Our current pre-production setup has evolved a lot over the last few months, due to issues with various services that ITSM 7 requires that either do not play well together, or do not like an x64 environment. Here is our current server sizing and distribution:
ARSYSTEM SQL SERVER * DL385 2 x Dual Core 2.6 ghz 10 gb RAM * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 * SQL Server 2005 x64 * ARSystem Database REMEDY AR SERVER * DL385 2 x Dual Core 2.2 ghz 10 gb RAM * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise * JRE 1.4.2 * ServletExec AS 5.0 * 7.x Components: ARS, AREmail, AREA & ARDBC, Approval, Assignment; CMDB 2.0 * 7.x Applications: Incident, Problem, Change, and Service Level Management, Enterprise Integration Engine Data Exchange, Remedy Knowledge Management integration to ITSM * SLM Collector REMEDY KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT WEB SERVER AND EIE SERVER * DL380 2 x Xeon 3.06 ghz 3 gb RAM * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise * SQL Server 2005 [RKM db] * JDK 1.5.0 * Tomcat 5.5.20 (Installed by RKM 7.1.01) * SearchServer 5.4 * RightAnswers SelfService, Support Analyst * 7.x Components: Remedy Knowledge Management 7.1.01, EIE and SQL Server Adapter 7.0.01.003 CRYSTAL REPORT SERVER WITH MID-TIER WEB SERVER * DL380 2 x Xeon 3.06 ghz 3 gb RAM * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 * SQL Server 2005 [CR11 db] * IIS 6.0 * JDK 1.4.2 * Tomcat 5.5.17 (Servlet Only) * Crystal Reports Server XI (running on IIS using .NET 2.0) * 7.x Components: Mid-Tier, Flashboards * ARSPerl Scripts PRODUCTION MID-TIER WEB SERVER * DL380G5 2 x Quad Core 1.87 ghz 12 gb Ram * Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 * SQL Server 2005 x64 [SharePoint web] * IIS 6.0 [SharePoint web] * SharePoint Server 2007 * JDK 1.4.2 * Apache Tomcat 5.5.17 (Web and Servlet as installed by mid-tier) * 7.x Components: Mid-Tier, Flashboards, CI Viewer, probably the SLM Collection Point INTEGRATION SQL SERVER * DL385 2 x Dual Core 2.2 ghz 10 gb RAM * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 * SQL Server 2005 x64 [for LDAP, EIE] * SMS 2003 * FTP Server (IIS 6 web not active) * LDAP Integration (People and Jobs) * Asset Integration * MySoft Integration Crystal, Mid-tier, and Remedy Knowledge Management are particularly problematic. I have all three running on my development web server, but with several problems that I will not accept for production. Installed together on the mid-tier-installed Tomcat instance, the web management interface into Crystal is not available, and any time RKM crashes tomcat (try an unqualified search of the kb) then Tomcat restarts and then mid-tier runs the AR server ragged for over 30 minutes while a prefetch of the ITSM application runs again. Without prefetch, web response times for ITSM 7 consoles are over a minute for first-time loads, close to a minute for all other forms. After a prefetch, first-time loads are 8-15 seconds, subsequent loads are 3-4 seconds similar to the User Tool. No one here is impressed with mid-tier performance - it is unacceptably slow until it has been running a while and all of the forms have been fully cached; prefetching is essential but only serves to bring the initial form loads into a tolerable delay range. NOTE - while a prefetch is running, ALL access to the AR Server from ANY client is noticeably degraded. I had to put EIE on the RKM server since it was 32-bit - EIE did not work properly on x64 or I would have kept it on the Integration SQL Server where its db resides. We are very satisfied with the performance of SQL Server 2005 x64 on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64. We have seen too many of the BMC Remedy 32-bit components misbehave on x64 platforms so have reverted many of them back to x86 - the last holdout is the mid-tier server, since it would be almost criminal to revert that much hardware from x64 to x86, but it is under consideration. Applying the x64 version of Service Pack 2 for Win2K3 to that server stopped Tomcat cold - it was unable to start until I removed the service pack. There are no such problems on three different servers with mid-tier or RKM using Tomcat after installing the x86 version of Service Pack 2. We are not in production yet, but are sizing for use by 300 support staff over both User Tool and mid-tier, and an active customer base of over 45,000, although we will be loading a customer table from PeopleSoft that has about 320,000 entries. That is our current load on our ITSM 5.5 / ARS 5.1.2 system. Christopher Strauss, Ph.D. Remedy Database Administrator University of North Texas Computing Center http://remedy.unt.edu/helpdesk/ ________________________________ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Anderson, Douglas W. Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 11:20 AM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: ARS 7, Windows server capacity info please ** Hi ARSListers, We are moving from all-custom applications on Solaris/Sybase/ARS 6.3 to a mix of custom applications and ITSM 7 on Windows Server/MS SQL/ARS 7.x. We need to support 200-400 concurrent users, 75-150 of whom are using the WUT and the others on mid tier. Our Windows Server team would appreciate some real-world input on server sizing. I have searched the ARSList archives extensively (exhaustingly, if not necessarily exhaustively) and found relatively little guidance on this topic for current ARS versions. I did find a response from James McKenzie back in November '06 and one from Christopher Strauss in February '07 that shed some indirect light on the subject. Thanks gents for those. If you are running ARS 7.x on Windows servers, would you be so kind as to share your experience regarding the following? What is your user load & application mix? What hardware are you using (CPU type & count, clock speeds, RAM, etc.) for Windows servers, for which bits of the puzzle (ARS server, mid tier, database server). How are the bits combined on, or separated between, server hardware? Are you using load balancing hardware/software? If so, what/where? What typical and peak-load response time,s or other performance metrics, do you observe (WUT vs. mid tier)? Thanks for any clues, Doug Anderson Mayo Clinic Rochester, MN __20060125_______________________This posting was submitted with HTML in it___ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org ARSlist:"Where the Answers Are"