As officially stated by PTC Technical Support with the just recent release of SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 CU11, SQL Server is only meant for low to medium implementations. Just before CU11 was released, I was advised to constantly reduce the number of foreground and background method servers which is the opposite of performance tuning for scalability. I spoken to other customers who kept their Windchill application with RH Linux and went with SQL Server and noticed an immediate 20 to 30% hit/negative performance. In some cases, PTC technical support told me to go to Oracle instead for large, heavily taxed implementations.
As for OS alone, you better stick to RH Linux for better performance. You will not face the high possibility of incompatibility with your SANs devices that is UNIX based and performance issues with R/W with so many files and folders. It is easier to upgrade java with symbolic links to the latest versions. Never have to reboot the machine.
All that wasted time and resources every week performance tuning and restarting with Windowscould be spent with Oracle with Linuxand less headaches and issues.
With Linux, you can use AuFS. This way you don't have to duplicate vaults, Windchill installs and never have to backup the entire Windchill system when deploying code. Thus, your dev and test can be complete mirrors of point to a layered terabytes/petabytes of vaults.
With Windows, you are always going to face memory and NUMA issues. Plus, oracle JAVA 64 bit on Windows is not truely 64 bit because it takes 4G chunks of memory which can result in more fragmentation and GC collection on larger systems.
Don't take chances with Windows, just because of a IT knowlege issue of Linux. Linux is so easy to get used to. Much easier than HP-UX, Solaris and AIX. You only get one chance to be successful most of the times. Best to go with RH Linux first of2X 8 core 3.4 GHz or 10 core 3.0 GHz ($2K to $3K each intel chip) on your application and CAD worker. Make sure that you have a physical memory (8GIG min) for each core so that communication stays within the channels. As for the oracle database, 2X 4Cores (3.4/3.8 GHz) is enough.
Remember to place all you OS, applicaitons, vaults, temps and logs on different LUNs that can beexpandable.
I suggest using physicals dedicated blades first for you production and VMs for your test and development servers on different blades.
Windchill behaves like ProE, it needs speed in everything in order to perform and have no issues. In all my years of working with Windchill since 1999, Windows for Windchill and its database doesn't cut it for scalability, performance, reliability and dependability. Linux is really cheap RH Linux ES is only $600 for 2 sockets.
I've added some good documentation against the thread
"Strange Windchill Server Behavior"
Wouldn't it be so nice if you can start your Windchill implementation ona good foundation instead of putting so much time and effort, resources constantly battling a poor server.
Important risk watch out for if you meet a vendor that goeswith Windows and clusteringwith only 2foreground method servers with 12 to16GIGsof ram per server and doesn't support Unix/Linux.You can instantantly tell there is lack of experience configuringyour servers torun like development laptops with a low scale implementation. Get ready for constant restarts and failures.
If you need help give mea call, I can set it up in a flash.
Good Luck,
Patrick
In Reply to Chris Collinson:
Gurus,
Anyone running Windchill 10.1 and Oracle on RH Linux,
We are currently running Windchill 9.1 m070 on WIndows platform and I have heard from several sources that Windchill and Oracle run better on Linux so am investigating if this is worth doing. We already have Linux and Oracle expertise on Linux in house but I wanted to get the feedback from this community.
Why did you choose to go for Linux?
Have you compared performance between Linux and Windows
Was this true prior to 64 bit Windows Server being available or based on actual performance over a Windows machines
Any information would be great on this subject
Thanks in Advance
CJ
