RE: How far can U2 scale?
In reply to what Steve wrote re: app level problems with scability: In a way you're right, in that an app written for small scale systems cannot easily be scaled upward to infinity without having serious bottleneck issues. No matter what tool (read language/RAD/whatever) is used, if the design has built in toe-jammers, it simply aint gonna work. However, if the designers knew upfront what scale to aim at, it's easy. Keys are prefixed with some kind of sub-structure label to break-down the scale to managable levels, eg branch, warehouse, or if requiring specifically numeric, ranges of number are set for each sub-structure, eg 100,000 - 200,000 for New Jersey, with scalability built in with the same number range for each million increase, eg 1,100,000 - 1,200,000, 2,100,000 - 2,200,000, etc (many ways to skin said cat) The thing about bad design is that its faults exponentially increase by number of users. Bigger hardware doesn't help. Developers with tunnel vision don't help. Most of all, patch jobs don't help. Then again, if weren't for all these, we wouldn't have jobs. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Re: How far can U2 scale?
Ross, Actually, we just had a reason to care. We just changed from raid 5 to raid 1+0, and wanted to determine how and where we achieved performance increase. We weren't interested in knowing how we compared to a museum machine, but in how we compared to the weekend before. We did see quite a performance increase in disk related functions, but it's rather difficult to quantify just how much faster it is overall for any given user in a normal work day. Regards, Charlie Noah Inland Truck Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So, assuming the Spirit was a 1x machine (I seem to recall a small DEC 1400 (?) being a 2x - sooo many years) if the spirit could complete 10,000 transactions in a quanta of time, and the new machine finishes the same task (approximating real world environment) in some fraction of this time, then it should be fairly straight forward to work out the X rating. I seem to recall that the omnipresent CUBS benchmark was trying to achieve the same thing . they may even have some old benchmarks from a known X rating machine, allowing an approximation of modern equipment to be made -- not that I think anyone really cares these days, as X tends to be sufficiently large ! Ross Ferris Stamina Software Visage an Evolution in Software Development -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: How far can U2 scale?
The HP superdome systems I've seen running Universe apps were single large multiprocessor systems. One notable example was for a wholesale distribution company running 400+ branches and around 7500 users on a single 24 processor machine attached to a large EMC Clariion disk array. One big database too. In my experience UV Net is much too slow to use as a clustering tool. -Original Message- From: Anthony Dzikiewicz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 7:27 AM What does the hardware look like for a system with this many users ? Are they all running the same apps going after the same data ? Is UV/NET involved ? I curious on how you would scale up to a large number of users running the same application. Would you beef up the machine or would it be better to hook up a number of machines with UV/NET linking them together ? Anthony -Original Message- afaik france telecom has 3 users online on a universe/unidata system and i also think there is a hp superdome running 3000 users in gb looks like its scalable to me :-) -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: How far can U2 scale? France Telecom
About the discussion regarding France Telecom : Their 30,000 UniVerse licences is their installed park : These licences are geographically dispatched onto 5 pairs of IBM servers connected via UV/Net. Each system have its backup system. Daily average number of Telnet connected users is 2,500 on server A, and 1,500 on server B Daily average number of UV/Net connected users on server A is 500 (coming from B), and 800 on server B (coming from A) Due to the nature of the applications, UV/Net communication between sites are not very frequent but may exist. The large difference between the number of licences France Telecom purchases and their actual average number of users is due to the criticity and non-stop purpose of their applications. Due to these criteria, the hardwares are dimensionned to securely support 30% more of system load increase, and so must do the UniVerse and UV/Net licences. I cannot communicate the exact configurations used. In few words, I can say that the UniVerse applications at France Telecom are both CRM and complex technical data management running on servers A, and proprietary enterprise resource planning running on servers B. The oldest applications were initially wrote 20 years ago for few tens of users (on IN2 boxes = InterTechnique french legacy hardwares)... and I agree saying that these had to be reviewed in some cases. At present, not all the files on a given server are accessed concurrently by the quoted number of users, but the main files are. Hervé BALESTRIERI Support Technique Avancé - IBM Data Management - Produits U2 Tel.: (33) 01 49 97 12 20Fax : (33) 01 49 97 12 21 Notes : Herve Balestrieri/France/IBM e-mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.ibm.com/software/u2/ - Forwarded by Herve Balestrieri/France/IBM on 26/04/2004 17:00 - Anthony Dzikiewicz To: U2 Users Discussion List [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]cc: ts.com Subject: RE: How far can U2 scale? Sent by: u2-users-bounces@ oliver.com 26/04/2004 16:27 Please respond to U2 Users Discussion List What does the hardware look like for a system with this many users ? Are they all running the same apps going after the same data ? Is UV/NET involved ? I curious on how you would scale up to a large number of users running the same application. Would you beef up the machine or would it be better to hook up a number of machines with UV/NET linking them together ? Anthony -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Claus Derlien Sent:Friday, April 23, 2004 9:58 AM To: 'U2 Users Discussion List' Subject: RE: How far can U2 scale? afaik france telecom has 3 users online on a universe/unidata system and i also think there is a hp superdome running 3000 users in gb looks like its scalable to me :-) Claus Derlien edb-afdelingen direkte : 63 13 86 69 email : [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Dawn M. Wolthuis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 3:50 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: How far can U2 scale? At what point in the life of application software would it be so large that you could not (or would not want to) support it with your existing UniData or UniVerse database? Is there a point where you would be better served by DB2 or Oracle, for example due to the scale you are working with? I hear people talk about moving way from U2 in order to do ODBC and use standard industry tools (and most find that the grass is not greener for those purposes), but I don't hear about switching because of running into scaling issues. However, we sometimes think of PICK as addressing small-to-mid size businesses and RDBMS folks sometimes think of their products as scaling the best. So, what's the cut-off for U2? Thanks. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman
Re: How far can U2 scale?
X was a benchmark available at the time. I am not certain, but I think it was written and published by Ultimate. Assuming my memory is correct on that, a 2X ADDS machine would be one that ran the Ultimate benchmark twice as fast as the original Ultimate machine did. Maybe someone with a better memory has more details. Anybody have a copy of the old X benchmark laying around? -- Regards, Clif ~~~ W. Clifton Oliver, CCP CLIFTON OLIVER ASSOCIATES Tel: +1 619 460 5678Web: www.oliver.com ~~~ On Apr 23, 2004, at 21:54, Mark Johnson wrote: latest '14x' processor. Boy, I wish I knew what those speeds of those older systems were in today's terms. 2x, 7x, 14x...What's an 'x'? IIRC, the -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: How far can U2 scale?
Circa 1983-85. I'm pretty sure that Ted was showing off a Honeywell Level 6 and not a Microdata. Ultimate's X calculations were based on the native speed of the cpu. Original Level 6, circa 1979-81 = 1x The 5x board came out in 1982-83. If I remember correctly, my tests showed the speed was more like 3-4 times faster. But you could add a bunch more terminals without slowing down. I never saw a 7x and don't know when it came out. We had one site that needed a 10x, but Ultimate and Honeywell Bull Germany couldn't keep the machine stable. So the site went to another platform. At least that's my 20 year old recollections. Roger -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Mark Johnson Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2004 12:55 AM To: U2 Users Discussion List Subject: Re: How far can U2 scale? A bit of history here. I'm sure that these high user counts all participate with telnet connections. Back in the day, I believe circa 1983-5, Ted Sabarese, president of Ultimate, illustrated one of the highest number of connected *serial* terminals on one system. It was an interesting photograph as he lined up 1,000 dumb terminals on the bleachers at a local high school and had them all BLOCK-PRINTing something like their port number. I don't exactly remember the machine's specs, but given the Microdatas of that time it probably had 260MB disc drive, 8 MB of 'core' memory and the latest '14x' processor. Boy, I wish I knew what those speeds of those older systems were in today's terms. 2x, 7x, 14x...What's an 'x'? IIRC, the original IBM-PC was 4.7Mhz. My 4.7 cents. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Re: How far can U2 scale?
In a message dated 4/24/2004 2:32:16 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Again, what would an 'x' be in MHZ. Or for that fact, what would a MCD spirit 600 be. One of my clients still has one and I could reference it against some of my 2.4Ghz D3 clients. There is no comparison because the 'X' was a measurement of the transaction speed, not the clock speed. There are several layers between clock speed and transaction speed. Ted was trying to measure the real-world, business needs as opposed to the propeller-head ones which MHZ measures :) My own 2 cents and a pickle. Will -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
How far can U2 scale?
At what point in the life of application software would it be so large that you could not (or would not want to) support it with your existing UniData or UniVerse database? Is there a point where you would be better served by DB2 or Oracle, for example due to the scale you are working with? I hear people talk about moving way from U2 in order to do ODBC and use standard industry tools (and most find that the grass is not greener for those purposes), but I don't hear about switching because of running into scaling issues. However, we sometimes think of PICK as addressing small-to-mid size businesses and RDBMS folks sometimes think of their products as scaling the best. So, what's the cut-off for U2? Thanks. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: How far can U2 scale?
Across 3 systems, 7,500(ish) on-line Users, have benchmarked to 20,000+ Users. Spooler struggles and we have re-written parts of it. -Original Message- From: Dawn M. Wolthuis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 23 April 2004 14:50 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: How far can U2 scale? At what point in the life of application software would it be so large that you could not (or would not want to) support it with your existing UniData or UniVerse database? Is there a point where you would be better served by DB2 or Oracle, for example due to the scale you are working with? I hear people talk about moving way from U2 in order to do ODBC and use standard industry tools (and most find that the grass is not greener for those purposes), but I don't hear about switching because of running into scaling issues. However, we sometimes think of PICK as addressing small-to-mid size businesses and RDBMS folks sometimes think of their products as scaling the best. So, what's the cut-off for U2? Thanks. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and intended solely for the use of the addressee only. If you have received this message in error, you must not copy, distribute or disclose the contents; please notify the sender immediately and delete the message. This message is attributed to the sender and may not necessarily reflect the view of Travis Perkins plc or its subsidiaries (Travis Perkins). Agreements binding Travis Perkins may not be concluded by means of e-mail communication. E-mail transmissions are not secure and Travis Perkins accepts no responsibility for changes made to this message after it was sent. Whilst steps have been taken to ensure that this message is virus free, Travis Perkins accepts no liability for infection and recommends that you scan this e-mail and any attachments. Part of Travis Perkins plc. Registered Office: Lodge Way House, Lodge Way, Harlestone Road, Northampton, NN5 7UG. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: How far can U2 scale?
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dawn M. Wolthuis At what point in the life of application software would it be so large that you could not (or would not want to) support it with your existing UniData or UniVerse database? Is there a point where you would be better served by DB2 or Oracle, for example due to the scale you are working with? I hear people talk about moving way from U2 in order to do ODBC and use standard industry tools (and most find that the grass is not greener for those purposes), but I don't hear about switching because of running into scaling issues. However, we sometimes think of PICK as addressing small-to-mid size businesses and RDBMS folks sometimes think of their products as scaling the best. So, what's the cut-off for U2? Thanks. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. Dawn, Maybe there is a theoretical limit but I've yet to see it reached and don't really know where it is. I've been involved with UD/UV systems with thousand of simultaneous users. Sometimes we had to get creative when there were time constraints for jobs (multi-threading and/or distributed processing) but I've not seen a situation that could not be handle by our beloved multi-valued systems. My US$0.02, Gordon Gordon J. Glorfield Sr. Applications Developer MAMSI (A UnitedHealth Company) 301-360-8839 This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: How far can U2 scale?
Dawn, Looking at this from outside, I would suggest that session persistence creates the overheads, so if you are running a traditional application that needs to maintain a single session per user (e.g a green screen or UniOjects application) you are probably limited to several thousand users on current hardware. There are a number of sites over here that run those sort of numbers. If you adopt a 'pure database' model (i.e. not an embedded database running the application) a la SQL Server or Oracle, where you are just farming data in response to requests or calling atomic stored procedures, and using some form of responder architecture, I cannot see why there should be any real scaling limits. After all, we run hundreds of users through RedBack on hardware that is not particularly massy or fast. Brian -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dawn M. Wolthuis Sent: 23 April 2004 14:50 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: How far can U2 scale? At what point in the life of application software would it be so large that you could not (or would not want to) support it with your existing UniData or UniVerse database? Is there a point where you would be better served by DB2 or Oracle, for example due to the scale you are working with? I hear people talk about moving way from U2 in order to do ODBC and use standard industry tools (and most find that the grass is not greener for those purposes), but I don't hear about switching because of running into scaling issues. However, we sometimes think of PICK as addressing small-to-mid size businesses and RDBMS folks sometimes think of their products as scaling the best. So, what's the cut-off for U2? Thanks. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users This email was checked by MessageLabs SkyScan before entering Microgen. This email was checked on leaving Microgen for viruses, similar malicious code and inappropriate content by MessageLabs SkyScan. DISCLAIMER This email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the named recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information. In the event of any technical difficulty with this email, please contact the sender or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Microgen Information Management Solutions http://www.microgen.co.uk -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: How far can U2 scale?
Interesting subject! I think I'm in Brian's camp on this one -- scalability is most dependent on application system and its architecture -- of which the database system is a critical component. I'm wondering where n-tier applications fit into this discussion. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the architecture of most MV applications is at best a 2-tier design... and the client tier tends to be very thin. With such a design, it seems reasonable to say that for a well designed 2-tier application, the performance characteristics and capability of the database system to use available hardware resources are significant factors. What little bit I know about n-tier architecture tells me the database system is a scalability factor, but the addition of other components in the application needed to coordinate application functionality across the various tiers plays a HUGE role. Well designed applications that can scale by adding systems seems like a powerful notion. But, just like the 2-tier application, scalability is still dependent on the capability of the overall application design (including its third-party components) and its capable to use the available hardware resources. N-tier seems like scalability Nirvana to me -- though very difficult to achieve. Are there highly scalable n-tier applications using Universe, Unidata, jBASE, etc? Tom Firl Columbia Ultimate -Original Message- From: Dawn M. Wolthuis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 6:50 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: How far can U2 scale? At what point in the life of application software would it be so large that you could not (or would not want to) support it with your existing UniData or UniVerse database? Is there a point where you would be better served by DB2 or Oracle, for example due to the scale you are working with? I hear people talk about moving way from U2 in order to do ODBC and use standard industry tools (and most find that the grass is not greener for those purposes), but I don't hear about switching because of running into scaling issues. However, we sometimes think of PICK as addressing small-to-mid size businesses and RDBMS folks sometimes think of their products as scaling the best. So, what's the cut-off for U2? Thanks. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: How far can U2 scale?
Design plays a big role. Some banks have massive systems, because all the customer data is in one spot even though customers are spread over several cities and states. To me if you live in City A you conduct most of your transactions in city A and occasionaly on business or holiday you may do business in City B which can be done through a remote procedure. Instead of one big mainframe, why noy have several smaller regional centers. In this area, I am interested in the performance of UvNet, Distributed Files and Remote Procedure calls to handle scalability. Has anyone had experience in this area. Regards David Jordan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dawn M. Wolthuis Sent: Friday, 23 April 2004 11:50 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: How far can U2 scale? At what point in the life of application software would it be so large that you could not (or would not want to) support it with your existing UniData or UniVerse database? Is there a point where you would be better served by DB2 or Oracle, for example due to the scale you are working with? I hear people talk about moving way from U2 in order to do ODBC and use standard industry tools (and most find that the grass is not greener for those purposes), but I don't hear about switching because of running into scaling issues. However, we sometimes think of PICK as addressing small-to-mid size businesses and RDBMS folks sometimes think of their products as scaling the best. So, what's the cut-off for U2? Thanks. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: How far can U2 scale?
There are quite a few sites running upwards of 2000 users in my region (Asia Pacific). The model is many small users (such as insurance brokers, accountants, tax agents, etc.) having dial-in access. One site is licensed for 3300 users, and sustains a load over 3000 users most of the day with acceptable response metrics. Strictly two tier (one tier really). -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: How far can U2 scale?
I would imagine in any of the scenarios that has been given, if some form of local (client side) intelligence is employed, coupled with a non-persistent connection scheme to the central database, that the numbers that have been quoted here (2-10,000) could easily be multiplied by a factor of 5-10 . but of course you may hit the wall in terms of saleability of web servers (web farms), network topology infrastructure etc. I think it would be fair to say, within the parameters that others have outlined (massively large databases vs. massively large user populations) that there are no practical limits to mv scalability. I recall hearing a story about when Tim Holland migrated Pick Open Architecture to the Sequoia machine. Similar concerns were raised about the saleability of pick, but it soon became obvious that it was the underlying Unix that would be pushed Given the historic position that mv allows you to do more with less, I don't think we should be too surprised by this. Ross Ferris Stamina Software Visage an Evolution in Software Development -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ray Wurlod Sent: Saturday, 24 April 2004 9:05 AM To: U2 Users Discussion List Subject: RE: How far can U2 scale? There are quite a few sites running upwards of 2000 users in my region (Asia Pacific). The model is many small users (such as insurance brokers, accountants, tax agents, etc.) having dial-in access. One site is licensed for 3300 users, and sustains a load over 3000 users most of the day with acceptable response metrics. Strictly two tier (one tier really). -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.665 / Virus Database: 428 - Release Date: 21/04/2004 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.665 / Virus Database: 428 - Release Date: 21/04/2004 -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
