Single Enterprise Content Management (ECM) node results

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For the measurement series discussed in the results section, all setup and tuning modifications described were applied to the system under test (SUT).

The workload as described in Enterprise Content Management workload with the different SUT load levels was used for this scale-out case study. For the measurement series, the virtual ICN users were scaled from 250 to 1000 users, either:
  • With the FileNet® File Storage Area on an XFS file system.
  • On a Spectrum Scale file system.

One of the major objectives for this study was to analyze IBM Spectrum Scale™ as a file system for the FileNet File Storage Area for Linux™ on z Systems™. This first part of the white paper established the SUT, verified various tuning settings, and compared it with a high performance file system such as XFS.

The second white paper in this series will discuss the usage of the IBM Spectrum Scale parallel file system for a multiple node ECM cluster.

The SUT load levels were defined as follows for the scale-out study. Usually, the ICN transaction throughput is at a fixed rate which depends upon the number of virtual ICN users and the thinktime between successive transactions.
Note: The average response time for all transactions was considered as an indication of performance.

The ratio of CPU overcommitment (30 IFL processors vs. 46 virtual CPUs) was 1:1.5. Note that the SUT z/VM® hypervisor had 30 IFL processors in total.

Table 1. Scale-out case study SUT load level definitions
SUT load level Number of virtual ICN users z/VM total CPU load % (3000% = 30 IFLs)
low 250 0-1000 (< 10 IFLs)
medium 500 1000-1500 (10 - 15 IFLs)
medium-to-high 750 1500-2000% (15 - 20 IFLs)
high 1000 2000-3000% (> 20 IFLs) - see Note below
Note: The highest z/VM total CPU load level was 2300% (23 IFL processors used) for the single ECM node case study with 1000 virtual ICN users.
The two most utilized Linux guests were:
  • The single ECM node (ICN and FNP8 CPE) with 1960% (19.6 IFL processors).
  • The ECM database server with 230% (2.3 IFL processors) at the high SUT load level.