[AccessD] Solid State Disk performance

jwcolby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Wed Apr 1 11:26:12 CDT 2009


Well Drew, it appears that memory is my bottleneck.  My server only has 8 gigs of RAM (in four 
slots).  I could put 16 in it but 4 gig dims made a brief appearance a year ago or so then 
disappeared.  So I am stuck at 8 gigs unless they reappear.

Two VMs run just fine, even with 3 gigs of ram each (needed for the application).  Running three, 
even dropping the RAM down to 2.25 gigs causes the server to slow to a crawl as the swap file comes 
into play.

Sigh.

It looked so promising.  I don't have the funds to go to server grade hardware with 8 or more dimm 
slots, registered memory and all that.

But in the end, two virtual machines running full speed is better than one, and I will take what I 
can get.  At least I can stop testing and go back to work.

;)

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com


Drew Wutka wrote:
> Why don't you double that, by getting a RAID controller and two of those
> drives, to stripe them?  It'll read twice as fast!
> 
> Drew
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby
> Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 9:18 AM
> To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
> Subject: Re: [AccessD] Solid State Disk performance
> 
> In this particular case I am just installing the application on a VM and
> then copying the VM so that 
> I run one instance in each VM.  Tech support for the application told me
> that as long as I have a 
> license to use the software I could run more than one copy to speed up
> my processing.  The 
> application does most of the processing locally so it is just my own
> hardware taking the hit.  It 
> does upload a file for post processing but they told me I could do this
> (which is really pretty nice 
> of them) so I am not violating any license.
> 
> Running it in a VM allows me to move the application to a different
> server if I need without 
> uninstalling / reinstalling / obtaining the key for the new install etc.
> Obviously it also allows 
> me to run multiple instances to speed up the processing.
> 
> I process huge tables, for example last night / today I am processing
> about 50 million records.  My 
> time to process (on an instance of the program) is about 4-5 million
> records / hour, however there 
> is upload / process / download time on the remote server.  Together the
> total comes to about 20 
> minutes per million records so it will take about 17 hours or so to
> process the table.  If I can 
> throw multiple VMs at it I can cut that by at least two, possibly three
> or even four.  Nine hours is 
> better than 17, 5 hours is better yet.
> 
> We shall see.
> 
> The SSD gives me extremely high (RAID 0 like) bandwidth, but it also
> gives me extremely high IO 
> processing as well as extremely low latency.  For a process like this
> where the system does nothing 
> but read and process, the performance boost versus a hard disk is
> astounding.  And all for a measly 
> $125!
> 
> John W. Colby
> www.ColbyConsulting.com
> The information contained in this transmission is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain II-VI Proprietary and/or II-VI Business Sensitive material. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender immediately and destroy the material in its entirety, whether electronic or hard copy. You are notified that any review, retransmission, copying, disclosure, dissemination, or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited.
> 
> 



More information about the AccessD mailing list