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General Information
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June 19, 2009
• Vol.31 Issue 17
Page(s) 28 in print issue
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Boost Application Performance
Unblock Bottlenecks To Keep Apps Running At Top Speed
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IT managers often tolerate applications that do not perform at their potential. Misconfigured components, complicated applications, and mismanaged deployments can all cause bottlenecks.
That degrades performance and costs money. It does not have to be that way, according to several experts on how to boost application performance. There are no failures here.
 Take A Holistic Approach
Performance depends on multiple components, and there needs to be a holistic approach to resolving performance bottlenecks, says Priya Kothari, senior product manager at HP Performance Center (www.hp.com). She recommends starting from the network and proceeding through the firewall, load balancer, routers, switches, Web servers, app servers, and database servers.
“Misconfiguration of any of these components could easily cause potential bottlenecks. Hence, the system needs to be tested in its entirety,” Kothari says. She recommends looking at any of the multiple tools in the market that can help diagnose performance bottlenecks.
Get A Cheap Tune-Up
“When was the last time your databases were tuned?” says Erin Sanders, data center services practice leader with Acumen Solutions (www.acumensolutions.com). Just like servers, databases need care. As data contained within them grows and changes, aspects of the databases can be adjusted to improve performance.
It’s also free, assuming you have a database administrator on staff.
Sanders would also consider deploying application delivery servers for remote users. For most applications, publishing an application on a software delivery tool is straightforward. The servers to run such a tool do not need to be particularly robust. “I’ve seen several perfectly functioning on desktop hardware, though I’d recommend an actual server platform,” Sanders says. “It’s certainly cheaper than upgrading network links or redeveloping application code. If an application—.NET, as an example—is causing high CPU utilization due to high rate of context switching, consider lowering the thread count.”
Live In The Clouds
SMEs typically have three options with any application: Spend time to manage it to increase productivity, buy more computing horsepower to handle increased demand, or offload some of the burden to the computing cloud.
David Setzer, CEO of Mailprotector (www.mailprotector.net), favors the latter. “A typical cloud-based security application does not require user interaction. There is no need for user training. IT does not have to install it on workstations. There is no downtime on the user’s workstation,” he says. The result is a more productive workforce.
He says that the traditional setup with a firewall, database server, file server, and email server on the same server is not a good idea. A separate but agile cloud service allows a company to focus on its core mission without becoming bogged down in defensive warfare.
Outsource Non-Core Applications
“Focus on your core for profits,” says Reed Smith, director of product management for StrataScale (www.stratascale.com). “If you are a legal firm, then spend your time and money on those ever-billable attorneys.”
What about the rest? “Consider letting someone else run the non-core components,” he says, adding that payroll is a good example of a business application that you could offload.
In your IT environment, consider your commodity infrastructure. “In today’s knowledge-based economy, most of us derive our value from the applications that run on our computer systems, not from the underlying infrastructure,” Smith says. So he advises letting someone who has economies of scale; much more expertise; and can afford reliable, scalable components (such as their own data center) handle the non-core stuff.
David Setzer, CEO of Mailprotector (www.mailprotector.net), says outsourcing an application allows your business to focus on its core competencies. While it is not as true for very large companies, he maintains that SMEs working in an MS Exchange environment will see better utilization of their existing computer hardware systems—disks, subsystems, I/O, processor power—by offloading the administrative function on someone who does it for a living.
“If you can cut spam and attacks by 90%, you don’t have the administrative burden with logs, updates, training,” he says. The ROI from freeing up expensive internal IT resources makes software-based services a bargain, Setzer adds. 
by Curt Harler
Bonus Tips
Test early and often. HP’s Priya Kothari (www.hp.com) says performance should be part of every SME’s DNA. “The more thought organizations put into performance upfront, the cheaper it will be in the long run. Performance testing is going to always have to be there, and organizations shouldn’t go cheap on testing tools,” she says.
Understand the full value of tools. Before deploying new testing tools, know your system and see where processes can be replicated. Scripting tools allow users to build and run scripts to be able to consistently repeat business processes so that developers can diagnose issues early on. |
Best Tip: Create A Deployment Recipe
“Encourage your domain experts (by OS, application, or business unit) to experiment and refine how systems get deployed,” says Laurent Gharda, CEO of LinMin (www.linmin.com). “Make the process very repeatable, like a kitchen recipe, where you can easily take one known good formula and tweak it slightly, adding a newer version of a database or changing how disk partitioning is done.”
Gharda advises making sure these recipes (or “roles”) can be deployed onto physical servers and virtual machines such as VMware without modification. This lets management leverage all IT staff.
This cuts costs by saving time and also giving better quality control since there are no “re-dos” due to mistyping. “This reduces and controls OPEX since you easily can predict the labor costs associated with deploying a new server or new service,” Gharda says.
“You’ll look good to your management since it shows IT really knows their stuff, thinks in terms of business agility and costs, not just IT buzzwords and technology,” he adds. It also helps control CAPEX since it is easy to swap systems and applications in and out, ferret out power hogs, and move away from systems with higher contractual maintenance costs. |
Easiest To Implement: Hold Off On Complicated Apps
Applications with many interfaces tend to be more difficult to boost performance, says Erin Sanders, data center services practice leader with Acumen Solutions (www.acumensolutions.com). Any change requires extensive planning, consideration, and testing and runs a greater risk of causing adverse reactions.
She says standalone applications or applications with fewer interfaces are easier targets for change, easier to test, and have a higher likelihood of producing the desired results (and a lower likelihood of producing undesired results). |
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