Optimize network for large files (Fuji PACS app)

[mfair]

We are running a Fui PACS (Med Imaging) application, Synapse, in our virtual environment. Studies, like CT's that have lots(100+) of relatively small images, load just fine, but studies like MAMO's that have a few very large images (4-8 images 25mb each) take an unacceptable amount of time to load (10-12 seconds).

Are there tweaks that can be made to accomodate larger files? Are we exceeding a network buffer somewhere?

Thanks,

Mike

[gguntz]

Mike

You have not really defined your configuration enough to make recommendations. Are the images coming from a RDM, a system drive, or some other location? Do you have virtual center running? If you have virtual center running you can check the performance differences for that particular vm during the opening of images in both scenerios. If you do not have virtual center you can run esxtop from a console session on the host server to see the performance indicators, but it does not have the pretty graph.

Gguntz

[mfair]

Here's the basic layout of the Fuji system, all VM's

MSCS active/active cluster with Oracle DB server on one node and Image Storage on the other. RDM's on CLARiiON CX700 connected with 2gb FC. 3 Web Servers handle the client traffic, this is where the bottle neck seems to be.

The image retrieval from the CLARiiON is fine, the database is plenty fast. According to Virtual Center performance metrics none of the servers are working too hard.

Here's the test that seems to point to the web servers as the issue.

A physical web server, configured to use the above MSCS cluster for image retrieval and DB, delivers the images beautifuly. To me that proves that the DB and image retrieval are working just fine. Using a VM web server configured to the same cluster for images and DB you see the issue. The studies with many smaller images load fine but the studies with fewer much larger images are painfuly slow.

the virtual web servers have 2 gb of RAM utilizing on average 25% of it.

The hosts that they are running on are a pair DL585 G2's. The hosts have plenty of available resources and show less than 3% cpu ready. All VM's use one vSwitch with several port groups set up for different VLAN's. The vSwitch has 3 gigE trunks back to a pair of Cisco 6509's with SUP 720's.

One Fuji tech suggested creating a dedicated vSwitch with its own path back to the core for the Fuji servers. Utilization on the current trunks seems to be nowhere near capacity, not sure what the dedicated vswitch would do for me.

Thanks,

Mike

[gguntz]

Mike

Just to be clear the only difference between the two configurations is one web server is a vm and one is physical in you test configurations. Are all the vms in this scenario in the same vlan? I have seen issues in the past with configurations that had lots of vlans especially if you are mixing a native vlan (untagged) with tagged vlans. Although, I would think in your case this is highly unlikely because you would have seen other issues besides slow pull up of images. There are a few different places that the problem could exist. Breaking off one nic and creating a dedicated vswitch can isolate some network issues. The other element that jumps to mind would be a possible contention across the storage. Are these vms on the same host or multiple hosts? I would setup esxtop to record the performance statistics for network, cpu, storage, and memory while you attempt to run your test again. After you run through your test, you can replay the statistics to see exactly what the esx host is showing as having an issue. You can find all the configuration options http://pubs.vmware.com/vi301/resmgmt/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=resmgmt&file=vc_e... here if needed.

Greg

[jimbo2010]

Mike,

I was able to Thinapp Fuji's Synapse 3.2.1 however it wasn't a simple process (I had to manually capture Explorer.exe, create an icon etc.).

Did you have any issues with the Synapse View Settings? The "Open study folder in the auxiliary window" option does not work.

When I select this option (Which the doctors request), I'm unable to double click images. Double clicking simply does nothing but make the Synapse Window flinch.

I've opened a Support Request with VMware however I'd like to take care of this asap.

Thanks,

Jim

[drbrooks61]

Jim and Mike,

If you need assistance with Thin App'ing our Synapse client please feel free to send me an email at doug.brooks@fujimed.com and I'll touch bases with you. We've been very successful capturing the client for a variety of uses.

Thanks,

Doug