Shunra Professional Servicesmedia.shunra.com/sample-reports/Data_Center_Relocation_Report.pdf ·...

Shunra Professional Services

Project Report for: Fortune 500 Company Project: Data Center Relocation Application Performance Assessment October 2009

Shunra Professional Services

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Executive Summary ............................................................................................................. 3

Project Overview.............................................................................................................. 3

Engagement Objective..................................................................................................... 4

Approach.......................................................................................................................... 4

Results and Analysis........................................................................................................ 5

Results Overview ............................................................................................................. 6

Next Steps ....................................................................................................................... 7

Single User Analysis ............................................................................................................ 8

Methodology .................................................................................................................... 8

Application Dependencies ................................................................................................. 12

Methodology .................................................................................................................. 12

Bandwidth Utilization.......................................................................................................... 13

Methodology .................................................................................................................. 13

Single User Analysis Results ............................................................................................. 14

Analysis Summary ......................................................................................................... 14

Outlook Application Analysis.......................................................................................... 26

Application Dependencies ................................................................................................. 29

Top Servers ................................................................................................................... 29

Top Applications ............................................................................................................ 31

Bandwidth Utilization.......................................................................................................... 32

Network Trending........................................................................................................... 32

Activity Summary ........................................................................................................... 33

Appendices ........................................................................................................................ 34

Appendix A - WAN Conditions ....................................................................................... 34

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Executive Summary

Project Overview

A Minneapolis based company (“The Company”) is planning to move their Data Center from downtown Minneapolis to a facility in Eagen, MN with networking provided by “The Network Provider.” The details of the move were not yet finalized, and it is yet to be determined if the move will take place in once or more stages. The Company wants to ensure that end user performance of critical business applications will not be negatively impacted as a result of the Data Center move. The Company engaged Shunra's Professional Services to provide predictive analysis of the applications' Quality of Experience and network impact. This will help them make informed decisions about the type of WAN link needed and the order of server migration.

Figure 1: The Production Network after the Data Center Move

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Engagement Objective The goals of this engagement were to: • Analyze End User Performance of 12 business applications: Using Shunra's

Single User Analysis methodology, a predictive report was generated listing end-user response times for typical business processes of 12 applications. This would also provide insight into application performance after the data center move from the end-user perspective.

• Identify Application Dependencies: Some of the applications being moved have distributed architectures. The Company wants to identify application \ server dependencies in the data center.

• Analyze Bandwidth Requirements: The Company wants to properly equip their network to ensure that sufficient bandwidth is available to run the required applications, while also making sure that money is not wasted on excess bandwidth.

Approach Shunra’s Professional Services used Shunra’s Virtual Enterprise (Shunra VE) solution to build the Shunra VE Lab (see Figure 4). In order to measure business application transaction times, Shunra consultants built a network template using VE Modeler. This template represented a variety of WAN conditions as defined in the Service Level Agreements signed with the “Network Provider.” The lab environment was used to emulate the operation of each application to be moved, and predict application performance before and after the move. Business users performed business transactions similar to those they’d perform conducting their day-to-day responsibilities. This was done using multiple WAN scenarios, each reflecting a different set of WAN conditions, and using VE

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Transaction Manager to record response times. Then, using data collected by VE Reporter, Shunra consultants were able to analyze the results. The infrastructure used for testing was the Production environment located at the company’s facilities in Minneapolis. For a detailed description of the Shunra VE methodology see the Methodology section. At the same time, Shunra consultants connected a network probe to a port on the Company's main production switch. This captured all traffic on the production network. By capturing traffic for 3 days and then filtering out all traffic except that between the Company’s production servers, the team was able to compile a Server Dependency Mapping Report. Shunra consultants also captured Network Trending statistics for a 24 hour period which showed Bandwidth Utilization between the clients and servers on the production network. For a detailed description of the Network Capturing methodology see the Methodology section.

Results and Analysis 1. Quality of Experience of a Single User: The twelve critical business

applications profiled yielded differing sensitivities to WAN conditions. Sensitivity to WAN conditions was also detected in different business processes within applications. There were 125 total transactions measured for the twelve applications. This pie chart below shows the percentage increase of Single User Transaction Response Times, comparing the best conditions after the Data Center Move with current conditions. The ranges signify transaction times which were: • Better than current conditions • Less than one and a half times current conditions • Less than double current conditions • Over twice that of current conditions.

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Figure 2: Single User Analysis Summary

Results Overview This section provides an overview of results that were obtained during testing. For a more detailed description of these results, see the section titled "Critical Business Applications Results.” Applications with Transactions Most Sensitive to WAN Conditions Applications that were identified as most sensitive to WAN conditions are those that have multiple transactions, and in which Single User Transaction Times from the After Data Center Move Best Case emulation is more than double current conditions. These applications include the following: • Carpe Diem • Network Shares • Introspect • SydneyPlus

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Applications with Transactions Somewhat Sensitive to WAN Conditions Applications that were identified as somewhat sensitive to WAN conditions are those with Single User Transaction Times from the After Data Center Move Best Case emulation, and that are more than one and a half times that of current conditions. These applications include the following: • Outlook • File Site • Elite • Interaction • Ultipro • IPMaster • PracticeMnager Applications with Transactions Least Sensitive to WAN Conditions Applications that were identified as least sensitive to WAN conditions are those with All Single User Transaction Times from the After Data Center Move Best Case emulation that are less than one and a half times current conditions. These applications include the following: • Lookup Precision • New Matter Approval 2. Dependency Map: A Server Dependency Mapping Report has been generated

to assist the company in determining a strategy for a possible phased approach to server migration. This will be delivered separately as the document 'Server Dependency Mapping.xls.'

3. Bandwidth Utilization: Bandwidth Utilization statistics for and servers over a 24 hour period were provided to the Company to assist in determining the services which will be leased from “The Network Provider.” See the section titled Bandwidth Utilization below.

Next Steps

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This section reviews steps that have been deemed as desirable following review of the results just described: • The above results identified a group of transactions that will experience

significant performance degradation (150% of baseline and above). For these transactions additional testing is recommended to better understand the root cause of performance slow down. This process should include:

o Additional testing under network and potentially under end user load conditions

o Deep packet analysis of poorly performing transactions o Assessing the potential impact of performance improving solutions such

as application tuning, application accelerators and WAN optimization solutions using performance ROI metrics. This will be done as part of the customer’s evaluation of such solutions.

• Moving a data center in multiple phases will introduce distance between servers during intermediate relocation steps. This distance can severely impact system performance and should not be overlooked. In the multi-step relocation scenario , we recommend testing the impact of intermediate steps on server and end-user performance.

Single User Analysis

Methodology Planning and Design The first step in modeling potential WAN characteristics of the Company's production network after the data center move was to understand the network components and conditions. Based on data provided by the Company, the following WAN scenarios were designed for testing: • Local User Current Conditions • After Data Center Move Best Case • After Data Center Move Average Case • After Data Center Move Worst Case

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• Denver/Boulder Current Conditions (Outlook and Interwoven only) Appendix A for a detailed description of the Wide Area Network (WAN) conditions for the scenarios Figure 3: The Shunra VE Network Modeling Template

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Test Preparation Shunra worked with the Company to define business processes for all critical business applications to be used in the simulation. User activities for each of the 12 applications profiled were chosen by a Company representative. The applications to be profiled were all installed and run from an IBM X60 laptop located in the Shunra lab in the Library on the 21st floor. Figure 4: Test Setup

Test Execution Overall, 12 applications were profiled during 7 days of testing. Testing took place in two primary stages: • Baseline Single User Transaction Response Time over the existing

environment. • Execute Transactions over possible configurations of the future network.

The same set of business transactions was executed over various WAN conditions for the new data center and the execution times were recorded.

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Figure 5: Testing Method

Reporting: Shunra's VE Reporter produced reports on transaction response times for the emulated scenarios. Application analysis reports were generated for the Outlook application. Application analysis included a native packet capture and a break down of Client, Network, and Server (CNS) times.

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Application Dependencies

Methodology

Planning and Design

Figure 6: Network Probe Setup

Collection and Analysis A data collecting probe was connected to a SPAN port to analyze communications traffic to production servers. After 3 days of collection, this data was used to generate a communications map that shows what protocols talk to which servers, and how much data is transferred during different periods of times (peak, late night, etc.). Please refer to Appendix B1 for the filter specifications used on the probe.

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Bandwidth Utilization

Methodology

Planning and Design The same hardware and software used for Application Dependency Mapping was used for Network Trending Analysis.

Collection and Analysis The filter for the Network probe was reconfigured for a 24 hour period to capture only traffic from workstations to servers. Please refer to Appendix B2 for the filter specifications used on the probe.

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Single User Analysis Results

Analysis Summary

Transactions Most Sensitive to WAN conditions

For the following business transactions, the times for the best WAN conditions were greater than double those for the current LAN conditions.

Current Denver Conditions Business transactions for Outlook and File Site applications were profiled under network conditions emulating the current conditions from the Denver/Boulder offices. Microsoft Outlook: Results showed that Denver users are experiencing similar single user response times to those experienced by Minneapolis when conducting

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Outlook 'Search Contact' and 'Open Attachment' transactions. They experience longer transaction times for the 'Load Attachment' transaction, which included a large attachment to a Meeting Request. Figure 7: Outlook Test Results

File Site: These results showed that Denver users are experiencing similar single user response times to Minneapolis users for File Site business transactions with the following exceptions: • File Email: File Email with a 3MB attachment • Document Import: Import new 3MB Document into a workspace folder • Profile Search

Note: Results displayed were formulated without the presence of a caching server. An evaluation is recommended to determine if an improvement in performance can be obtained with the use of a caching server.

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Critical Business Applications Results Listed below are the single user analysis results for each of the twelve business critical applications that were profiled. • Transactions for which the Best Case after the DC Move are >150% of the LAN

timings are highlighted in yellow. • Transactions for which the Best Case after the DC Move are >200% of the LAN

timings are highlighted in red.

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Outlook Application Analysis A more in-depth analysis of Outlook was performed using VE Analyzer. This analysis helped pinpoint the cause of transaction sensitivity to WAN conditions, and is described below.

Search Contact The Response Time Breakdown showed the following percentages: • Client - 61.11%: A significant amount of time is spent on the client. Therefore is

becomes clear that end user experience is affected by individual host configuration, such as programs running on the host, its hardware resources, etc.

• Network - 16.67%: This portion of the end user experience is the most likely to be affected by WAN conditions

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• Server - 22.22%: The amount of time that the transaction spends on backend servers. This is caused by factors such as multiple users competing for system resources, and other activities which also use server resources.

Figure 9: Search Contact CNS Breakdown

Load Attachment

Figure 10: Load Attachment Timing Summary

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The Response Time Breakdown shows the following: The transaction spends the bulk of its time traversing the network, and is likely to be very sensitive to WAN conditions. This is demonstrated by the graph above after a preliminary root cause analysis. Further testing and analysis is recommended in order to obtain more definitive results.

Figure 11: Load Attachment CNS Breakdown

Open Attachment

Figure 12: Open Attachment Timing Summary

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The Response Time Breakdown shows the following: This transaction spends the bulk of its time on the Client, and is less likely to be sensitive to WAN conditions. This is demonstrated by the graph above after a preliminary root cause analysis. Further testing and analysis is recommended for more definitive results. Figure 13: Open Attachment CNS Breakdown

Application Dependencies

Top Servers A complete report of Server Traffic was delivered separately in Excel and Access format. The following shows the Top 2-10 Servers by Total Bytes of traffic over the time.

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Figure 14: Top 2-10 Servers

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The following chart shows the Top 3-10 Applications. Figure 15: Top 3-10 Applications

Top Applications

A complete report of Application Traffic was delivered separately in Excel and Access format. The following lists the Top 10 Applications by Total Bytes of traffic over time:

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Table 16. Top 10 Applications by Total Traffic (Bytes)

Bandwidth Utilization

Network Trending The following is a snapshot of Packets/second and Bytes/second of traffic between Workstations and Servers during the daytime.

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Activity Summary Table 17: Activity Summary Traffic

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Appendices

Appendix A - WAN Conditions

Appendix B was excluded Appendix C was excluded

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