From: Lukas Beeler
I've deployed quite a few 1 Core Power 6 machines with 4GB
of memory and just two arms. They're awfully slow, and i wouldn't
want to work on them on a daily basis.
Is the "machine" slow? Or are the "applications" slow? I think that's a valid question because performance is largely based on software - not just the number of cores, the amount of RAM, disk arms, and processor speed. Does the application architecture perform well, or not?
I recently prepared a benchmark to evaluate a Web Server/Application Server/Transaction Processing/Database Server workload. I stress tested my Web portal and 4 applications that run within it. A detailed report can be downloaded at:
http://tinyurl.com/n48qsg
With 25 virtual users and NO think-time between requests, a single-core Model 520 handled about 400 requests per second, with an average response time of 15 milliseconds or less for most requests. All requests generated dynamic content. Most requests performed DB I/O. No responses were cached on the server or client.
The test platform was a 2006 period model 520 with 1-Gig RAM, single-core Power 5 processor - 3,100 CPW.
We've been in an era where people would often throw more cores, memory, and disk arms at workload problems, but I think there's more potential to improve performance and reduce cost through intelligent software design.
Most users are not expecting 15 millisecond response times from Web applications, let alone applications running on single-core servers with only 1 Gig RAM, under stress of 400 requests per second.
Nathan.
midrange.com
