Download - Short reference architecture
The Blackboard Reference Architecture: Advanced Performance Management
Stephen Feldman ([email protected])
Director Blackboard Performance Engineering
07/10/07
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Who is this presentation geared for?
• Directors of Technology and Infrastructure
• Key Decision Makers over technology purchase and implementation decisions
• Key Stakeholders in the operational management of the system
• Curious bystanders who walked into the session by accident.
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• Learn what are reference architectures.
• Understand why reference architectures are important for enterprise application deployments.
• Introduction to initial components of the Blackboard Reference Architecture
• Short overview of user performance management.
What will you attain from this presentation?
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• Introduction to Reference Architectures• The Blackboard Reference Architecture• Key Components
– Platform Infrastructure– Web/Application Delivery and Management– Advanced Storage Architectures– Monitoring and Management– User Performance Management– Behavior Modeling (Web Analytics)
Presentation agenda
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Where does your institution fit?
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5
Reactive and
Exploratory
MonitorAnd
Instrument
PerformanceOptimizing
BusinessOptimizing
ProcessOptimizing
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• An architectural set of best of practices for system deployment.
• Begin with a holistic view of the system and narrow down to each essential component.
• Each component must add value to the overall architecture.– Without the component the system lacks the
quintessential definition of the “Ideal Architecture”
What is a Reference Architecture?
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• Consider it a blue print for success.– Remember that buildings are not constructed of blue
prints, but rather are designed from blue prints.– This is not a pie-in-the-sky idea, but a vision towards
enterprise performance optimization.
• Provide an overview of what an enterprise application requires to achieve Level 5 in the Performance Maturity Model.
• Without it, your institution will struggle to ascend beyond Level 2: Monitoring and Management.
Why is the Reference Architecture important to you?
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What is the Blackboard Reference Architecture?
Federated ApplicationsEnterprise SearchOther WSI ...
Application Layer
Enterprise Storage
· Optimization· Backup· Recovery· Growth
Analysis
SNMP
ManagementMonitoring
Integration
Even
t-Driven
M
gm
t.A
dvan
ced
Rep
ortin
gB
ehavio
r M
od
el Stu
dies
SIS & Back office
B2 Partners
Campus Systems
Publishers
Directory Svcs.
SSO
Portals
SMS & MobileCam
paig
n
Mg
mt.
Database Layer
Blackboard Reference Architecture
User Experience
Virtualization
MonitoringManagementClustering
Load Balancing
Beyond ServicesBlackboardInstitution
AccessSecurityIdentify
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Platform Infrastructure• Focusing on a few major players
– Hardware Perspective• Dell
– Linux/Windows on Intel– Linux/Windows on AMD
• Sun Microsystems– Solaris on Niagra/T1– Solaris on Ultra Sparc IV– Linux/Windows on AMD– Linux/Windows on Intel
– Platform OS• Red Hat Linux• Windows 2003• Solaris 10
– RDBMS• Oracle 10G and Oracle 10G RAC• SQL Server 2005
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Dell Multi-Purpose Reference Architecture
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Sun Multi-Purpose Reference ArchitectureOracle and Oracle RAC on SUN
Reference Architecture
Gig-E Switch(separate subnet)
Gig-E Switch Private Interconnect(separate subnet)
Public Network
Storage Network
Oracle Cluster Interconnect Network
Attempt to bond interconnect NICs
Sun T1000 6 to 8-core
Sun T2000 6 to 8-core
Sun T1000 6 to 8-core
Sun T2000 6 to 8-core
Sun T1000 6 to 8-core
Sun T2000 6 to 8-core
Gig-E Switch
Application Tier
Database Tier Virtual IP addresses
Netscaler7000Citrix Netscaler 7000
NetApp FAS Appliance
Sun Modular Blade Units (Niagara: T1)
Storage Tier
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Alternative Performance Configurations: Multi-Home Clustering
AS Node 1
AS Node n
AS Node 3
AS Node 2
Apache Web Server
Single Physical Server
HTTP Traffic
Vista Admin Node
Vista Node n
Vista Node 2
Vista Node 1
Hardware Load Balancer
Single Physical Server
HTTP Traffic
Academic Suite Vista/CE Learning System
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Alternative Performance Configurations: Distributed Load-Balancing and Clustering
Physical Server n
Physical Server 3
Physical Server 1
Physical Server 2
Vista Admin Node
Vista Node n
Vista Node 2
Vista Node 1
Hardware Load Balancer
HTTP Traffic
Hardware Load Balancer
AS Instance
Apache
Server 1
AS Instance
Apache
Server 2
AS Instance
Apache
Server 3
AS Instance
Apache
Server n
HTTP Traffic
Academic Suite Vista/CE Learning System
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Alternative Performance Configurations: Server Virtualization (Linux/Windows)
Virtual M
achine
Virtual M
achine
Virtual M
achine
Virtual M
achine
2x2 Physical Server
Physical Memory Pool
vCP
U
vCP
U
vCP
U
System Hypervisor Kernel
Network Switch
CPU Core CPU Core CPU Core CPU CoreNetwork Attached
StorageVirtual Interfaces Virtual InterfacesVirtual InterfacesVirtual Interfaces
vCP
U
vCP
UvC
PU
vCP
U
vCP
U
Re
served
RA
M
Re
served
RA
M
Re
served
RA
M
Re
served
RA
M
Physical Interfaces
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Alternative Performance Configurations: Server Virtualization (Solaris)
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Web/Application Delivery and Management
Security
Caching
Compression
SSL Acceleration
Web Servers
Application Servers
DB Servers
Servers Add
Up Quickly
Variety of Point
Products
Chatty Protocols,
Long Hauls,High Latency
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Citrix NetScaler: Reference Architecture Component
Security
Caching
Compression
SSL Acceleration
Web Servers
Application Servers
DB Servers
Reduces Load on Backend Servers
Eliminates Multiple
Inefficient Point Products
Reduces Bandwidth Required
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Storage architectures
• Ideal architectures should support multi-protocol– Network File Storage (NFS)– Fiber-Channel SAN– IP/SAN (ISCI)– Common Internet File System (CIFS)
• High-Performing (I/O per second)– Read/Write Performance– Data Replication
• Handle growth and change– Least interruption
• Storage Utilization– Flexibility in mixing spindle type and speed
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Monitoring and Management• One of the most critical components in the Reference Architecture.
– Without monitoring and management tools in place it would be the equivalent of walking in a pitch-black room with no lights.
– Visibility is essential with enterprise applications.• Issues can be highlighted and observed in real-time• Enterprise architectures are large…M & M tools can help make the problem more
manageable. • M & M tools assist with going back in time to understand patterns,
trends and key events.• Automate problem detection and notification — you don’t have to ask
about current status• M &M tools assist with the quantification of problems.
– Provide critical diagnostic information about why something happened.• Most M & M tools make the data digestible to stakeholders of the
system who are often not as technical as you are.
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Monitoring and Management: Example Artifact
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User Performance Management
UserExperience
PlatformHealth
Infrastructure NetworksApplications
• Assumes platform health is the only indicator of user performance or app availability
Impact
Verify
Escalate
Alert
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User Performance Management startswith user experience
UserExperience
PlatformHealth
Infrastructure NetworksApplications
Detect
Investigate
Localize
Resolve
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Where User Performance Management fits• UPM the missing piece• Without it:
– No way to measure end user experience
– No immediate detection of user errors
– No problem reproduction– No view of what really
happens in production
Users
Systems
OperationsMarketing
UserPerformanceManagement
• Incidents• Service levels
Synthetic testingReachability, baselining,CDN, competitors, load
Web analyticsConversion, SEO,
traffic, campaign ROI
Platform MgmtDevices, functions,agents, databases
Synthetic testingReachability, baselining,CDN, competitors, load
Platform MgmtDevices, functions,agents, databases
Web analyticsConversion, SEO,
traffic, campaign ROI
$
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Device monitoring: Watching the infrastructure
• Less relation to application availability
• Vital for troubleshooting and localization
• Will show “hard down” errors– But good sites are redundant anyway
• Correlation between a metric (CPU, RAM) and performance degradation shows where to add capacity
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Web Analytics: Looking at user behavior
• Studies the behavior of Web site visitors
• Help marketing teams support business objectives
• Report on effectiveness of campaigns
• Analyze visitor demographics
• Doesn’t look at the impact of performance on user behavior
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Synthetic testing: Checking it yourself
• Local or outside
• Same test each time
• Excellent for network baselining when you can’t control end-user connection
• Use to check if a region or function is down for everyone
• Limited usefulness for problem re-creation
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User performance management: See what’s happening
• See what your users are actually doing
• Monitor usage while in production
• Get real-time visibility
• Re-produce problems for troubleshooting
• Prioritize problems based on the impact to actual users
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The technology: Real user monitoring
• Detect individual incidents • Capture, alert, localize & escalate• Store detailed user performance data• Share with other IT systems• Measure capacity at different loads• Report on subscribers, regions, etc.
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Web Analytics: Behavior Modeling
• Look into the past to see the future.• Web Analytics is the analysis of how users behave on
the system.• While built-in product features are helpful to understand
user behavior, analyzing log data can provide more meaningful statistics.
• Goal is to understand the following:– Where are your users spending their time?– How long are they spending?– Where are they coming from?– Where are they going?– What patterns do they exhibit when they are interacting with the
application?– What types of errors or failures are they experiencing?
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Want More?
• To view my resources and references for this presentation, visit
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