application question
I am concerned about the performance of an application "client" running on a separate server from the database. I've read that this is workable only with a limited number of users. We have over a 1000 users and hundreds of databases. Is the os (unix) over worked in this arrangement? Does anyone use this two server configuration with a large amount of users? I would appreciate any response for we haven't done any benchmarking! James Windom
James Windom wrote: > > I am concerned about the performance of an application "client" running on a > separate server from the database. I've read that this is workable only with > a limited number of users. We have over a 1000 users and hundreds of > databases. Is the os (unix) over worked in this arrangement? Does anyone use > this two server configuration with a large amount of users? I would > appreciate any response for we haven't done any benchmarking! I think that your performance will depend most on the speed of the network. If you will be using 100BaseT, CDDI, FDDI, or ATM you will probably be OK, 10BaseT or TokenRing10 just won't hack it. In general, the Informix server is happier if it is running practically alone on the system so it does not have to compete for resources and this can make up for a lot of communications delay. You MAY actually run faster client server. I have seen it go both ways. If your apps are written with client server in mind, ie use stored procedures and well formed queries to reduce data flow, etc, then this will be true. If your database is not normalized and queries typically select large sets of data and filter in code space, or if you join large parent records to small child records with a high 1:N count or fetch all columns (or large column subsets) when only a few columns are needed; then your performance will not be stellar in a client server setup. Art S. Kagel
In article <794h1o$92e$1@news.xmission.com>, james.windom@mail.state.ar.us (James Windom) wrote: > > I am concerned about the performance of an application "client" running > on a > separate server from the database. I've read that this is workable only > with > a limited number of users. We have over a 1000 users and hundreds of > databases. Is the os (unix) over worked in this arrangement? Does > anyone use > this two server configuration with a large amount of users? I would > appreciate any response for we haven't done any benchmarking! > > James Windom > I've just come from a site that used 3 DBservers (not Informix) to handle the data, 10 servers to handle the user application code (its X based) and about 350 concurrent users per DBserver. The consensus is that although it was a good idea at the time to take this approach because a single server was not capable of delivering the required throughput the plan is to move towards a single server environment. It was decided that with current server technology the added complexity of multiple servers was undesirable for the performance gains Paul Watson # I don't suffer from WF Software Ltd. # stress, I'm just Tel. (+44) 1436 674729 # a carrier Fax. (+44) 1436 678693 # www.wfsoftware.co.uk