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