[p4] Slow Downs - More RAM?

Jamison, Shawn sjamison at ciena.com
Mon Jan 8 19:26:25 PST 2007 

One thing that has helped me is to implement a trigger that prevents the
users from creating client spec that map the depot root.  No more
//depot/... //clienspec/depot/... Mappings.

That one thing alone helped me a bunch especially for users that don't
read the prompt "do you want to sync" after creating the new client spec
and just click yes.

It's funny how little a user can accomplish when syncing 100Gig and 9
million files :-)


-Shawn J>
Babs/Perforce Admin

-----Original Message-----
From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com
[mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of Terry Metler
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 1:21 PM
To: Russell C. Jackson; Perforce userlist (E-mail)
Subject: Re: [p4] Slow Downs - More RAM?

Everyone,

Thanks for the responses...sounds like I'm going to have to bite the
bullet.

Just a couple updates.
	- I am looking at the 64bit OS (sorry left that out)
	- our Database is now on a local HDD and the versioned files are
on a Fibre attached IBM DS4300 (2Gbps) SAN.  Doesn't look like this is
maxing out or anything like that.
	- I have not set a limit for maxscanrows and maxresults as I
want to make sure this isn't going to adversely effect my users more
than the slow downs.  This is the next thing I was to go through with
Perforce support.

I still think, even with the maxscanrows and maxresults set I will have
to move to the 64bit OS.  Again, I'm going to have to bite the bullet.

Thanks again everyone.  Let me know if you think there are any other
corners I need to look into.

Thanks,


Terry.


-----Original Message-----
From: Russell C. Jackson [mailto:rusty at rcjacksonconsulting.com]
Sent: January 8, 2007 12:35 PM
To: Terry Metler; Perforce userlist (E-mail)
Subject: Re: [p4] Slow Downs - More RAM?

A company I work for has Perforce running on a Dell with 2 dual core
processors, 8 gigs of RAM and Windows 2003 Advanced server 64 bit with
64 bit Perforce. They are using a Hitachi AMS 1000 to host both the
metadata and the depot data volumes. They have 2600 users on that
server, and it runs quite well. As of 2006.2, Perforce has eliminated
the one remaining problem Windows had, and that was a file handle limit
because of the POSIX API they were using. That said, we are still moving

to Linux because you can monitor your server much better on Linux and
determine what is causing problems better on Linux.

There are several things that help, but one key is that we have
maxscanrows and maxresults both set to prevent users from running
excessively large operations that back the server up the way you
described yours is doing. Another is the very fast SAN. Perforce's
performance is very drive speed dependent. What is happening to your
server is exactly what Perforce said. Someone has run a very large
command, and locked the database files. All other transactions backup
and wait on that lock to release, and then they quickly go through. The
order of things that will help you:

Memory
Drive Speed (If you have more memory than the size of your db files,
then the CPU speed is the second thing on this list instead of the
third.)
CPU Speed

All three of these affect Perforce's performance, and if one is causing
the bottle neck, increasing the other two won't help. I have seen many
teams try to prove a particular upgrade can be justified before spending

the money, but it is a nearly impossible task. You just have to know
that the faster you have of the three things above, the faster Perforce
will perform, but you still have to take actions inside of Perforce, and

in your process to prevent your users from killing your server with
excessively large requests.

Also, consider breaking your server into multiple instances if you can. 
If you have independent product lines that can operate in independent
servers, you can improve performance by splitting those into two or more

Perforce servers, both running on the same hardware you have now, and
get better performance than the single instance you have running on that

hardware.

Thanks,
Rusty

--------------------------------------------------
RCJackson Consulting
Perforce Consulting Partner and Certified Trainer
--------------------------------------------------
rusty at rcjacksonconsulting.com
http://www.rcjacksonconsulting.com
tel:      479-696-9710
fax:      479-967-0963
mobile:   479-747-3845
--------------------------------------------------




Terry Metler wrote:
> I need opinions about hardware and how "big" I need to go...
>
>  
>
> We've been running Perforce now for about 7 months.  Up to November 
> everything was running very smoothly but since then we have many slow 
> downs a day.  There are no indications on the system except that I
have
> noticed just before everything goes back to normal that the cores all 
> peg to 100% utilization for a few seconds.  This has slowly gotten
worse
> to now it is happening two or three times a day.
>
>  
>
> After talking with Perforce support they indicated that it looks like
a
> case that the server is running out of resources.  There are points
when
> there are over 700 concurrent transactions.  Support mentioned that it

> looks like a large process is backing everything up and eventually it 
> does finish and everything else runs really fast that was backed up 
> behind that one process.
>
>  
>
> I've rebuilt the databases, defragged the drives, removed the audit
file
> and moved the database files to a separate drive to try and get some 
> additional performance.  None of these have made a significant 
> improvement.
>
>  
>
> Currently...
>
> Users: 160
>
> Files: 460 000 (not including all revisions)
>
> Server
>
>             CPU: 2 x 3.0Ghz Xeon
>
>             RAM: 4GB
>
>             OS: Windows Server 2003 Standard
>
>  
>
> New server I'm looking at...
>
> CPU: 2 x 2.6Ghz Opteron
>
> RAM: 32GB (Can be upgraded to 64GB)
>
> OS: Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
>
>  
>
> I am hoping to hear from some people that have been using Perforce for
a
> lot longer than we have.  I don't want to purchase a bigger server and

> not get the performance I'm being told I would get with "a lot more"
RAM
> (the current one is almost maxed out physically and is maxed with the 
> Standard OS).  All recommendations are more than welcomed as I want to

> have a better feeling that it is the hardware that is causing the slow

> downs before shelling out for a new server.
>
>  
>
> Thanks in advance for your recommendations and feedback!!
>
>  
>
>  
>
> Terry
>
>
>
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>
>
>
>   


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