly less than $50k box) we support 1800 simultaneous connections, doing OLTP work against a ~15GB database. The most commonly hit table in the system has about 10 million rows that get added and deleted in batches of between 20 and 10,000, and updated singly or in bulk. Other apps select from this table on a polling basis (i.e. decision monitors). We could make our db and app design much "better" w.r.t performance, but we don't need to - the money we save not having to do genius level feats of programming, app rewrites, and perf tuning more than pays for the occasional new hardware or upgrade.
Continuing, Run perf monitor on your SQL server machine. Look at the physical spindle(s) that hold your MDF. If you're reading from them, buy more ram until you're not
You can tune SQL server without application changes until you're blue in the face, honestly. Use profiler to see what kind of queries you're doing. Put those queries in Query Analyzer and show the execution plan. QA breaks it down for you and shows execution time percentages of each sub-tree of the execution plan. If you've got something eating 80% of your time and its doing a table scan, do whatever you can to put some selectivity in that query (i.e. an index, or maybe a query change).
If you want to save yourself some headaches, setup management tasks to recalc indexes over the weekend (or nightly, if you see that much index fragmentation after a day).
Stop Using WEB SERVICES! (Score:4, Insightful)
STOP USING WEB SERVICES.
#1) If you are using the [WebMethod] shit and hosting your SOAP calls via IIS you need a smack in the head.
#2) If you are using SOAP to communicate between the layers of your application, and are not exposing the SOAP methods for external consumers of the web services, You need more smacks in the head.
#3) If you don't know what you are doing, hire someone who does. (and by the sound of your point #6 about using reflectiona and dynamic code in the production app, you don't.)
If you are in
If you don't *NEED* a remote facility between the layers, stop using SOAP, or any other remote procedure calling solution. Nothing pisses me off more than bandwagon jumping know-nothings using a fancy fucking hammer to solve a problem which requires far less.
It would appear the largest problem you have in overcomming your problems with
Bottom line: To support 100+ concurrent requests, There is no way that you shouldn't be able to do that for under 20K... (although I wonder where that number came from.. Do these servers sit in a vacuum? Who's running them?)
From a purely acedemic standpoint, what the heck were you guys thinking when you were going to spend only 20K on the hardware for an app that does 100+ concurrent transactions. That sounds like enough business to afford quite a heck of a lot more.
If you are/were so budget constrained, why are you spending at thousands on server software? (.NET server, SQL Server, etc...) If you are so budget constrained, you shoulda bought opensource.
You're really confused (Score:4, Insightful)
I've designed infrastructure and application-level systems that use .NET and happily meet your requirements (MSMQ is not scalable? Huh?), and then some. So yes, to answer all your question, it works. But if you don't know what you're doing it's very simple to fuck it up, regardless of whether you're using Microsoft products or not.
Coming here (!) and asking questions about whether or not a given Microsoft product is viable seems to me like a losing proposition. FWIW, most professionals that work with Microsoft technologies are far more willing to admit shortcomings in those products and suggest alternatives, something that the /. crowd seems incapable of. So at least if you hire someone in the know you won't get BS left and right.
So get some help.
Match.com Developer's Blog (Score:3, Interesting)
- Jalil Vaidya
Why worry about this problem... (Score:3, Funny)
Two different questions. (Score:3, Interesting)
I am by no means a fan of Microsoft. To be honest I hope that your projects dies, and this can be added to the long list of people that I know who bet the farm on Microsoft just to either have far more NT servers than employees, or they go out of business... but I will give my 2 cents.
You seem to have defined some of the basic bottlenecks of performance. What you appear to leave out is what happens at certain loads. Does the system die? Probably not, but what happens to the response time? What are the acceptable requirements for the system? You may find 25 seconds for a page to load unacceptable, but the users may not. Either way it will let you know what goal you need to hit. Can you configure your DB to use less or more RAM?
Next, is it for sure processor load that is the issue? My guess is that you would be far better off with an x86 chip with more cache and stronger memory bandwidth than a standard P4. Granted this involves another hardware purchase, but if that becomes an option at all look at an Operton or Xeon chip in a 2 way system. You can get one of those systems well under 4 grand. The Opteron flat out rocks and the new Xeon 3GHZ with 1MB cache should be hitting the streets soon.
Not knowing much about the dark sides languages (Java is my thing), are you using one database connection throughout your application? Not returning it back to a connection pool, but storing it in the session object? This can have a significant impact on performance.
Seeing that you said you talked to a SQL Server expert (I have never met one), I will assume that he looked through the code and optimized all the SQL. Everyone seems to be taking cheap shots an d saying you should have used product X, well here is my cheap shot... Next time use Oracle! I repeat next time use Oracle! Ok, it bears repeating one more time.... next time use Oracle. Granted it is expensive, but you are learning a lesson that a ton of shops here in Indy have had to learn the hard way. Well what the heck next time use Java + JBOSS or Resin + Oracle + Linux. In our environment it flat out rocks.
What else is running on the box? You can buy a sub $500 machine to move all the DNS AD stuff to it. Not sure how much that impacts performance though... it may not be worth it. But my point is to turn off every unused service. Also, I will assume that you have applied every service pack, and called Microsoft. Since you are using ALL their products, you would think that they would help you. God I would love to be in on that call!!! All I ever hear them say is "You need to get off of product x" and use our product.
Generally what I find to be the issue with performance is SQL and DB access. The code takes around nothing to execute processor wise. Now what kind of DB are you talking about? How many tables and how many rows in each table. What kind of transactions do you do (mostly inserts or querys). Are the indexes setup correctly on the tables? Could you flatten some relationships down?
Sounds like a troll (Score:3, Interesting)
The kind of loads big firms need to support are in the order tens of millions of users with millions of transactions a day. What I mean by transactions is buy process which can contain a dozen to a couple hundred individual orders. In other words, the number of complex insert/updates is tens of millions to hundreds of millions a day.
For example, big firms like fedility, city group, thompson, vanguard, and schwab have millions of customers with hundred thousand plus portfolio managers. throughout a given work day, a portfolio manager may generate a couple hundred orders and submit them in one or two batches. This is done because it's cheaper for them. Can .NET scale well? Like what others say, it can if you design it right. For example, if you use MSMQ for it's designed job it works well. If you write your queues for MSMQ with plain hashtables and you don't index the messages, your chances of supporting 10K+ messages a second aren't likely. On the otherhand, if you write custom queue's, profile the messages, index them efficiently and make sure no other heavy weight stuff sits on the same box it can scale. Is that easy? No. You have to understand the problem you're trying to solve. Let's say hypothetically you have insane performance requirements like 100K+ messages a second for a messaging tier, you're better off using IBM MQSeries. Can you do the same thing with MSMQ? Sure if you build a bunch of custom stuff, write the messages to a database, index, partition and load balance. It will probably take you 8-12 months to do it, but you can with the right people and good hardware. Would you want to use XML for that messaging system? The answer is obviously no, if you want to keep the cpu and memory loads manageable.
Many people have claimed they support thousands of transactions. Sure if all you're doing is insert into one table. Simple stuff right. Financial transactions like trading systems do a heck of alot more than a simple insert into one table. More often than not, a trade transaction with 100 orders goes into the database, affecting several tables. The middle tier then has to get events, and check the order to make sure it is valid and does not violate regulations or other compliance requirements. Sometimes it requires analytics like Tibco or what the industry calls Business Intelligence. Regardless of the server, stuff like analytics take time (seconds). Obviously if you're running complex analytics that scane 10 million rows of data with several joins in the query, you're better off using an analytics server like OLAP. Can .NET handle 1K analytics requests per second? If it's cached sure. If the nature of the data is very dynamic, like realtime trading systems, no way. doing that is very hard and most people avoid it.
The key here is setting the expectations accurately, so your customer knows what is realistic. If you have a hard time communicating that to your customer or management, than find another job.
Simple rule not followed (Score:3, Insightful)
"To ensure scalability, host each server-component of an application on it's own hardware - optimsed for the specific task assigned."
In other words, DO NOT deploy everything onto one machine. Remember the old adage "Jack of all trades, master of none".
So, put the database server on its own box, with dual cpu, loads of memory and RAID-mirrored drives.
Put IIS, the ASP.Net app (and the web services if you're feeling cheap) onto a fast, single cpu box, enough memory to turn off paging and a single drive - GHOST'd onto CD for backup.
Install an extra net card in both, and set it up soley as the route for traffic between them.
Implimenting this hardware for less than 20K should be trivial.
If you can't comfortably support 200 concurrent users with this, you need professional help - my consulting rates are quite reasonable...
Re:Why one server? (Score:2)
Re:Why one server? (Score:2)
People are filled with scepticism about technology they don't know well. And cluster is not a common thing to imagine for some common IT, which is more or less uneducated (based that the same ITs have been there from VAX times). Mostly they can imagine up their own level of understanding and talking them out is very hard thing to try. I tryed that, but now I just don't bother, if someone want's to be hammered, well... let him be.
Server vs. desktops, and other issues. (Score:2)
However, I will give this advice: under no circumstances should you be using only one machine. You should have at the very least some level of failover built into your application.
Faster is not the only concern for many businesses (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why one server? (Score:5, Insightful)
For one, there's reliability:
-first of all, the more expensive systems have more internal redundancy, which is a good thing (sucks to hamstring even a cheap $1000 machine because the $5 cpu-fan dies, let alone a $3000 middle-of-the line machine because a $50 power-supply dies... or the $5 fan inside the $50 power-supply).
-if p(c) is the probability of a cheap machine crashing, and p(e) is the probability of a single expensive machine (your entire system) crashing, and you require all N of your cheap computers to be running in order to consitute an "up" system... then your overall system crash probability (p*) is:
p*(c) = 1-(1-p(c))^N
vs.
p*(e) = p(e)
so, by buying more, cheaper servers, you're increasing your crash-likelihood, by both increasing p(c) and increasing N (unless you buy additional cheap servers to failover to... but then you have to manage and support failover which is additional $$$ as well in terms of buying/developing/implementing more advanced systems and taking on a higher administration overhead).
Not all systems are distributable, and those that are are often more complicated and/or expensive (but not always).
There's also administration cost:
-Obviously its easier to manage one box than 10 (or easier to manage 5 boxes than a hundred). Not to say that there aren't nice tools for mass-administration... but it is still more work, and anyone who says different is selling something (and something you want to think twice about before buying).
There's ancillary costs:
-hey! if you have ten boxes talking to each other to comprise one "system", then you need a network connecting them! That's another fast switch... and again, because you don't want to lose an expensive "system" because of a failure of one cheap part, you need to buy an expensive switch.
-power costs money, believe it or not.
-so does rack-space.
-so do IPs... unless you're gonna NAT your little cluster, in which case you need to set up a NATing router for them... and that's another single point of failure unless you wanna shell out $$$ of one form another (again: buy/develop/implement).
-you're probably gonna need some sort of KVM switch.
I could go on, but I don't want to. Anyway, the point is that it is more complicated than many of the lot in this particular audience are likely to make out. It is often still the best route (and increasingly so!), but you can't just say that the answer is *always* to buy more, cheaper machines. There are many things to consider.
What's your major malfunction? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why on earth did you bring open source into it? If the man wanted to know about Linux & BSD, he would've asked.
If you don't have any experience with the scalability of
Re:What's your major malfunction? (Score:5, Insightful)
That really isn't the question being asked at all.
This person doesn't want to know if
They actually want to know if it will handle a large number of concurrent connections to services on small hardware.
The real question is:
Will it handle a lot of clients at once on very little hardware?
The answer is: No.
If you don't have enough capital to invest in the infrastructure you need, you have to either find something that will do what you want with less, or give up on the whole idea.
Re:What's your major malfunction? (Score:3, Funny)
A short guide to scalability (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, if you define a target performance metric and find that a single user can access the system at better or equal that speed, then a system can be said to "scale" if it still performs within that metric, on average, when 20, or 50, or 100, or whatever users are accessing the system.
Of course, due to the nature of computing systems, any system will hit a point where it will no longer scale to the requirements with the same hardware configuration. At that point we start talking about scaling upwards through hardware upgrades. But you can only upgrade hardware so far, at which point, again, the system will reach a hard limit on its ability to perform as required.
The next logical step is to scale through redundancy: If a system can, in whole or (more commonly, as in "multi-tier" web clusters) in part, run concurrently in multiple instances, then you can scale by adding more instances of the system or system components: Multiple web servers, multiple "back ends", multiple database servers, and similar. This kind of organic scaling can be, in practical terms, near-infinite if a system is designed well; for example, multiple mirrored web servers serving static pages will scale indefinitely, whereas a trading system requiring inter-process synchronization through a message-queue system will most likely not.
In scalability terms, efficient redundant clusters is the holy grail. It's the way Google scales, and it's how the core parts of the Internet scales.
In the context of this Slashdot story, since the poster faces limited possibilities for investing in expensive hardware, he might consider going for the "many cheap boxes" route, if his Microsoft-dominated infrastructure permits it.
Re:What's your major malfunction? (Score:5, Insightful)
This company doesn't have money for a new beefy server. So what makes anyone here think that this company has the money to
1) Take down all of their current systems and install Linux or something similar.
2) Spend the next several months learning an operating system and related tools that the IT staff may not have experience with.
3) Spend the time and money to get rid of all of the Microsoft technologies that they use such as Exchange/Outlook, Active Directory, IIS, etc. The TCO is more than just the price of the free software. You have to make sure that you can swap out technologies without impacting your customers or your employees.
4) Spend the money to train the current staff and/or hire new expertise to administer the new systems.
The guy at the top that told the parent to basically STFU is right.
To close, I want someone to respond to this post that has successfully walked into a company that was strapped for cash and wanted some Windows solutions, but then suggested using OSS instead and had the company buy into it. And I'm not talking about your brother's donut shop either, I mean a REAL customer with, say, a minimum of 100 users on a Windows network using AD, Exchange, etc. I think it's only fair to hear the success stories to give some validation to this argument.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:5, Insightful)
A) This consultant, it sounds like, is largely or exclusively MS. He's not going to suggest Open Source software to his client because that will mean a loss in business. You can hardly blame him; you gotta go with what you know.
B) Oftentimes a commercial solution to some problems exists where a free one does not. The cost of development and maintanance means that the balance is not strictly in terms of free and non-free; after all, your developers' time costs quite a bit as well and home-grown or open source solutions may need more time taken in administration.
This is a pretty complex issue; different analyses have been done with different results. I myself am partial to Open Source, but this does not mean that the obvious answer is, "Hey, go Open Source! It's free!" Get real.
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's an idiotic argument. For consultants, OSS is often at least as much of a money maker as Microsoft software. Furthermore, there are mature non-OSS alternatives (e.g., Java) available.
B) Oftentimes a commercial solution to some problems exists where a free one does not. The cost of development and maintanance means that the balanc
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, and I don't know much about .NET, he was also looking for an SQL
backend. You mention "Linux, apache, PHP, whatever" and "some servlet engine, jsp,
etc" without seeming to really understand a couple of crucial points: the "Java one"
would still need an OS and webserver, and all three still need a database server.
Really fancy, high-volume DB servers such as Oracle cost a lot. So then we end up
comparing, say, MySQL, MSSQL, mSQL, and PostgreSQL? Or Perl, PHP, ASP, and
JSP/servelets? I'm sure I'll get flamed by zealots, but those aren't always easy
comparisons.
Write it off as ignorance if you like. It doesn't sound like you're a professional in this field. But so what if he is ignorant? That was my point; if he is best with MS, it's not going to be profitable for him or his client for him to be mucking about with Unix instead.
As for the amount of money you'd save, well, I already commented on that. Sometimes the figures aren't necessarily what they may appear to be; the initial layout is certainly greater with commercialware, but support, time spent on maintainance and deployment, and so forth, is sometimes a lot less.
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:5, Insightful)
A small business CANNOT afford to employ a full time UNIX administrator. Open source solutions just do not have the ease of administration of the Windows GUIs. Until they do, they will not be small business friendly. Windows Small Business Server provides you with one installer that will basically set you up completely (Exchange Server and all).
Now, before you flame me out for being pro-Microsoft, you should know that almost all my machines at home run Gentoo Linux, and I prefer to use Linux myself.
I had a long discussion with a good friend who is not terribly computer literate. Linux drives him _crazy_ because he can't just, "point, click and go" as he said it. Until these issues are resolved, we won't see small organizations without dedicated IT staff rolling out Linux installs.
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:3, Insightful)
And since he's talking about web services I
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:4, Insightful)
They can't affor NOT to: We service many small compaines who use Windows desktops connected to UNIX (OpenBSD firewalls, FreeBSD servers). The savings in time alone are staggering:
Real example:
One office of ten accountants has been managed by me lasst year for under $3000.
They have offsite backups, a PostgreSQL databe, Samba file serving, 56K nat, Firewall, email filtering.
If (and its a BIG if) one of the servers has a problem - I can remotly fix it over my cell phone connection, and I don't have to charge them travel time. If it was Windows - I'd have to drive there.
Windows is expensive because it requires full time baby-sitting. UNIX, once deployes is usuall fire and forget.
What?! (Score:3, Interesting)
What?! You've never heard of any of the following:
-- Terminal Services
-- VNC for Windows
-- Remote Desktop commercial programs
I am sorry, but that is just on crack (and so is whoever modded you "Insightful".) In fact, with Terminal Services and the rdesktop client program, you can even administer a Windows desktop or server fr
Re:What?! (Score:5, Interesting)
What?! You've never heard of any of the following: -- Terminal Services -- VNC for Windows -- Remote Desktop commercial programs
Yes I use them all the time, but when I'm on the road I have to manage servers over my CELL PHONE coneection. Window Termmial Services is unsuable in that situation.
Here's an example:
With UNIX I'm in Ireland (I'm usually based in the US) and I get a call "We just got a new user, could you add them"
I whip out my Ericcson 68i and Sharp Zaurus - and ssh into the server and run a script to add the user.
With Windows: I have to find a "Internet Cafe" pay 10 Euros, and convince the owner of the cafe to let me install VNC. Then I get to S-L-O-W-L-Y use the gui to add the user.
It get's even better - I can remotly manage my servers in the absolute wilderness with an Iridium satelite phone and a Zaurus with a serial cable. At 9600 baud, I can do it with UNIX - but Windows, forget about it.
Ignorance is no excuse. (Score:5, Insightful)
" With UNIX I'm in Ireland (I'm usually based in the US) and I get a call 'We just got a new user, could you add them'. I whip out my Ericcson 68i and Sharp Zaurus - and ssh into the server and run a script to add the user."
Did you even bother to check out whether this was possible in Windows? I guess not: this site [windows2000faq.com] shows you how to add a user from the command line in Windows. In fact, you could even write a script to do that (batch files... remember those?) In fact, here are lots of handy other things you can do from the command line in Windows [labmice.net], including changing user passwords, forcing users to log off, and more.
Once again, ignorance of what Windows can do is no excuse. I administer 16 Linux boxes... I'm not anti-Linux by any stretch of the imagination, and I know that there are lots of situations where Linux is the better choice. But that still doesn't mean I'm ignorant about what Windows can and can't do.
Re:Ignorance is no excuse. (Score:4, Funny)
Could you please show me how to do a multi-file search and replace from the command line? That is, multiple files in arbitrary directories where I need a certain string replaced with another string.
Also, I'd like to count the number of lines in all the files in a directory tree (with nested directories, of course). Please show each file, with its line count, on a separate line.
Finally, I need to know how to kill processes that were started by a certain user - but not just any process. Just the ones that are currently using 0% of the CPU.
All of these should be able to be done in a single command line - no scripts - sorry, batch files.
Thanks!
Re:Ignorance is no excuse. (Score:3, Insightful)
Er, I thought that was the whole point of windows -- that you could use it easily despite being kinda ignorant. If you need to rely on command-line interfaces and configuration files anyway, then why not do it properly and use linux/unix in the first place?
Re:Ignorance is no excuse. (Score:5, Insightful)
So yes, it is possible to administer Windows over ssh, it's just a pain in the ass compared to Linux, sorry.
ignorance made me post that incomplete post above (Score:3, Informative)
[shell]# mysqldump databasename > filename.sql
http://mysql.new21.com/doc/en/mysqldump.html [new21.com]
<slap> Keep it together, man! (Score:3, Insightful)
Your drugs must be more expensive than mine. (-:
/. as a whole is as clueless as ever, but you did see a few good posts.
Back on topic(-ish): as well as the low-bandwidth point the grandparent made, I think it's more germane to mention that any one of sixty-to-a-hundred failures will keep a Windows server (and hence VNC) off the air, but you only get a-handful-to-a-few-dozen chances to kill a Linux server stone dead as far as remote access is concerned.
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:5, Insightful)
A good Windows admin costs the same as a good Unix admin.
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows systems need an administrator every bit as clueful as a UNIX sysadmin if they are to have any reliability at all. If the Windows 'sysadmin' has to be able to point-click-go to be able to function, in all probability the Windows system will be unreliable and insecure.
It is a false economy to think that "It's Windows. I can hire a junior reboot monkey to admin the system" - a Windows system really does require a sysadmin every bit as competent, skilled and clueful as a Unix system. A Windows system can be very reliable with a clueful admin - but it *needs* a clueful admin. Companies are shooting themselves in the foot if they think otherwise.
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, they should be looking for the right service. You don't need dedicated staff with open source software. We get a call maybe once a month about an OSS product gone bad (usually something silly that can be fixed in 5 minutes if you know what you are doing), and we ssh in and fix it. We get calls about MS products and idiots that don't turn on things before they want to use them from 8AM till close every day. I'm pretty sure that most of our clients have spent more money on MS related tech support than OSS related tech support. I can calculate right now that the TCO for a pirated MS product would still be greater than a OS product by a significant factor. The speed at which MS products have to be fixed/patched is very much greater than a properly configured Linux system, and you're paying for that hell to boot.
If you want to shoot yourself in the foot by jumping on the
Before those of you that say the SQL Server is actually good start flaming me, that's where a lot of headaches come from. SQL Server drops records and corrupts more than MySQL before transaction support. (There, now I'll get flames from both ends.) Also consider the price you are paying. (Per connection last time I checked.) Spend more money on the hardware and get RAID-1 on good disks and a good UPS, and you will have a faster, more reliable RDBMS.
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:3, Informative)
having said that, i think you are way off base. I used mySQL a lot and use SQL server extensively now. Comparing the two just isn't worth while. mySQL is a lot closer to berkeley DB than it is to SQL server, feature wise, scalability wise, management wise, and reliability wise.
SQL server has several licsensing options - per conection or per processor are the two default ones.
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:3, Informative)
I think I know what you are talking about.
I'm guessing this software is mainly decade old desktop packages that were originally designed to run on Paradox/dBase/FoxPro and ported to SQL Server or Oracle because that's the trendy thing to do. (If
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, the Windows GUIs are significantly better than the UNIX GUIs. No, I don't think that matters. I've found that the Windows admins need to be every bit as c
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:4, Insightful)
And I'm sick of this attitude that always seems to come from SB owners, like they are *owed* something and *exempt* from working just because they're a small business. What would we do if they said "I don't have the time or money to learn the rules of the road or how to care for an automobile, I just want to blast down the road at 130 mph, trailing a could of oily smoke, because I'm a SMALL BUSINESS OWNER and I'm in a hurry, dammit!" Would we allow that kind of behavior? HELL NO. I'm sorry, it costs time and money. ACCEPT IT.
Factually Incorrect (Score:3, Insightful)
I've found Red Hat 9 most impressive.
The included version of Wine
From the Red Hat 9 Release Notes:
The following packages have been removed from Red Hat Linux 9:
- wine - Developer resource constraints
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:4, Funny)
Even if they were using Linux they would need someone around to make sure everything runs smoothly.
The trick is to multi-task. Once the system is running, a small business sysadmin is not a full time job. They can also program or PR or
Also the benefit of not using MSFT tools is the weaker propagation of acronymedics. E.g. I can code DOM SOAP
10 print 'hello world'
L33t!
Tom
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:5, Insightful)
What?#$#@ I don't care who this "SMALL" business may be, but if you put a server on the internet, and plan on not having someone to "keep tabs on it", please, get off of the f-ing internet. It's that type of mentality that yields the servers out there that STILL are spreading Code Red and Nimbda, because nobody has kept tabs on these infected servers in years.
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:3, Interesting)
But reading comments like this, is it any wonder that businesses, "small" and large have stopped spending so much money on IT recently ?
As far as businesses are concerned, computers are just tools to do jobs, to help those companies generate money. If they don't help make them money, there's no reason for them to spend money on IT.
And here we are telling those companies they don't just have to buy the equipment, and the software, they have to contin
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:5, Insightful)
telling those companies they don't just have to buy
TANSTAAFL.
No matter what you'll have to layout cash to buy the three essential ingredients:
Microsoft marketing would have you believe that their software solves all your problems and that lots of cheaply available people can do the job. They'll still charge you for their software and you'll find out that hardware still costs something and that getting good people to support and maintain your software and hardware is more expensive, but worth it.
Linux advocates will tell you that the software costs zero and that any competent sysadmin can do the job. You'll find out you still have to buy reasonable hardware. And you'll find out that getting good poeple to maintain and support your hw and sw costs more, but is worth it.
Any way you go you're gonna pay.
Re:Why are they running Windows then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Java is a DOG (Score:5, Insightful)
I wrote and administer a J2EE application that supports online rebate offers for a very large company. We have over 350,000 registered users and typically 500 simultaneous sessions on a dual 1 GHz PIII Linux box with MS SQL Server on a similar dual CPU W2K box for the database.
Whatever you are doing with your application (probably misapplication of EJB) is wrong.
Re:Java is a DOG (Score:4, Interesting)