Transaction throughput and z/VM total CPU load

This topic provides information about the normalized ICN page throughput rates at different SUT load levels.

Figure 1 shows the normalized ICN page throughput rates at different SUT load levels. The throughput rate increased as the number of virtual ICN users increased.

The z/VM® total CPU load is an indicator for the utilization of the SUT, where the top CPU consumers are the single ECM node and the ECM database node.

This graphic shows the normalized ICN page throughput and z/VM total CPU load — Figure 1. Normalized ICN page throughput and z/VM total CPU load

Observations

The throughput rate shows almost linear characteristics correspondent to the increasing number of virtual ICN users beginning from a low load level (250 users) to a high load level (1000 users).

For the low load level the z/VM total CPU load shows around 600% (6 IFL processors used) and for the high load level around 2300% (23 IFL processors used).

Conclusion

Over the entire load level bandwidth, the ECM system showed stable page throughput rates almost following an ideal linear trend-line (throughput line vs. dashed linear throughput line). The transaction throughput quadrupled at the highest load level compared to the lowest workload level (4x times the number of virtual ICN users).

The z/VM total CPU load also showed linear trend equivalent to the adjusted workload level.

In summary, the SUT showed an excellent scaling behavior for the entire ECM system towards high CPU loads and high user numbers!