Re: Informix on NT platform - Impact of 100 to 400+ Users

David W Chan wrote: > This morning, Informix released a press release about a BANN benchmark > on NT. The benchmark simulated 760 users and gave response times of > less than 3 seconds. They used one database server and two > application servers. Each machine had 4 Pentium Pro 200s and 2GB of > memory i.e. 12 Pentium Pros and 6GB of memory. I also suspect that > the application is partitioned. > > I agree with other posts that you can't mix oltp and warehousing on > the same machine. Use replication and put your oltp users on one and > dw users on the other. If you can partition your application as well > then it may work. > > David > > David W Chan > GO5 Limited > david@go5.com (work) > dwc@cix.compulink.co.uk (home) Agreed. We have to keep in mind that in most cases users would be automatically partitioned from the server when it comes to NT, i.e. ODBC, whereas in UNIX-land we would think of not only the telnet scenario, where the user is actually logged in, but also the ODBC connect, in this case. So benchmarking to show numbers for NT vs UNIX is not really a good comparison, unless you have EXACTLY the same configuration for a UNIX box as the NT box. Also many UNIX scenarios may contain an extra layer of security or networking not found with the NT box. This could be a pro or a con, but who knows without really testing. It could APPEAR that NT is fast, according to the press release, but in actual reality, several other external factors were not reported: 1. network bandwith what was the network layout, how was the user base distributed on the lan 2. application-to-server connectivity how was the app connected to the data base 3. what kind of load was actually performed. what was the actual test scenario. 4. Were the Pentiums EISA or ISA machines? We could infer they were EISA, SCSI, and so forth. In this test it would probably be so, but what is the REAL baseline hardware setup to make this work. Will it put you in the poorhouse compared to a similar UNIX box? 5. What version of OnLine were they running??? The article didn't specify. 6. What version of NT were they running? The article didn't specify. 7. 2 GB RAM / 760 users = 2,631,578 MB AVG RAM per user. This is quite high for a partitioned app, where if the user actually telneted in they might need this much. But if one user creates more online sessions of course the results could go in the dumper. One good select statement could really throw things off, thus bringing the actual RAM usage higher. How much RAM was set up for Informix? I still wouldn't bet anything mission critical on NT, other than using it for a file server or using it in a small shop. And I would certainly have a UNIX box around along with it, to help it out. :-) NT makes a nifty web server, but really a resource hog no matter what. ( UNIX is more optimal no matter what the test says ) Think about your long-term investment, and the long-term timeline for NT. Even if it looks wonderful now, what about when 5.0 comes out? The hardware you buy for NT, can you convert it to UNIX if you need to? The performance will go through the roof if you take the same hardware and slap UNIX on it. :-) Tim