ShowTable of Contents
Introduction
IBM® Notes® Traveler provides automatic, two-way, over-the-air syncing between IBM Domino® servers and wireless handheld devices, including Android devices, Windows™ Mobile devices, Nokia S60 Third Edition devices, Nokia S60 Fifth Edition devices, Nokia Symbian^3 devices, and select mobile devices running the Exchange ActiveSync protocol, such as Apple, Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10 devices.
IBM Notes Traveler syncs mail, calendar and address book data in real time. On some select clients, To Do and Journal data are also synchronized. The Notes Traveler server runs as a Domino server task and is installed on a server running IBM Domino. The Notes Traveler server task uses the Domino directory to look up Notes users.
Server High Availability
Notes Traveler 9.0 in High Availability (HA) configuration added the ability to run multiple Notes Traveler servers in a service pool, thereby allowing devices to connect to any server in the pool.
Requests are received at any Notes Traveler server, and a determination is made whether to service the request locally or to route the request to another server in the pool. This decision is based on which server is currently monitoring mail for the user and the server loads. If a server in the pool is stopped or otherwise unavailable, device requests can be handled by the other servers in the pool without requiring recovery sync.Notes Traveler 9.0 in HA configuration uses Enterprise Database Servers for HA. DB2 for IBM i is used to store Notes Traveler Notes administration data and device synchronization data on IBM i platform. An enterprise database is not required when running Notes Traveler with standalone mode.
In this article we present the performance test results of Notes Traveler 9.0.0.1 in HA configuration.
Testing
Setup
We use the following hardware for our testing:
• Power 740 8205-E6B
• a Storwize V7000 with 24x 10K 360GB disk units.
• 2 Hosting VIOS partitions with 8GB FC connection to the Storwize V7000. Each VIOS LPAR has 1 CPU dedicated 4GB Memory
The HA performance test configuration was as shown on figure 1 and as outlined in table 1.
Figure 1. Test configuration
Table 1. Test configuration hardware and software
Function | CPU | Memory | Storage | Software | Quantity |
Mail Server
Power 740 LPAR | 4 core
3.6 GHz | 32 GB | 1 TB | Domino 9.0.0 on IBM i 7.1 | 3 |
Traveler Server
Power 740 LPAR | 2 core
3.6 GHz | 16 GB | 500 GB | Traveler 9.0.0.1 HA Domino 9.0.0 on IBM i 7.1 | 4 |
DB2 Server
Power 740 LPAR | 4 core
3.6 GHz | 32 GB | 800 GB | IBM i 7.1 | 1 |
Test Methodology
The test strategy was to simulate a typical enterprise-customer messaging load and then add mobile devices to that environment. The IBM Notes Server.Load workload generators simulated Notes client activity by sending mail to random users in the test set and causing other activity on the Domino mail server.
We added mobile devices into this mix, using the device simulators, which keep the changes generated by Server.Load in sync with the client and simulate mobile-user actions on the device.
The performance of the Notes Traveler server and the Domino Mail server were measured by using of the Notes Traveler and Server.Load N85Mail workloads on IBM i 7.1 servers.
Notes Traveler servers were exercised by test systems that simulated mobile device clients. These driver systems simulated remote devices reading and sending mail messages using HTTP (not HTTPS).
Here are the details the IBM Notes Traveler client script:
There are 64 iterations of this loop with a 15-min wait between iterations. Each user starts on a random iteration count (1st, 5th, etc.), and each user runs for the entire 64 iterations:
Loop start
OPEN/READ five Inbox mails (every iteration)
Reply to the first mail (every 2nd iteration)
SEND one 10-byte mail to one person (every 8th iteration)
SEND another 10-byte mail to three people (every 8th iteration)
MOVE one mail from the Inbox to the NotesBench folder (every iteration)
DELETE two mails (every iteration)
Loop end
In addition to the user scripts above, the Notes Traveler clients are listening for auto-sync (push) messages from the Notes Traveler server. If mail or calendar data is changed on the server as a result of the NotesBench load drivers, then the Notes Traveler client will automatically synchronize the server changes to the device.
The load driver for Notes Traveler simulates Windows Mobile (WM) 6, Nokia, Apple and Android devices. Windows Mobile, Nokia, and Android devices use HTTP-based auto sync, whereas Apple devices use the Exchange ActiveSync synchronization protocol and have different performance characteristics than the WM, Nokia, and Android devices.
For Notes Traveler 9.0.0.1, a mixed workload with 35% Android devices, 5% Windows phone devices 60% Apple devices was used.
Domino mail server workload
The Server.Load N85Mail workload that was run on the Domino 9.0.0 mail server simulated users sending mail using an IBM Notes client, and one-third of the N85Mail workload was sent against each of the Domino mail servers. This workload is part of the Server.Load workload tools suite (included as an install option in the Administrator Client). For more information on the N85Mail workload, refer to the developerWorks article, “IBM Lotus Notes V8 workloads: taking performance to a new level.”For these measurements, the N85Mail workload simulated 2,000 Notes clients sending mail to up to 18,000 users . The additional users (up to 12,000, or as otherwise noted) were the Notes Traveler registered users. These measurements simulate a customer environment in which mail users are using either a Notes client or a Notes Traveler device, but not both at the same time.
DISCLAIMER: All our tests are lab measurements; therefore the results may differ from real customer environments. For assistance with capacity planning, we recommend consultation with the IBM TechLine team.
Domino mail server configuration parameters
Table 2 lists the software configuration for the Domino mail server.
Table 2. Software configuration
Notes.ini settings |
|
Used for all tests | server_pool_tasks=200
server_max_concurrent_trans=200
Server_Show_Performance=1
RouterDbCacheSize=6100
NSF_DBcache_maxentries=6000
SCHEDULE_NO_VALIDATE=1 |
The mail server is running Domino Server 9.0.0 set up as a single Domino partition server using settings in table 2.
IBM Notes Traveler server configuration parameters
IBM Notes Traveler Server 9.0.0.1(64bit JVM) was set up using settings in table 3
.
Table 2 shows the software configuration for the Notes Traveler Server . The Notes Traveler server must be tuned for the number of active users that it supports. The setting we changed for this test are indicated in the table. For more details, refer to the “
Tuning performance of the server” topic in the Notes Traveler 9.0.0 product documentation
.
Table 3. Software configuration for Notes Traveler Server
Notes.ini settings |
|
Used for all tests | JavaUse64BitJVM=1
HTTPJVMMaxHeapSize=2048M
NTS_DBMAXPOOLSIZE=1001 |
Settings |
|
HTTP threads | 1.2* number of devices |
Traveler maximum Java heap size | 1536 MB |
Results
The following figures show system resource utilization for Notes Traveler Server 9.0.0.1 (64-bit JVM) on IBM i at different simulated device loads with one IBM i DB2 Database Servers in an HA configuration.Figure 2 shows the CPU utilization for Traveler HA server, Mail server and DB2 server.
Figure 2. CPU Utilization for Traveler HA Server, Mail Server and DB2 Server
Figure 3 shows the base pool page fault for Traveler HA server, Mail server and DB2 server.
Figure 3. Page Fault for Traveler HA Server, Mail Server and DB2 Server
Figure 4 shows physical DISK I/O usage for Traveler HA server, Mail server and DB2 server.
Figure 4. Physical DISK I/O usage for Traveler HA Server, Mail Server and DB2 Server
Figure 5 shows the network usage for Traveler HA server, Mail server and DB2 server.
Figure 5. Network usage for Traveler HA Server, Mail Server and DB2 Server
Load Balancer Consideration
We use IBM i HTTP server as the load balancer for 8,000 and 10,000 mobile users. We use Linux Apache HTTP server as the load balancer for 12,000 mobile users. • IBM i load balancer hardware configuration:
Power 740 LPAR
4 cores (3.6 GHz)
32 GB Memory
W e recommend use IBM i HTTP server as load balancer while mobile users are less than 10,000 users in one server pool, and use other load balancer, such as Linux Apache HTTP server, while mobile users are greater than 10,000 users in one server pool.
Conclusion
The performance measurements of the IBM Notes Traveler 9.0.0.1 in our configuration demonstrated that the Traveler servers in High Availability configuration is able to support up to 12,000 devices in one server pool.
Resources
IBM Notes and Domino Wiki:
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf
Traveler wiki document: “Configuring IBM Notes Traveler High Availability pool on IBM i”
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/xpDocViewer.xsp?lookupName=Administering+IBM+Notes+Traveler+9#action=openDocument&res_title=Configuring_the_IBM_Notes_Traveler_High_Availability_pool_on_IBM_i_A9&content=pdcontent
Traveler wiki document: “IBM Notes Traveler 9.0 in High-Availability Configuration Performance”
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/IBM_Notes_Traveler_9.0_in_High-Availability_Configuration_Performance
Traveler wiki document: “IBM Notes Traveler 9.0.0.1 in Standalone Configuration Performance on IBM i”
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/IBM_Notes_Traveler_9.0.0.1_in_Standalone_Configuration_Performance_on_IBM_i
Appendix 1: Notes.ini settings
Notes.Ini parameter name | Explanation |
NSF_Dbcache_Maxentries | Specifies the number of databases that a server can hold in its database cache at one time |
RouterDbCacheSize | Specifies the size of Router Database cache used to cache mail databases in the router process. |
SCHEDULE_NO_VALIDATE | Enables or disables whether SchedMgr validates its busytime database entry on a daily basis, as follows: 0 (default) - Enables validation 1 - Disables validation |
Server_MAX_CONCURRENT_TRANS | Sets the limit for the number of concurrently scheduled transactions on a server |
Server_Pool_Tasks | Total number of physical threads in the Domino server (DbServer) threadpool. |
Server_Show_Performance | Applies to servers. Specifies whether or not server performance events are displayed on the console. Set this variable to 1 to display server performance events on console. |
JavaUse64BitJVM | Use 64 bit JVM on IBM i |
HTTPJVMMaxHeapSize | Control memory allocation to allow the new XPages functionality to work correctly |
About the author
Chen, Yong Ze is an Advisory Software Engineer working for IBM i Domino and Traveler. You can reach him at
yongzech@cn.ibm.com