HP PROLIANT DL760 G2, PROLIANT DL760 User Manual

June 2002

Compaq Computer
Corporation

Prepared by
ISS Solutions
Engineering and ISS
Enterprise Marketing
Programs

CONTENTS

Abstract .............................1

Introduction.......................3

Exchange 2000

Consolidation....................3

The Test Platform: ProLiant

DL760.................................5

Resource Partitioning

Manager.............................6

Partition Configuration.....6

Add the Active Process........6

Add the Active Process to

Resource Partition................ 7

Registry Setting for Exchange

2000 .....................................8

Processor Utilization ............ 9

Resource Partition Properties10

Partition Performance ....12

Partition Processor Utilization12

Partition Rules.................... 13

Test Results ....................13

Conclusion ......................14

TC020602TB

TECHNOLOGY BRIEF

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Microsoft Exchange 2000 Consolidation

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Using ProLiant Essentials Workload

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Management Pack

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ABSTRACT

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Increasingly, today’s enterprises need to reduce costs while increasing uptime and better

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leveraging hardware and software investments. One of the most effective means of cost

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reduction is consolidating applications spread across the IT infrastructure. A Microsoft

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Exchange 2000 environment, for example, often requires multiple servers and multiple

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supporting applications. By combining such applications onto a single or fewer servers

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and better managing resources used by these services, costs are greatly reduced and

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management of the environment becomes much easier.

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The ProLiant Essentials Workload Management Pack from the new HP, featuring

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Resource Partitioning Manager (RPM), enables system administrators to set processor

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affinity and allocate memory usage on a per process basis to maximize system

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performance. This paper explains how to set up and configure RPM partitions for use

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with Microsoft Exchange 2000 and supporting applications and to ensure a consolidation

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scenario that can be easily deployed and managed in the enterprise.

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Please direct comments regarding this communication to the ISS Technology Communications Group at this Internet

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address: [e-mail]

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1

TC020602TB

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Consolidation Using

ECHNOLOGY BRIEF (cont.) ProLiant Essentials Workload Management Pack

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NOTICE

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Compaq shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained

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herein. The information is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind and is

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subject to change without notice. The warranties for Compaq products are set

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forth in the express limited warranty statements accompanying such products.

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Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.

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Compaq and ProLiant registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

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Microsoft, Windows, and Exchange 2000 are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of

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Microsoft Corporation.

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Other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their

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respective companies.

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2002 Compaq Information Technologies Group, L.P.

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Compaq Computer Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard Company.

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Microsoft Exchange 2000 Consolidation Using ProLiant Essentials Workload

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Management Pack

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First Edition (June 2002)

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Document Number TC020602TB

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2

Inf

ormation Store: The

p

E

I

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default message store

rovider for Microsoft

xchange Server. Built on
the Microsoft Extensible
Storage Engine, the

nformation Store consists
of multiple files
(properties and streaming
databases), organized
into storage groups with
transactional log files.
The information store
organization of public

olders, private folders,
and messages is referred
to as the organization
hierarchy. Information
Store services are
contained in file store.exe.

TC020602TB

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Consolidation Using

ECHNOLOGY BRIEF (cont.) ProLiant Essentials Workload Management Pack

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INTRODUCTION

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Today’s corporate IT environments mandate the use of many supporting applications to ensure

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availability of mission critical applications. These supporting applications include antivirus

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software, management applications, and backup solutions that can cause a significant drain on

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system resources. The negative impact on system performance due to excessive CPU utilization or

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memory consumption by these supporting applications is evident when using primary applications

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such as Microsoft Exchange 2000. A virus scan, for example, consumes a considerable amount of

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CPU resources. Microsoft Windows 2000 does an excellent job of symmetrical multiprocessing:

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equally distributing load generated by application and system processes among all processors in a

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multiprocessor system. If two processes have the same priority, each is allocated equal CPU time.

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Thus, a supporting application shares CPU time equally with a primary application. This sharing

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of CPU time can result in a performance degradation of the primary application, in this case

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Exchange 2000.

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To facilitate consolidation and ensure reliable and consistent performance, the new HP provides

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the Resource Partitioning Manager (RPM). This software allows administrators to set processor

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affinity and allocate memory usage on a per process basis.

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In an Exchange 2000 server environment, the most compute intensive process is the store.exe

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process. Using RPM, an Exchange 2000 administrator can allocate a specific number of

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processors to store.exe and a specific number of processors to supporting applications. The

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administrator can configure RPM partitions to ensure that the Information Store (store.exe) process

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has consistent access to system resources, while available resources are accessible to other

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applications and services consolidated onto the same platform.

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This paper explains how to set up and configure RPM to isolate an Exchange 2000 server process

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from supporting applications and therefore allow managed co-existence on a single server. First,

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the partitions are set up and configured to run some typical applications. Then a potential conflict

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is resolved by modifying the registry. Next, the processors are divided to provide effective

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utilization. Finally, the testing was performed by the Messaging and Collaborative Applications

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Solutions Engineering team within the Industry Standard Server Group of the new HP. The tests

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were designed to confirm the hypothesis that use of RPM in an Exchange 2000 environment

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would provide performance, resource availability, and system utilization benefits.

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For this paper, two partitions were created and tested on an 8-way ProLiant DL7606 server: one

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partition for the Exchange 2000 store process (the primary consumer of system resources in an

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Exchange 2000 environment) and one partition for the supporting applications (a popular

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Exchange anti-virus solution). This is just one possible configuration. Each environment’s needs

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and requirements vary with the application mix. Using performance monitor’s process object to

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record process and memory utilization (working set) is useful in determining which processes to

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assign to a partition. CPU and memory-intensive processes associated with supporting

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applications are prime candidates for RPM partitions. Restricting these applications to specific

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resource ensures the availability of resources for the primary application such as Microsoft

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Exchange 2000 Server.

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EXCHANGE 2000 CONSOLIDATION

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Today, the backbone of many corporate messaging infrastructures is Microsoft Exchange 5.5.

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Typical Microsoft Exchange 5.5 deployments are limited by the architecture of the messaging

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store, which is a relational database (the Extensible Storage Engine, or ESE) containing user email,

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attachments, calendar and PIM data. The Exchange 5.5 message store is a single file that can grow

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to sizes in excess of 100 GB and is governed by the 32-bit store.exe process, which also runs as a

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single instance. The number of users supported on a single server is a by-product of the maximum

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size of the information store that will allow the organization to meet their backup/restore

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3

TC020602TB

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Consolidation Using

ECHNOLOGY BRIEF (cont.) ProLiant Essentials Workload Management Pack

T

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requirements in the event of database corruption or failure. Assuming an average mailbox size of

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50 MB and a target database size of 35 to 50 GB, the average number of users on an Exchange 5.5

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server would be between 700 and 1000.

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Exchange 2000 addresses the single instance of ESE by allowing up to four instances of ESE per

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server (still governed by a single instance of store.exe), known as storage groups. Each storage

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group has its own transactional logs, thereby making it the unit of backup. Also, each storage

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group can contain as many as five databases, which become the unit of restore. Partitioning the

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information store into more manageable sizes (for backup and restore) provides the basis for

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consolidating larger numbers of users onto a single server.

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Exchange 2000 also features improved SMP scalability over its predecessor to take better

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advantage of multi-processor servers. Vying for system resources on Exchange 2000 deployment

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servers, however, are additional applications and services, including:

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 Anti-Virus agents. The primary entry point for viruses into organizations has migrated from

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4

floppy disks and internet downloads, to the outward-facing email environment. Many third
parties offer Exchange-specific anti-virus solutions, which may integrate directly with ESE
through the virus-scanning API 2.0 to scan email and attachments. These agents have a
resource cost in real-time monitoring mode, and they may have an additional impact when
performing a scan of the information store.

 Management agents. In addition to server management agents such as Insight Manager,

third party vendors such as NetIQ and BMC provide enhanced management capabilities for
applications such as Exchange. While designed to be unobtrusive to the environment, these
agents may also require additional server resources, depending upon their level of activity.

 Backup/Restore agents. Most organizations will leverage a third-party backup vendor to

take advantage of such Exchange-specific capabilities as storage group and individual
database recovery, parallel backup of storage groups, and backup/recovery of key Exchange
services, such as site replication services and the key management service. Like anti-virus
agents, these agents have may have additional resource impact during the backup or restore.

 Other Exchange services. New to Exchange 2000, the full-text indexing service can place a

CPU-intensive load during its crawl and rebuild operation. These types of services are often
scheduled for after-hours operation, due to the load placed on the server and the potential
impact to the core messaging services.

 Other applications. Exchange 2000 scales well through four processors, and initial testing

indicates some potential benefits with as many as six processors. However, the resources of
an 8-way server, such as the ProLiant DL760 server, may be better utilized through the
partitioning of services, specifically by limiting the Exchange STORE process to four or six
processors, and granting other agents or processes access to the remaining physical
processors. These applications could include Active Directory, Collaborative Applications,
and even file/print services. Our testing was designed to prove that the Exchange
environment would function similarly when limited to six processors, thereby freeing up
additional resources for other supporting or even unrelated applications.

Our testing focused on using RPM to better manage the supporting agents partitioning the
workload on the Exchange 2000 server, while experiencing the same or better overall Exchange
performance (measured through lower CPU consumption).

NOTE: It is important to mention that CPU utilization is only one resource consumed by
Exchange. Before consolidating unrelated applications on the same box, consider the additional
resource constraints of these applications and factor these requirements, such as storage I/O,
memory, network, etc., into your configuration.

P

roLiant DL760 Server

TC020602TB

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Consolidation Using

ECHNOLOGY BRIEF (cont.) ProLiant Essentials Workload Management Pack

T

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THE TEST PLATFORM: PROLIANT DL760

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The ProLiant DL760 server was designed for mission-critical environments and offers an

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outstanding combination of high performance and high availability features, with 8 processors, 16

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GB of SDRAM, 11 hot-pluggable 64-bit I/O slots (of which 8 are PCI-X slots), redundant hot plug

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power supplies and fans, and more. The ProLiant DL760 has been developed to meet the needs of

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customers requiring scalability and fault tolerance in a data center environment. With the latest

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performance, reliability, manageability, and serviceability features in a modular, dense 7U form

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factor design, this server provides an ideal solution for demanding enterprise applications. PCI-X

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is the next evolution of the PCI I/O standard and is backward compatible with PCI. Customers can

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install their existing PCI adapters in the ProLiant DL760 while investing in new PCI-X adapters.

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High speed PCI-X I/O technology was developed by Compaq and is being licensed to others in the

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industry.

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Today's mission-critical applications demand ever-increasing scalability and availability from data

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center servers. The ProLiant DL760, with new Intel Pentium III Xeon 900-MHz processors and

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PCI-X I/O, delivers the performance and uptime required to meet the current and future demands

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of enterprise server consolidation, e-business, ERP, thin client, compute engine, mail and

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messaging, and data mining applications. Based on the Profusion architecture jointly developed by

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Compaq, Corollary and Intel, the ProLiant DL760 offers excellent scalability driven by its

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balanced system architecture.

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Component Quantity Description

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CPU: 8 900-MHz Intel Pentium III Xeon processors

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CPU Cache: 2 MB

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RAM: 4 GB

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OS: Windows 2000 Advanced Server - build 2195 with SP1

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Storage: 2

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Controller: 1

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NIC: 1 Compaq NC3163 (100BaseTX) network interface card

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5

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56

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Test Server Configuration

4-GB disks for OS/Exchange DS/MTA and NTDS (Active
Directory) files

18.2-GB disks for log files (RAID 0)

18.2-GB disks for information store files (RAID 0)

18.2-GB disks for SMTP queue (RAID 0)

SmartArray 5i embedded RAID controller

SmartArray 5304 4-channel RAID controllers