Sizing Solaris Servers

[rolandw]

For one reason or another we are going to adopt Solaris for our new deployment of business management systems. Our question is which server and how many of them. "How long is a piece of string?" you might ask - well we have a complete system map, we know how many users and we know the size of our database and the speed of our app so we can provide this information but where is the best place to start? Do we go to Progress and ask for help? Do we go to Sun and say this is what we are doing so please help us? Does anyone have a list of "Don't do this" horrors?

 

[MurrayH]

My advice is, assuming you are going V9, get the latest Java version 1.3.1_02 from Sun and us that one .. especially on Soalris 8 10/01. Also be very careful about the Progress patches you install with v9.1C. I've found patch 9 works ok but had all sorts of Java issues with patch 10.

Other general rules:
1. Have at least 3 disk controllers (prefer 5 {or more}).
* BI
* AI
* DB
* Indexes
* OS + Tmp + Apps + Other junk

2. Strip and mirror everything

3. Get plenty of CPUs

4. Use "iostat -nxP 10" and "mpstat 10" to look over the OS while its running and check for bottlenecks

5. When dumping and loading, create a RAMDISK as your "sort area" for index rebuilds

I'm currently using a SunFire 6800 in a very high thoughput environment and have found that creating a processor set for the Progress BIW is a good thing.

psrset -c 1 (create a processor set for CPU 1)
psrset -b 'add the PID of the BIW here'
e.g.
psrset -b 1278

Hope that helps

Murray