Would a 2nd processor really be a waste of time???? help
Lee and Nadine
We are looking at different aspects on what to do about our older unix sco
5.5 server that tends to run slow at times (333mhz with 196 meg ram). using
cpqmon it shows the CPU "2 sec avg" the "10 sec avg" and the "20 sec avg" as
maxxed out when things run slow. One idea was to buy another processor and
more ram, however this is what one supplier has told us - see below. I have
no idea if what he is saying is correct of if hes trying to drum up more
sales. Some ideas on what he wrote would be greatly appreciated.
As quickly discussed on the phone today the server is dual processor
capable.
Your server has only 1 processor.
Memory is not an issue unless the system is swapping , if this was the case
on your system you would not be able to login.
Your system is not swapping and so is not the cause of the slow system.
The server is only 333 MHz, what would a 5 year old 333 MHz PC with 75 users
logged in run like?
The Unix system takes full advantage of Symmetric Multi Processing when the
SMP license is installed.
The only advantage of this would be seen when the system as it stands gets
processor bound and slows down , with dual processors the load is shared and
this processor bound state takes a little longer to occur .
A second processor does not speed up a server but shares load at current
processor speed. i.e. 333Mhz
It should be noted that even with a second processor the system may become
processor bound very quickly.
Estimated Pricing:
SCO Unix SMP License
$2,900
Second 333 MHz Processor [ subject to availability]
$1,000
Installation approximately 2 days labour [ out of hours rate ]
$ 2,400
Plus travel and accommodation
Estimated pricing does not include GST.
As discussed this is not a very good idea due to the small possible
advantage it may bring during peek usage and cost benefit. Even after
installation you may find that there has been no improvement in performance
.
Again as mentioned on the phone we need to get the new server installed as
soon as possible so users can benefit from superior technology enhancements
of the past 5 years.
Stuart J. Browne
"Lee and Nadine" <lee.n...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:Ic5Ra.81020$JA5.1...@news.xtra.co.nz...
If you are looking at getting a new server soon anyway, why spend $6k now?
(Go NZ dollars! Even worse than AU! :P)
As for the rest. As you've not said what you're doing, it's hard to say.
The output of things like 'sar -r' would be nice, also what does 'sar -d'
report. You might need to enable sar first, and leave it running for a day
before it gives you any reasonable results (/usr/lib/sa/sar_enable -y, if
it isn't already eanbled).
If it's processor bound, using 'mpstat' (if you've got SMP software
installed already atleast) will show you as it's happening.
Just one or two things to get you started. I'm sure the other guy's will
go into more detail later.
bkx
Skot
> We are looking at different aspects on what to do about our older unix sco
> 5.5 server that tends to run slow at times (333mhz with 196 meg ram). using
> cpqmon it shows the CPU "2 sec avg" the "10 sec avg" and the "20 sec avg" as
> maxxed out when things run slow. One idea was to buy another processor and
> more ram, however this is what one supplier has told us - see below. I have
> no idea if what he is saying is correct of if hes trying to drum up more
> sales. Some ideas on what he wrote would be greatly appreciated.
I just upgraded a client from a Dual P2-400Mhz, with OSR5.0.5 SMP to a
single P4-2.5Ghz running OSR5.0.7. Oh, and SCSI drives from 10Krpms to
15Krpm drives (big difference writing huge files and restoring backups
from a DDS4 drive too). Processing that used to take 20 minutes now
only takes a few seconds.
> Estimated Pricing:
>
> SCO Unix SMP License
> $2,900
Ouch! Which currency?
> Second 333 MHz Processor [ subject to availability]
> $1,000
$150USD maybe, pretty hard to find though. I have two SMP P2/400s. At
that age, I would look at replacing the entire server unless down time
means nothing to you. Generally, expect things to begin slowing and
breaking down at three years, by five years, expect regular strange
behaviour and frequent down time, and very hard to find replacement
parts. In my experience anyway, OTOH: I've seen 10 year old machines
just chugging away happily in their little corner.
> Installation approximately 2 days labour [ out of hours rate ]
> $ 2,400
2 days if you sit around watching the tape drive spin. Maybe 8 hours
total hands-on time, including recovering users and any software and
databases etc. Maybe a couple hours support calls to fix/recover
unothodox things that may be floating around.
Yeah, being from out-of-town makes a difference, so two days may be in
order. Also depends where you are at.
Maybe you would like to describe your system and circumstances in a bit
more detail so the more, worldy, experts can asses it a bit closer.
Perhaps the output of 'uname -X' too.
:)
Skot.
Abid Khan
I would definitely upgrade hardware and OS to the latest, it will cost
you more then $6K but it will be a good investment for the future, you
can spend 6k now but I can almost bet you that it will not speed up as
much as you desire and will not be worth the money you will spend and
again you will stuck with 5 years old hardware/OS.
Abid
Bill Vermillion
Lee and Nadine <lee.n...@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
>We are looking at different aspects on what to do about our
>older unix sco 5.5 server that tends to run slow at times
>(333mhz with 196 meg ram). using cpqmon it shows the CPU "2 sec
>avg" the "10 sec avg" and the "20 sec avg" as maxxed out when
>things run slow.
Put 'maxed out' into real numbers.
>One idea was to buy another processor and more ram, however this
>is what one supplier has told us - see below. I have no idea if
>what he is saying is correct of if hes trying to drum up more
>sales. Some ideas on what he wrote would be greatly appreciated.
>As quickly discussed on the phone today the server is dual processor
>capable.
>Your server has only 1 processor.
>Memory is not an issue unless the system is swapping , if this
>was the case on your system you would not be able to login.
That's not true. You can still log in on a system that is swapping
- but the login may be slow. Only when you get to the point of
massive thrashing do you lose any ability to log in.
>Your system is not swapping and so is not the cause of the slow system.
Did he check the system when it was running the slowest?
>The server is only 333 MHz, what would a 5 year old 333 MHz PC
>with 75 users logged in run like?
Well I've had systems like that with 120 users logged in - but it
was only 300MHz - and it ran pretty well. It had a fast disk
system.
One thing I don't see mentioned is disk performance.
Output of sar with about 10 results from about 15 second intervals
when the system is slow would surely help. Don't run intervals
less than 10 seconds or sar itself will likely impact the results.
>The Unix system takes full advantage of Symmetric Multi
>Processing when the SMP license is installed.
But your programs nay not.
>The only advantage of this would be seen when the system as
>it stands gets processor bound and slows down , with dual
>processors the load is shared and this processor bound state
>takes a little longer to occur .
>A second processor does not speed up a server but shares load at
>current processor speed. i.e. 333Mhz
>It should be noted that even with a second processor the system
>may become processor bound very quickly.
Was anything done to determine if the machine was processor bound.
That was not stated.
>Estimated Pricing:
>SCO Unix SMP License
>$2,900
>Second 333 MHz Processor [ subject to availability]
>$1,000
>Installation approximately 2 days labour [ out of hours rate ]
>$ 2,400
>Plus travel and accommodation
It's been quite typical that upgrades to older systems don't bring
the perfomance of a newer system.
>As discussed this is not a very good idea due to the small
>possible advantage it may bring during peek usage and cost
>benefit. Even after installation you may find that there has
>been no improvement in performance .
>Again as mentioned on the phone we need to get the new server
>installed as soon as possible so users can benefit from superior
>technology enhancements of the past 5 years.
You need to do some more testing to find out exactly where the
problem lies. You didn't mention the program you used - some
database designs should be taken out and destroyed.
Your question is sort of like asking 'how big a truck do I need to
move from xx to yy?' - without saying what you have to move.
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
Bob Bailin
"Lee and Nadine" <lee.n...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:Ic5Ra.81020$JA5.1...@news.xtra.co.nz...
>
> We are looking at different aspects on what to do about our older unix sco
> 5.5 server that tends to run slow at times (333mhz with 196 meg ram).
using
> cpqmon it shows the CPU "2 sec avg" the "10 sec avg" and the "20 sec avg"
as
> maxxed out when things run slow. One idea was to buy another processor
and
> more ram, however this is what one supplier has told us - see below. I
have
> no idea if what he is saying is correct of if hes trying to drum up more
> sales. Some ideas on what he wrote would be greatly appreciated.
>
> As quickly discussed on the phone today the server is dual processor
> capable.
>
> Your server has only 1 processor.
>
> Memory is not an issue unless the system is swapping , if this was the
case
> on your system you would not be able to login.
Not true, but when the system starts swapping overall performance drops
dramatically.
>
> Your system is not swapping and so is not the cause of the slow system.
>
> The server is only 333 MHz, what would a 5 year old 333 MHz PC with 75
users
> logged in run like?
Having recently upgraded a dual Pentium II Overdrive Processor (333MHz) last
year
that had only 20 active users max at any given time, I can't imagine your
performance
with only a single processor and 75 users, unless 70 of them are doing only
data entry/inquiry.
>
> The Unix system takes full advantage of Symmetric Multi Processing when
the
> SMP license is installed.
>
> The only advantage of this would be seen when the system as it stands gets
> processor bound and slows down , with dual processors the load is shared
and
> this processor bound state takes a little longer to occur .
>
> A second processor does not speed up a server but shares load at current
> processor speed. i.e. 333Mhz
No single task by itself will run faster, but overall system performance
will appear
to be faster.
>
> It should be noted that even with a second processor the system may become
> processor bound very quickly.
>
> Estimated Pricing:
I'm glad Stuart mentioned the NZ$, otherwise I was going to comment on the
somewhat extravagant pricing.
>
> SCO Unix SMP License
> $2,900
>
> Second 333 MHz Processor [ subject to availability]
> $1,000
You may also need an additional VRM (Voltage Regulator Module) if a 2nd
one is not already present. Very hard to find for obsolete motherboards.
>
> Installation approximately 2 days labour [ out of hours rate ]
> $ 2,400
Unless your original installer had the foresight to install the SMP module
(without
a license) during the original installation, this figure of 2 days is almost
reasonable.
In order to install SMP on a fully patched 5.0.5 system, you have to remove,
in
the proper order, over 2 dozen patches in addition to the rs505a supplement,
and
then reinstall all of them after installing SMP.
If SMP is already there, you just have to
>
> Plus travel and accommodation
>
> Estimated pricing does not include GST.
>
>
>
> As discussed this is not a very good idea due to the small possible
> advantage it may bring during peek usage and cost benefit. Even after
> installation you may find that there has been no improvement in
performance
> .
>
> Again as mentioned on the phone we need to get the new server installed as
> soon as possible so users can benefit from superior technology
enhancements
> of the past 5 years.
We upgraded to a dual Pentium III 1.4GHz system with 512MB, due to the
excessive
cost of Pentium 4 Xeon systems at the time. Yesterday, Intel announced a
price drop
for most Xeon processors, bringing some of them down to the price we paid
for the
PIII processors last year, so that would be the direction to go today.
DDR memory is significantly faster than the PC66 you're using now, and newer
servers
may have 66MHz PCI bus slots for a faster Ultra 320 SCSI adapter and disks.
I agree that the money, inflated as it is, would be better spent on a new
server.
Upgrade to 5.0.7 while you're at it.
Bob
Brian K. White
Holy cripes!!!
a 333mhz anything, even a xeon, sould be at _most_ about $75(US)
installation including changing the bios settings and installing the smp
license and even including the possible backing-out of several sco patches
and suppliments so that they can be re-added after smp is in, should only
be a couple hours. 4 maybe if you run into some unforseen problem that
takes a whoile to figure out or simply abandon the attempt and revert. add
a coupel more if you want to be extra safe and do a full backup first, but
since you should have one of those every night anyways, I wouldn't even
bother. it's not an especially risky operation. (although, anyone who says
it takes two days may not be of the competence level where they know how
to make a copy of the current good kernel and if necessary boot from it
later, so for them, if the box doesn't boot after installing smp and the
only way they know to fix it is something collosally overkill like
restoring the whole drive from a tape... yeah for them it might take two
days.) add another hour for standing around testing and listening/watching
for problems after you go back to work. I'd porbably stand around about 15
minutes myself. most problems will either show up immediately, or else
there is no predicting and no sense waiting.
I have no idea what an smp license costs but that you can find on-line
many places, because lost of people sell it and it doesn't matter who you
get it from. the only value a vendor could add to make his price worth
more is if he is knowledgeable he can assure that you buy the right
license and nothing you don't need. It is confusing in some cases and so
this service is actually valuable in some cases. Yours is not a complex
licensing problem though.
your cpu is old enough that you should actually be able to get two
matching faster cpus for $200(US) or so all together. This would require
knowing the exact motherboard model and revision, and bios version, and
probably installing a bios update from the motherboard manufacturer to
support faster cpu's than it originally could. I've done it plenty of
times and all that would be part of the same couple hours I said above.
you have other speed limits on a box that old, probably the scsi card is
not a high-end raid card nor ultra160 discs. probably the ram is 66 mhz
sdram
The second cpu will probably help ...somewhat. probably not what you'd
call "a lot". No particular job will go any faster, but, the box as a
whole can support almost twice as many jobs at any one time as it could
before. There is some overhead managing two cpu's though, so sometimes
it's really more like 1.5 to 1.8 times as many jobs instead of the
theoretical 2.0 times as many jobs.
This will make everything faster, just by making them _possible_ at times
when some big job would have normally tied up your only cpu. All in all
I'd say it was worth doing, being cheaper faster and easier than getting a
new server, but not at the quoted prices. at those prices you might as
well get a new server because even though that would definitely be a lot
more, at least you know about how much faster it will be. Beware you would
need to upgrade your version of OS to at least 5.0.6 in order to use any
P4 based cpu.
The ram/swapping/not-swapping argument is not quite true either. If
nothing else, you can probably get a noticeable boost by adding more ram
even if all you do with it is max out the disk buffer cache size kernel
parameters. (giving yourself 450 megs of disk cache). going too far in
this direction can hurt performance too, because every few seconds the OS
flushes the cache, and it takes a lot longer to flush 450 megs than say,
20. there are other tunable parameters that control how often and at what
threshold the cache is flushed which might make the extremely large cache
work out, but it depends on your actual usage pattern which I cannot
guess. that requires some live testing and observation. (_THAT_ can easily
take two days, or two weeks or two months... but somehow I don't get the
impression their quote figured in anything like that.) enabling sar is a
good start. installing sarcheck is another.
to summarize:
You'll get more of a boost with new cpu, new motherboard and new ram (ddr
or rdram at high bus rates, not sdram), which will also require an OS
upgrade.Even if single-cpu, just because the cpu and memory are so much
faster.
You'll get a good noticeable hike by adding a second cpu to existing
system, especially if the motherboard can take faster cpu's and you
replace both rather than add one. (the same applies to the ram, maybe the
motherboard can be made to use pc100 or even pc133 sdram instead of 66? It
*should* be a lot faster easier and cheaper to do this than set up a new
server, but the quotes you received are not good enough to make it worth
doing in my opinion. Perhaps another consultant in your area?
there are other issues that make a huge difference that might be worth
looking at too. what kind of hard drive do you have now? Replacing a 20 or
40 mhz scsi drive & controller with a 10k or 15k ultra160 drive and
ultra160 controller makes a big difference. stepping up to raid
even more so, but then it gets expensive. :) It's a time consuming job
swapping hard drives and controllers. coupled with the cost of the
hardware itself, it's probably too much to be worth doing because the
amount of improvement is not as sure.
> As discussed this is not a very good idea due to the small possible
> advantage it may bring during peek usage and cost benefit. Even after
> installation you may find that there has been no improvement in
> performance .
>
> Again as mentioned on the phone we need to get the new server installed
> as soon as possible so users can benefit from superior technology
> enhancements of the past 5 years.
--
Brian K. White -- br...@aljex.com -- http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
+++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++.
filePro BBx Linux SCO Prosper/FACTS AutoCAD #callahans Satriani
Lee and Nadine
Appreciated.
Lee
"Bill Vermillion" <b...@wjv.comREMOVE> wrote in message
news:HI5C7...@wjv.com...
Lee and Nadine
You have given me enough info to come to a few conclusions.
Thanks for your time
Lee
"Skot" <sk...@canada.com> wrote in message
news:_DiRa.385$46.1...@news2.telusplanet.net...
Brian Lavender
Jeez. I just had a system built for my current project, and the
_total_ box cost me $1400. It's an Athlon XP 1.533 GHz with 512 Mb DDR
ECC RAM and a 120 Gbyte hard drive. I got it from Xi Computer
(http://www.xicomputer.com). It came with RH 9 installed. I got the
box with the cheapest Nvidia card, since OSR 5.0.7 doesn't seem to
support that many video cards. I also had them put in an Inter
EtherExpress PRO, since SCO is particular about the NIC's as well.
brian
to...@aplawrence.com
>We are looking at different aspects on what to do about our older unix sco
>5.5 server that tends to run slow at times (333mhz with 196 meg ram). using
>cpqmon it shows the CPU "2 sec avg" the "10 sec avg" and the "20 sec avg" as
>maxxed out when things run slow. One idea was to buy another processor and
>more ram, however this is what one supplier has told us - see below. I have
>no idea if what he is saying is correct of if hes trying to drum up more
>sales. Some ideas on what he wrote would be greatly appreciated.
Well, it doesn't sound to me like he's trying to drum up more sales
necessarily.
I'd disagree with some of what he said:
>Memory is not an issue unless the system is swapping , if this was the case
>on your system you would not be able to login.
Not true. Logging in (and everything else) might be painfully slow,
but not impossible. It's easy enough to find out if you are having
memory issues: see http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/memory.html and
http://aplawrence.com/Boot/swap.html
>Your system is not swapping and so is not the cause of the slow system.
So what is the cause? Maybe he already knows, but if not, it's time
to look at sar, http://osr5doc.ca.caldera.com:457/PERFORM/CONTENTS.html
and http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/slow.html
>The server is only 333 MHz, what would a 5 year old 333 MHz PC with 75 users
>logged in run like?
Pretty slowly, though I xan remember running 20 users on a machine 1/10th
as fast. The CPU speed just isn't necessarily the issue; in fact
you are much more likely to be disk and i/o bound than cpu bound.
That's "likely", though: sar will show you what's really going on.
>The Unix system takes full advantage of Symmetric Multi Processing when the
>SMP license is installed.
Right.
>The only advantage of this would be seen when the system as it stands gets
>processor bound and slows down , with dual processors the load is shared and
>this processor bound state takes a little longer to occur .
>A second processor does not speed up a server but shares load at current
>processor speed. i.e. 333Mhz
Well, yeah, but that doesn't tell the true story. If you are slow because
the cpu can't keep up with the workload, activating a second cpu will
make you faster. Ther's a great big IF in there; again you need to
know why you are slow now.
>It should be noted that even with a second processor the system may become
>processor bound very quickly.
Sure. And with a $70,000 super-charged, fire breathing everything to the max
super machine, 75 users doing the right (or wrong) things could make it
run like an old Tandy Model 16 with 15 users. So?
>Estimated Pricing:
>SCO Unix SMP License
>$2,900
If that's some currency that's worth about a third of U.S. dollars that's
about right.
>Second 333 MHz Processor [ subject to availability]
>$1,000
And that's a good point about availability.
>Installation approximately 2 days labour [ out of hours rate ]
>$ 2,400
Two days ??????
Doing what?
>As discussed this is not a very good idea due to the small possible
>advantage it may bring during peek usage and cost benefit. Even after
>installation you may find that there has been no improvement in performance
>.
>Again as mentioned on the phone we need to get the new server installed as
>soon as possible so users can benefit from superior technology enhancements
>of the past 5 years.
I'd agree with that with this caveat: very often people over-buy in
the hope that the super-duper machine they have paid some outrageous sum
for will last for many years. It won't. The Superman machine you buy
today is plain old clark Kent in two years and is the skinny wimp on the
beach in three. Unless you have a real need to be on the bleeding edge,
or have money to burn, don't do this. Consider this:
A $1,000 machine today (U.S. Dollars) will outperform almost ANYTHING you
bought 5 years ago, even if you spent 20 times that. So don't make that
mistake again. Maybe you can beef it up a little, maybe a $2,000 or
$3,000 box, but almost nobody really needs anything more than that. If
you buy in the lower range, you can afford to have duplicate hardware
ready to employ, and you also won't feel bad about replacing it with
another inexpensive box two years from now.
Many a time I have had smaller places try an off the shelf $700.00 Dell
to replace a $12,000 monster they bought 5 years back. They could
always use it as someones desktop if it didn't work out, but it almost
always does - oh, maybe we throw in some more RAM, or if the number
of users is up there I still prefer SCSI, but it is very, very rare
to have to speInd big money on hardware today. You are a bit larger,
and of course I don't know what apps your 75 users run, so you probably
couldn't get away at the very bottom, but neither is it likely you
need bleeding edge either.
--
to...@aplawrence.com Unix/Linux/Mac OS X resources: http://aplawrence.com
Get paid for writing about tech: http://aplawrence.com/publish.html
Lee and Nadine
Lee
<to...@aplawrence.com> wrote in message news:bf9qbk$4j5$1...@pcls4.std.com...