Oracle iPlanet Web Proxy Server 4.0.14 Performance Tuning, Sizing, and Scaling Guide

Tuning UltraSPARC® T1–Based Systems for Performance Benchmarking

Use a combination of tunable parameters and other parameters to tune your system for performance benchmarking. These values are an example of how you can tune your system to achieve the desired result.

Tuning Operating System and TCP Settings

The following table shows the operating system tuning for Solaris 10 used when benchmarking for performance and scalability on UtraSPARC T1-based systems (64 bit systems).

Table 4–2 Tuning 64-bit systems for performance benchmarking


Parameter	Scope	Default Value	Tuned Value	Comments
`rlim_fd_max`	`/etc/system`	65536	260000	Process open file descriptors limit; accounts for the expected load (for the associated sockets, files, pipes if any).
`hires_tick`	`/etc/system`		1
`sq_max_size`	`/etc/system`	2	0	Controls streams driver queue size; setting to 0 makes it infinite so the performance runs are not hit by lack of buffer space. Set on clients too. Note that setting `sq_max_size` to 0 is not optimal for production systems with high network traffic.
`ip:ip_squeue_bind`			0
`ip:ip_squeue_fanout`			1
`ipge:ipge_taskq_disable`	`/etc/system`		0
`ipge:ipge_tx_ring_size`	`/etc/system`		2048
`ipge:ipge_srv_fifo_depth`	`/etc/system`		2048
`ipge:ipge_bcopy_thresh`	`/etc/system`		384
`ipge:ipge_dvma_thresh`	`/etc/system`		384
`ipge:ipge_tx_syncq`	`/etc/system`		1
`tcp_conn_req_max_q`	`ndd /dev/tcp`	128	3000
`tcp_conn_req_max_q0`	`ndd /dev/tcp`	1024	3000
`tcp_max_buf`	`ndd /dev/tcp`		4194304
`tcp_cwnd_max`	`ndd/dev/tcp`		2097152
`tcp_xmit_hiwat`	`ndd /dev/tcp`	8129	400000	To increase the transmit buffer.
`tcp_recv_hiwat`	`ndd /dev/tcp`	8129	400000	To increase the receive buffer.

Note that the IPGE driver version is 1.25.25.

Disk Configuration

If HTTP access is logged, follow these guidelines for the disk:

Write access logs on faster disks or attached storage.
If running multiple instances, move the logs for each instance onto separate disks as much as possible.
Enable the disk read or write cache. Note that if you enable write cache on the disk, some writes can be lost if the disk fails.
Consider mounting the disks with the following options, which can yield better disk performance: nologging, directio, noatime.

Network Configuration

If more than one network interface card is used, make sure the network interrupts are not all going to the same core. Run the following script to disable interrupts:

allpsr=`/usr/sbin/psrinfo | grep -v off-line | awk '{ print $1 }'`
   set $allpsr
   numpsr=$#
   while [ $numpsr -gt 0 ];
   do
       shift
       numpsr=`expr $numpsr - 1`
       tmp=1
       while [ $tmp -ne 4 ];
       do
           /usr/sbin/psradm -i $1
           shift
           numpsr=`expr $numpsr - 1`
           tmp=`expr $tmp + 1`
       done
   done

Put all network interfaces into a single group. For example:

$ifconfig ipge0 group proxyserver
$ifconfig ipge1 group proxyserver

Proxy Server Start Options

In some cases, performance can be improved by using large page sizes. To start the Proxy Server with 4 Mbytes pages:

LD_PRELOAD_32=/usr/lib/mpss.so.1 ; export LD_PRELOAD_32; export MPSSHEAP=4M; ./bin/startserv; unset LD_PRELOAD_32; unset MPSSHEAP