Editor's note: Know a lot about this topic? Want to share your expertise? Participate in the IBM Lotus software wiki program today.

Introduction

Lotus Notes Traveler provides two-way, over-the-air synchronization between IBM Lotus® Domino® servers and Microsoft® Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 handheld devices. Lotus Notes Traveler synchronizes email, calendar, to-do, address book, and journal data functions in real time. The Lotus Notes Traveler server runs as a Lotus Domino server task and is installed on a server running Lotus Domino. The Lotus Notes Traveler server task uses the Lotus Domino directory to automatically look up and find Lotus Notes users. You can read more information on Lotus Notes Traveler.

For this study, two Lotus Domino servers were used. One server was used to host the Lotus Notes Traveler server task, and the other server hosted the user’s mail database.

Figure 1 shows the testing configuration.

Back to top

Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 server workload

The performances of the Lotus Notes Traveler server and the Lotus Domino mail server were measured using the Lotus Notes Traveler and N8Mail workloads on the Microsoft Windows 2003 server operating system. The Lotus Notes Traveler server was on a separate server from the Lotus Domino mail server, and it was exercised by other driver systems that simulated mobile device clients. The driver systems ran scripts that simulated remote devices reading and sending mail messages.

Here are the details the Lotus Notes Traveler client script:

There are 64 iterations of this loop with a 15-minute wait between iterations. Each user starts on a random iteration count (first, fifth, and so on), and each user runs for the entire 64 iterations. The loop followed this pattern:

Loop start

• OPEN/READ five Inbox mails (every iteration)
• Reply to the first mail (every seconnd iteration)
• SEND one 10-byte mail to one person (every eighth iteration)
• SEND another 10-byte mail to three people (every eighth iteration)
• MOVE one mail from the Inbox to the NotesBench folder (every iteration)
• DELETE two mails (every iteration)

In addition to these user scripts, the Lotus Notes Traveler clients listen for automatic synchronization messages from the Lotus Notes Traveler server. If email or calendar data changed on the server as a result of the NotesBench load drivers, then the Lotus Notes Traveler client automatically synchronized the server changes to the device.

All tests for Lotus Notes Traveler 8.0.1 were done for Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 only. Because Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 does not support rich text, all mail was formatted as plain text.

Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 introduced a new feature that allows rich-text mail to synchronize to the device. Only Lotus Notes Traveler clients running on Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 devices support the rich-text mail synchronization. The Lotus Notes Traveler client scripts can simulate both Windows Mobile 5 and Windows Mobile 6 devices, so the tests incorporated devices of both types so that rich-text mail synchronization could be simulated.

For both the 32-bit and 64-bit tests for Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5, Windows Mobile 5 and Windows Mobile 6 devices were simulated with 40 percent mail formatted as plain text (Windows Mobile 5) and 60 percent mail formatted as rich text (Windows Mobile 6). The details on the data rates from the N8Mail workload are in the N8Mail article on developerWorks® Lotus, “IBM Lotus Notes V8 workloads: taking performance to a new level.”

Back to top

Lotus Domino 8.5 server workload

The N8Mail workload that was run on the Lotus Domino 8.5 mail server simulated users sending mail using a Lotus Notes 8.5 client. This workload is part of a NotesBench workload suite that is part of the tools NotesBench and Server.Load (included as an installation option in the administrator client). For more information on the details of the N8Mail workload, refer to the developerWorks Lotus article, "IBM Lotus Notes V8 workloads: Taking performance to a new level."

For these measurements, the N8Mail workload simulated 4000 Lotus Notes clients sending mail to as many as 6000 mail users (or as otherwise noted). The additional 2000 mail users (or as otherwise noted) were the Lotus Notes Traveler registered mail users. These measurements simulate a customer environment where mail users are using either a Lotus Notes client or a Lotus Notes Traveler device, but not both.

Disclaimer

All our tests are lab measurements; therefore, the results might differ from the real customer environments. For assistance with capacity planning, consult with the IBM TechLine team, which does capacity planning for new hardware.

Back to top

IBM Lotus Notes Traveler server 32-bit configuration and results

Table 1 shows the hardware and software configurations for the Lotus Notes Traveler 32-bit server.

Lotus Notes Traveler server was set up as a single Lotus Domino partition server on an IBM System x® 3550 running Microsoft Windows 2003 32-bit Enterprise Server with two dual-core processors and 3 GB of physical memory. Network access was through a single 1 GBit Ethernet adapter running in full-duplex mode.

Figure 2 shows the processor resource utilization on the Lotus Notes Traveler 32-bit server at various user loads.

The majority of work on the Lotus Notes Traveler server is done by the ntraveler.exe task. The Lotus Notes Traveler server does the following:

• Pulls data from the mail server and pushes the data to mobile devices.
• Pulls data from mobile devices and pushes the data to the mail server.

To obtain the results shown in figure 1, the Lotus Domino mail server was always at a steady state of 4000 N8Mail users, and the number of Lotus Notes Traveler users was incremented as shown in the figure. The Lotus Domino mail server was configured for 5100 mail users, out of which 4000 mail users simulated Lotus Notes client traffic using the N8Mail workload. The number of Lotus Notes Traveler users simulating device traffic was then increased from 400 users to 1100 users.

Table 2 shows several key resource utilization metrics on the Lotus Notes Traveler server at a load of 1100 active Lotus Notes Traveler users and 4000 active Lotus Domino N8Mail users.

We compared memory usage between Lotus Notes Traveler 8.0.1 (32-bit) and Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 (32-bit) configurations at a load of 700 active Lotus Notes Traveler users and 4000 active Lotus Domino N8Mail users:

• Lotus Notes Traveler 8.01 with 700 users used 1870 MB.
• Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 with 1100 users used 1391 MB.

As you can see, Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 has improved over Lotus Notes Traveler 8.01 by reducing the amount of memory used by more than 400 MB and increasing the number of concurrent users from 700 to 1100 on the same hardware.

Back to top

Lotus Notes Traveler server 64-bit configuration and results

Table 3 shows the hardware and software configuration for the Lotus Notes Traveler 64-bit server.

Lotus Notes Traveler server 8.5 (64-bit) was set up as a single Lotus Domino partition server on an IBM Ssytem x 3550 running Microsoft Windows 2003 64-bit Enterprise Server with four dual-core processors and 8 GB of physical memory. Network access was through a single 1 GBit Ethernet adapter running in full-duplex mode.

Table 4 shows the hardware comparison between 32-bit Windows 2003 servers and 64-bit Windows 2003 servers used in this article.

Figure 3 shows the processor resource utilization on the Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 (64-bit) server on 64-bit Windows 2003 at various user loads.

To obtain the results shown in figure 3, the Lotus Domino mail server was always at a steady state of 4000 N8Mail users, and the number of Lotus Notes Traveler users was incremented as shown in figure 3. The Lotus Domino mail server was configured for 6000 mail users, out of which 4000 mail users simulated Lotus Notes client traffic using the N8Mail workload. The number of Lotus Notes Traveler users simulating device traffic was then increased from 1100 users to 2000 users.

Table 5 shows the mix of Windows Mobile 5 and Windows Mobile 6 users for each of the Lotus Traveler user loads in our test.

While we were running the 64-bit measurements, we found that it was possible to take advantage of the Microsoft Windows 64-bit operating system by changing the number of threads allocated by the Lotus Notes Traveler server. You can make these changes by editing the file NTSConfig.xml. Note that you must restart the Lotus Notes Traveler server task after making any changes to this file.

The thread parameters are TSS_SYNC_THREADS and WORKER_THREADS. The WORKER_THREADS parameter should be set to double the number of TSS_SYNC_THREADS. By default the values are as follows:

Increasing the TSS_SYNC_THREADS setting to 350 and WORKER_THREADS setting to 700 improved the overall throughput of the Lotus Notes Traveler server and allowed more devices to use the server.

Lotus Notes Traveler is a memory-intensive application, and Lotus Domino32-bit on Microsoft Windows 64-bit has a memory limitation of 2 GB, which is not the case on for Lotus Domino 64-bit. Use Lotus Notes Traveler 64-bit on Windows 64-bit for your deployments.

Back to top

Lotus Domino mail server configuration and results

Table 6 shows the hardware and software configurations for the Lotus Domino mail server.

Lotus Domino 8.5 (32-bit) was set up as a single Lotus Domino partition server on an IBM Ssytem X 3850 running Microsoft Windows 2003 64-bit Standard Server with four dual-core processors and 12 GB of physical memory. The storage configuration was an IBM DS4000 series (FAStT) hardware array with 42 disk drives. The Lotus Domino executable files were installed on one RAID-0 logical volume of 200 GB. The mail databases were spread across three RAID-0 logical volumes, each 800 GB. Mail journaling was set up on a separate logical volume. Network access was through a single 1 GBit Ethernet adapter running in full-duplex mode.

Figure 4 shows the processor resource utilization on the Lotus Domino mail server at various Lotus Notes Traveler user loads and 4000 N8Mail users. This utilization was measured with the 64-bit Microsoft Windows 2003 server configuration for Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 server (64-bit).

When increasing the number of Lotus Notes Traveler users from 400 to 2000, we measured a 7 percent relative processor usage increase on the Lotus Domino mail server. The processor overhead of enabling Lotus Notes Traveler users on the Lotus Domino mail server is moderate due to the efficient use of polling for Lotus Domino mail by the Lotus Notes Traveler server.

Back to top

Conclusion

The performance measurements of the Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 server and the Lotus Domino 8.5 mail server in a remote configuration show that a Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 32-bit server was able to support 1100 active users and a Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 64-bit server was able to support 2000 users.

The Lotus Notes Traveler 32-bit server, with two dual-core processors and 3 GB memory, was at approximately 70 percent processor utilization at 1100 active users and is close to the 2 GB virtual memory limit for a 32-bit application server.

The Lotus Notes Traveler 64-bit server, with four dual-core processors and 8 GB memory, was at approximately 70 percent processor utilization at 2000 active users and at 1.6 GB memory usage. This rate of memory usage is much less than the 4 GB memory limit for a 64-bit application server.

With the Lotus Domino 8.5 mail server at a steady state of 4000 N8Mail users, adding 1100 (32-bit) or 2000 (64-bit) Lotus Notes Traveler active users increased the processor utilization on the Lotus Domino mail server moderately in both cases.

To support more than 1100 active Lotus Notes Traveler users, you can deploy the Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 64-bit server or configure additional Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 32-bit servers. You should monitor the processor utilization on the Lotus Domino mail server to ensure that the Lotus Domino mail server can handle the added activity from the Lotus Notes Traveler users at peak load.

Resources

• Participate in the discussion forum.
  
  
• Read the developerWorks article, “IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 performance for IBM Lotus Notes users.”
  
  
• Read the developerWorks article, “IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 performance for iNotes users.”
  
  
• Read the developerWorks article, “IBM Lotus Notes V8 workloads: Taking performance to a new level.”
  
  
• Learn more about Lotus Notes Traveler.
  
  
• Contribute to the IBM Lotus Domino wiki.
  
  
• Refer to the developerWorks IBM Lotus Notes and Domino product page.
  
  

About the authors

Rate this article

Comments

Back to top

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 server workload
• Lotus Domino 8.5 server workload
• IBM Lotus Notes Traveler server 32-bit configuration and results
• Lotus Notes Traveler server 64-bit configuration and results
• Lotus Domino mail server configuration and results
• Conclusion
• Resources
• About the authors
• Comments

Next steps from IBM

• Try: Lotus Notes
• Webcast: Reach for high ROI: Forrester on the economic benefits of upgrading to Lotus Domino 8.5
• Buy: Lotus Notes

Dig deeper into Lotus on developerWorks

Try IBM PureSystems. No charge.

Experience today!

---

Get started with the cloud-based trial and pattern development kit.

Special offers