[comp.os.vms] Dynamic Load Balancer

d2b@rayssd.RAY.COM (Donald A. Borsay) (09/15/87)

The August issue of Digital Review made reference to a new product called
"VAX Dynamic Load Balancer" by Touch Technologies Inc.  Has anyone else
heard of the package, good or bad?  Apparently it is "analogous to having
a VAX system manager monitor and tune [the system] on a non-stop basis".

Don    |Raytheon Company, Submarine Signal Division, Portsmouth, RI
Borsay |ARPAnet: d2b%rayssd.RAY.COM@a.cs.uiuc.edu
       |UUCPmail: {allegra, decvax!brunix, linus!raybed2}!rayssd!d2b
-- 
Don    |Raytheon Company, Submarine Signal Division, Portsmouth, RI
Borsay |ARPAnet: d2b%rayssd.RAY.COM@a.cs.uiuc.edu
       |UUCPmail: {allegra, decvax!brunix, linus!raybed2}!rayssd!d2b

JOE@FHCRCVAX.BITNET.UUCP (09/17/87)

>The August issue of Digital Review made reference to a new product called
>"VAX Dynamic Load Balancer" by Touch Technologies Inc.  Has anyone else
>heard of the package, good or bad?  Apparently it is "analogous to having
>a VAX system manager monitor and tune [the system] on a non-stop basis".
        A neighboring computer system has gotten the demo, and claims to
have gotten a noticable improvement in throughput. I have his documentation
right here, and I'll quote it directly:

        The DYNAMIC LOAD BALANCER (DLB) will increase VMS through-put
by approximately 25% or more. It does this by using an exclusive Touch
Technologies, Inc. (TTI) algorithm. The algorithm encourages VMS to better
allocate CPU cycles by dunamically altering both SYSGEN "dynamic parameters"
and process specific resource allocation.

End quote. Later on it describes what sysgen parameters it modifies:
QUANTUM, IOTA, MPW_THRESH, PFRATL, PFRATH, WSINC, WSDEC, AWSMIN,
AWSTIME, GROWLIM, BORROWLIM, & TTY_DMASIZE, which it claims
reduces soft page faults, hard page faults, and modify page writes.
It also modifies the process working set size, working set list size,
and physical memory pages (?).

I tried this on my system, which is quite CPU bound, and did not see any
improvement at all (subjectively, I did no real benchmarking), however, I
do not have a problem with hard page faults, which is probably what this
program is best able to optimize..

You can get a demo for $69.95 for a 30 day trial copy. I was dissappointed
to find out it was a mere 10 block executable, but if it improves your
system by 25% then the $1495 asking price may not be unreasonable.

I have absolutely no affiliation with this company (not even as a satisfied
or dissatisfied customer). Here's the address for those of you chomping at
the bit:
        Touch Technologies, Inc.
        San Diego Headquarters
        9990 Mesa Rim Road, Suite 220
        San Diego, Ca 92121

  Cheers,
  Joe Meadows Jr.
  VAX/VMS System Manager / guru in training
  Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
  1124 Columbia St.
  Seattle Wa. 98104
     bitnet - JOE@FHCRCVAX
     arpa   - JOE%FHCRCVAX.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
     voice  - (206) 467-4970

Walter_A_Schwarz@cup.portal.com.UUCP (10/01/87)

The company that I work for in San Francisco is currently testing the
dynamic load balancing program.  We have 6 11/780's, and 7 MicroVax II's
all in a network of Ethernet, DecNet and 19.2KB data lines.

Once that load balancer started running, we instantly saw that hard page
faults dropped 35%.  We also had 5 meg of memory become available that was
able to be re-allocated to other resources.

All in all, it does pretty good of managing system resources.

PDREYER@CIM-VAX.HONEYWELL.COM (Phil Dreyer MN67-1B11 825-8758) (01/22/88)

It has been some time since I have been on the network, and as such I have not
heard anything for some time.  But anyway, the last few times I was on I heard
discussions about a dynamic load balancer program for VMS that someone was
testing.  Is there anyone out there using dynamic load balancing software?
If so, can you tell me the vendor and how well the software is working?  Please
send replys to me personally as we have not restored the info-vax mailing list
to our host.

PDreyer@cim-vax.honeywell.com