Compaq 124708-001 - ProLiant Cluster - 1850 White Paper page 5

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ServerNet II SAN Technology Improves the Response of Clusters
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ERP and database applications usually operate efficiently if powerful CPUs and large memory
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resources are available to them. Distributed ERP applications accommodate more users (scale) by
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adding applications servers (Figure 1), which increases the need for SQL services from the
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database. Overall system performance depends upon the ability to keep the database busy.
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However, extreme software overhead generated by traditional network technologies forces the
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database to let the operating system functions and heavy communication protocols use a substantial
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portion of the CPU resources. With ServerNet II, database CPU utilization increases more than
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three times that of gigabit Ethernet and TCP/IP with the messaging loads just described. Published
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benchmark results demonstrate the value of ServerNet II SAN technology by increasing the number
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of SAP SD users supported by the system by more than 30 percent.
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Parallel relational database architectures rely on clustering multiple nodes to support very large
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databases and increase database availability. Queries, updates, and utility functions are distributed
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across multiple servers within a database cluster to maximize parallelism and to reduce the impact
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of a failure. Parallel relational databases rely on message systems to distribute processes, data, and
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database control information to database instances within the cluster. Parallel databases demand
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more than CPU efficiencies from the messaging system. Low message latency allows faster
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synchronization of parallel operations, which results in lower response times to user queries. CPU
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utilization and latency measurements with ServerNet II messaging show a three-fold improvement
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over gigabit Ethernet and TCP/IP with the messaging loads just described. Published database
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benchmark results demonstrate the value of SAN technology and efficient messaging to the
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database cluster system.
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C S
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Compaq enterprise servers have long used ServerNet SAN technology to provide systems with
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superior scalability, availability, and flexibility. ServerNet is the internal cluster interconnect
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within several Compaq NonStop
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messaging provide NonStop transaction services to Automatic Teller Machines, Stock Exchanges
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and credit card processing for most financial communities and consumers worldwide. Compaq
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Integrity products use ServerNet to achieve superior Unix availability to the telecommunications
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industry. NonStop Cluster products based upon Compaq ProLiant servers and the SCO operating
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system rely upon ServerNet for superior scalability and availability features. ProLiant Parallel
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Database clusters use ServerNet for scalability.
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The Compaq ServerNet II SAN interconnect is the most complete industry-standard
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implementation of the VI Architecture specification. Compaq ServerNet II is a low-latency,
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distributed memory fabric that uses low-cost, industry-standard components to provide highly
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reliable server-to-server communication. ServerNet II technology leverages several features of the
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VI Architecture that allow distributed applications to operate independent of the operating system
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and avoid unnecessary CPU interrupts. CPU utilization measurements of small message (64 bytes)
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latency show that ServerNet II messaging delivers over three times the performance of gigabit
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Ethernet and TCP/IP. Because of this high-performance, ServerNet II SAN configurations can
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scale to tens of servers within a cluster.
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products. Compaq Himalaya systems with ServerNet SAN