data center relocation report

8/12/2019 Data Center Relocation Report

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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 DataCenter from downtown Minneapolis to a facility in Eagen, MN with networkingprovided 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 predictiveanalysis of the applications' Quality of Experience and network impact. This willhelp them make informed decisions about the type of WAN link needed and theorder 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 listingend-user response times for typical business processes of 12 applications. Thiswould also provide insight into application performance after the data centermove from the end-user perspective.

Identify Application Dependencies: Some of the applications being moved havedistributed architectures. The Company wants to identify application \ serverdependencies in the data center.

Analyze Bandwidth Requirements: The Company wants to properly equip theirnetwork to ensure that sufficient bandwidth is available to run the requiredapplications, while also making sure that money is not wasted on excessbandwidth.

Approach

Shunras Professional Services used Shunras Virtual Enterprise (Shunra VE)solution to build the Shunra VE Lab (see Figure 4).

In order to measure business application transaction times, Shunra consultantsbuilt a network template using VE Modeler. This template represented a variety ofWAN 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 bemoved, and predict application performance before and after the move.Business users performed business transactions similar to those theyd performconducting their day-to-day responsibilities. This was done using multiple WANscenarios, 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 VEReporter, Shunra consultants were able to analyze the results.

The infrastructure used for testing was the Production environment located at thecompanys facilities in Minneapolis. For a detailed description of the Shunra VEmethodology see the Methodology section.

At the same time, Shunra consultants connected a network probe to a port on theCompany'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 thatbetween the Companys production servers, the team was able to compile aServer Dependency Mapping Report.

Shunra consultants also captured Network Trending statistics for a 24 hour periodwhich showed Bandwidth Utilization between the clients and servers on theproduction network.

For a detailed description of the Network Capturing methodology see theMethodology section.

Results and Analysis

1. Quality of Experience of a Single User: The twelve critical businessapplications profiled yielded differing sensitivities to WAN conditions. Sensitivityto WAN conditions was also detected in different business processes withinapplications.

There were 125 total transactions measured for the twelve applications. Thispie chart below shows the percentage increase of Single User Transaction

Response Times, comparing the best conditions after the Data Center Movewith 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. Fora more detailed description of these results, see the section titled "CriticalBusiness Applications Results.

Applications with Transactions Most Sensitive to WAN Conditions

Applications that were identified as most sensitive to WAN conditions are thosethat have multiple transactions, and in which Single User Transaction Times from

the After Data Center Move Best Case emulation is more than double currentconditions. 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 arethose with Single User Transaction Times from the After Data Center Move BestCase emulation, and that are more than one and a half times that of currentconditions. 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 thosewith All Single User Transaction Times from the After Data Center Move Best Caseemulation 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 generatedto assist the company in determining a strategy for a possible phased approachto server migration. This will be delivered separately as the document 'ServerDependency 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 theservices which will be leased from The Network Provider. See the sectiontitled Bandwidth Utilization below.

Next Steps


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This section reviews steps that have been deemed as desirable following review ofthe results just described:

The above results identified a group of transactions that will experiencesignificant performance degradation (150% of baseline and above). For thesetransactions additional testing is recommended to better understand the rootcause of performance slow down. This process should include:

o Additional testing under network and potentially under end user load

conditionso Deep packet analysis of poorly performing transactions

o Assessing the potential impact of performance improving solutions suchas application tuning, application accelerators and WAN optimizationsolutions using performance ROI metrics. This will be done as part of thecustomers evaluation of such solutions.

Moving a data center in multiple phases will introduce distance betweenservers during intermediate relocation steps. This distance can severely impactsystem performance and should not be overlooked. In the multi-step relocationscenario , we recommend testing the impact of intermediate steps on serverand end-user performance.

Single User Analysis

Methodology

Planning and Design

The first step in modeling potential WAN characteristics of the Company'sproduction network after the data center move was to understand the networkcomponents and conditions. Based on data provided by the Company, thefollowing 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) conditionsfor 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 criticalbusiness applications to be used in the simulation. User activities for each of the12 applications profiled were chosen by a Company representative.The applications to be profiled were all installed and run from an IBM X60 laptoplocated 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 intwo primary stages:

Baseline Single User Transaction Response Time over the existingenvironment. Execute Transactions over possible configurations of the future network.

The same set of business transactions was executed over various WANconditions 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 timesfor the emulated scenarios. Application analysis reports were generated for theOutlook application. Application analysis included a native packet capture and abreak 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 communicationstraffic to production servers. After 3 days of collection, this data was used togenerate 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 theprobe.


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Bandwidth Utilization

Methodology

Planning and Design

The same hardware and software used for Application Dependency Mapping wasused for Network Trending Analysis.

Collection and Analysis

The filter for the Network probe was reconfigured for a 24 hour period to captureonly 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 conditionswere greater than double those for the current LAN conditions.

Current Denver Conditions

Business transactions for Outlook and File Site applications were profiled undernetwork conditions emulating the current conditions from the Denver/Boulderoffices.

Microsoft Outlook: Results showed that Denver users are experiencing similarsingle user response times to those experienced by Minneapolis when conducting


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Outlook 'Search Contact' and 'Open Attachment' transactions. They experiencelonger transaction times for the 'Load Attachment' transaction, which included alarge attachment to a Meeting Request.

Figure 7: Outlook Test Results

File Site: These results showed that Denver users are experiencing similar singleuser response times to Minneapolis users for File Site business transactions withthe 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 cachingserver. An evaluation is recommended to determine if an improvement inperformance 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 businesscritical applications that were profiled.

Transactions for which the Best Case after the DC Move are >150% of the LANtimings are highlighted in yellow.

Transactions for which the Best Case after the DC Move are >200% of the LANtimings are highlighted in red.


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

Figure 9: Search Contact CNS Breakdown

Load AttachmentFigure 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 tobe very sensitive to WAN conditions. This is demonstrated by the graph aboveafter a preliminary root cause analysis. Further testing and analysis isrecommended 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 besensitive to WAN conditions. This is demonstrated by the graph above after apreliminary root cause analysis. Further testing and analysis is recommended formore definitive results.

Figure 13: Open Attachment CNS Breakdown

Application Dependencies

Top Servers

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


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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 betweenWorkstations 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 excludedAppendix C was excluded

data center relocation report

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