Testing Performance Itensive Applications!!!

[harryven]

Hi! Everybody,

Question - How would you determine that a performance intensive application is a good candidate? Specifically what tools would you use to identify candidates. Specifically inside those tools what metrics would you use?

I happen to view this question in VMTN whileI was browsing.

Did anybody do this this kind of testing? I would also like to perform these tests before converting my physical machines to VM's along with its applications.

Any detailed help would be appreciated.

Thank you

Regards

Harry

[mreferre]

Harry,

the only true way to determine it is to move your app on an ESX host and see what happens. Sure you can monitor usage on a physical system and have an educated guess (and most of the time an app that requires few resources is a good candidate) but sometimes you will find app that are not very virtualization-ready and the only way to find it out is to P2V your physical host.

See here an example: http://it20.info/blogs/main/archive/2007/08/11/44.aspx

Massimo.

[AWo]

Maybe this doesn't answer your question exactly but it might help:

For I/O tests I use iometer (http://www.iometer.org). This tool is also able to emulate many connections to test disk and network I/O.

For an overall workload characterization and ongoing load balancing you can user PlateSpin "Power Recon" (http://www.platespin.com). They were purchased by Novell early this year. This tool monitors workloads on hosts (CPU, network, disk, ...) and stores the values in a database (let's say for a month). You can create a "project" then, add hardware templates of existing and non-existing ESX servers and Power Recon suggests how to distribute the monitored servers over you ESX hardware templates to get an equal load. With an extension it also does the P2V for you according to the final design of the project.

[harryven]

Guys,

Thank you for the replies. I am looking into the suggestions you gave. Appreciate it.

Regards

Harry

[azn2kew · Accepted solution]

These are the tools that can be use to test specific applications under virtual machines as well.

*

Memory reliability

Microsoft Windows Memory Diagnostic

**

I/O performances

Intel IOMeter

Microsoft SQLIO Disk Subsystem Benchmark Tool

**

Network performances

DeNamik LoadGen

JMeter

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Load Simulator

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Load Generator (64bit version)

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Stress and Performance Tool (64bit version)

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 (and SharePoint Services 3.0) Test Data Load Tool

Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool

Microsoft Web Capacity Analysis Tool

OpenSTA

SLAMD Distributed Load Generation Engine

Soap-Stone

*Read this site for details.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant