Master-Replica server

[alonkar-2]

Hi All,

We have a master server running in India and have to setup the replica site at our Sweden office location.

The India and Sweden site offices are connected with Internet connection having Bandwidth of total 6 Mbps.

We have done the test server setup. But the performance observed by the remote site (Sweden) users was found to be vey poor as compared to master site (India) users. It takes atleast 4-5 times more time for remote site users for any action done as compared to India site users.

Can anybody suggest how can we improve the performance for the remote site users.

Is it by

- Adding more bandwith?

- Having Full scale replica site?

- or anything else?

Thanks,

~Amit

[GaryMansell]

With Windchill it is not possible to have a Master server at each site with it's own database - you would either need to have two separate Windchill Systems or do the Master/Replica configuration that you currently have.

Log a call with PTC Tech Support to get performance tuning advice with your current setup - it is possible to compress data from the WGM or Pro/E which may help throughput (but not latency)

Check that your network ping times/traceroutes are about correct for the distance you are apart compared to others.

You don't say how many users/busy your WAN connection is, but 6Mb/s is not very big these days - it it is heavilly congested then the latency will increase and you will see poor UI performance because of it.

But, the most likely improvement will be achieved with a bit of expense:

A WAN accelerator (Riverbed are good and popular) at both sites would help you in this instance:

They reduce network protocol conversation "chatter", compress network data and also cache network data at each end so you get much better performance.

[SteveVinyard]

Onsite in India - Speed = 100Mb/s (approx.)
Onsite in Sweden - Speed = 6MB/s

Just nature of the beast sometimes. Now I assume you are talking about Web Browsing speeds.

There are a lot of performance tweaks that can be made to help out though. I think the first step is establishing baselines for different operations.


1- Web Browser operation - doing a large task via web browser. What is the delta between India and Sweden?

2- Large Check-in operation (Creo) - this should be somewhat similar as your clients in Sweden are storing the data in their local replica

3- Large Add to workspace (Creo)

4- Large Add to workspace (web browser)

The idea is to identify the problem areas. It might be slow all across the board and in that case Riverbed or bandwidth improvements might be the only high impact improvement. Most of the time if it's REALLY slow, there is a specific breakdown though that can be addressed within reason.

[cid:image001.gif@01CECB1D.C1E3B960]

Steve Vinyard
Senior Solution Architect

[HugoHermans]

Hi Amit,

Maybe you should read "Optimizing Windchill Performance for Global Collaboration", a document that can be found on the PTC Support site. Brief, it says that you have to take into account these aspects:

- Bandwidth

- Latency

- Congestion

- Packet Loss

- Geographical distance between the sites
For each of these aspects, it explains the technology and discusses the impact on performance. Really interesting to read, but difficult to implement.

Regards, Hugo.