This document provides an overview of Dell's reference architecture for optimizing Blackboard Academic Suite software deployments. The architecture is designed to support large-scale implementations with up to 30,000 active users through a virtualized and scalable infrastructure. It utilizes Dell PowerEdge servers, EqualLogic storage, and management tools from Quest Software. The reference architecture aims to help customers achieve high performance, scalability, simplified management, and lower TCO. It provides sizing guidelines and best practices for implementing the application, database, and storage tiers in a way that is optimized for Blackboard Academic Suite.
This document discusses a scalable solution for Blackboard education software using Dell hardware and Oracle database software. It provides an overview of testing done to measure the scalability of Blackboard applications running on Dell servers with an Oracle Real Application Cluster database configuration. Tests showed the solution could sustain over 30,000 active user sessions per hour, demonstrating strong scalability. The document provides guidance on sizing, performance tuning, and implementing a reference deployment of the Blackboard/Dell solution.
Microsoft Windows Azure - Acumatica an IT Services Company Delivers Software ...Microsoft Private Cloud
Acumatica develops accounting and ERP software and wanted to offer a hosted, software-as-a-service solution to reduce customers' costs. Acumatica chose to develop this new offering on Windows Azure to reduce its own development time and costs. Using Windows Azure, Acumatica was able to develop its hosted solution in just 5 weeks with only 2 developers, reducing capital expenditures and allowing faster deployment for customers.
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 - Enterprise for Mid Market Organizations DatasheetMicrosoft Private Cloud
SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise helps organizations reduce costs, improve productivity and optimize business processes through high performance, scalability, availability and advanced security features. It allows for server consolidation, virtualization, data compression and centralized management to lower hardware and storage costs. The platform also provides powerful business intelligence and data warehousing capabilities to help organizations gain insights from data and make better business decisions.
Microsoft SQL Azure - Agility in the New Economy Partner Technical DatasheetMicrosoft Private Cloud
SQL Azure is a cloud-based relational database platform built on Microsoft® SQL Server® technologies. With SQL Azure, you can easily provision and deploy relational database solutions to the cloud.
Minimizing licensing costs for enterprise applications is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down. When your applications use per-core licensing, choosing higher-performance servers with fewer cores dramatically reduces your software-related spending. The Dell PowerEdge M820 blade solution with Compellent storage could deliver up to $96,236 in savings as compared to a single HP ProLiant BL680c G7 solution, and if consolidating multiple workloads, could deliver even more savings in licensing costs when running Microsoft SQL Server in a virtualized scenario – all while maintaining or exceeding previous performance levels.
VMmark virtualization performance of Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SANPrincipled Technologies
The storage you use for your virtualization solution can be a significant factor in its performance and effectiveness. Two Dell PowerEdge R720 servers, paired with Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN, ran 10 VMmark tiles for a total of 80 running VMs and achieved a score of 12.05@10 tiles, making it the top score running VMware ESXi 5.5 of the 32-core server configurations. For enterprises that need excellent virtualization performance, this makes Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN a wise investment.
Resource balancing comparison: VMware vSphere 6 vs. Red Hat Enterprise Virtua...Principled Technologies
Having ample resources to handle user requests is a necessity of modern virtualization solutions. Allocating and distributing those resources evenly, however, is imperative to the success of your business’s virtualized environment. In our tests, after powering on the other two servers in our three-node cluster and adding resource management features, VMware vSphere 6 improved performance by 183 percent over its baseline configuration of one active server and no resource management features. RHEV 3.5, in contrast, delivered only a 79 percent increase over its baseline. As you design your business’s infrastructure and applications, improvements such as those offered by VMware vSphere 6 DRS and Storage DRS can play a critical role by offering your users better application experiences. Optimized and modern resource management provided by VMware DRS can also help to lower your IT purchase and maintenance costs by reducing the number of servers necessary to run your applications.
System Center Cloud Services Process Pack Administration GuideKathy Vinatieri
The document provides instructions for installing and configuring the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack. It outlines the required prerequisites, including installing System Center 2012 products. It then describes how to install the Cloud Services Process Pack on the Service Manager server and how to install the Cloud Services runbooks on the Orchestrator server. The document provides various configuration and administration tasks that must be completed to fully implement the cloud services solution.
This document discusses a scalable solution for Blackboard education software using Dell hardware and Oracle database software. It provides an overview of testing done to measure the scalability of Blackboard applications running on Dell servers with an Oracle Real Application Cluster database configuration. Tests showed the solution could sustain over 30,000 active user sessions per hour, demonstrating strong scalability. The document provides guidance on sizing, performance tuning, and implementing a reference deployment of the Blackboard/Dell solution.
Microsoft Windows Azure - Acumatica an IT Services Company Delivers Software ...Microsoft Private Cloud
Acumatica develops accounting and ERP software and wanted to offer a hosted, software-as-a-service solution to reduce customers' costs. Acumatica chose to develop this new offering on Windows Azure to reduce its own development time and costs. Using Windows Azure, Acumatica was able to develop its hosted solution in just 5 weeks with only 2 developers, reducing capital expenditures and allowing faster deployment for customers.
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 - Enterprise for Mid Market Organizations DatasheetMicrosoft Private Cloud
SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise helps organizations reduce costs, improve productivity and optimize business processes through high performance, scalability, availability and advanced security features. It allows for server consolidation, virtualization, data compression and centralized management to lower hardware and storage costs. The platform also provides powerful business intelligence and data warehousing capabilities to help organizations gain insights from data and make better business decisions.
Microsoft SQL Azure - Agility in the New Economy Partner Technical DatasheetMicrosoft Private Cloud
SQL Azure is a cloud-based relational database platform built on Microsoft® SQL Server® technologies. With SQL Azure, you can easily provision and deploy relational database solutions to the cloud.
Minimizing licensing costs for enterprise applications is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down. When your applications use per-core licensing, choosing higher-performance servers with fewer cores dramatically reduces your software-related spending. The Dell PowerEdge M820 blade solution with Compellent storage could deliver up to $96,236 in savings as compared to a single HP ProLiant BL680c G7 solution, and if consolidating multiple workloads, could deliver even more savings in licensing costs when running Microsoft SQL Server in a virtualized scenario – all while maintaining or exceeding previous performance levels.
VMmark virtualization performance of Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SANPrincipled Technologies
The storage you use for your virtualization solution can be a significant factor in its performance and effectiveness. Two Dell PowerEdge R720 servers, paired with Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN, ran 10 VMmark tiles for a total of 80 running VMs and achieved a score of 12.05@10 tiles, making it the top score running VMware ESXi 5.5 of the 32-core server configurations. For enterprises that need excellent virtualization performance, this makes Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN a wise investment.
Resource balancing comparison: VMware vSphere 6 vs. Red Hat Enterprise Virtua...Principled Technologies
Having ample resources to handle user requests is a necessity of modern virtualization solutions. Allocating and distributing those resources evenly, however, is imperative to the success of your business’s virtualized environment. In our tests, after powering on the other two servers in our three-node cluster and adding resource management features, VMware vSphere 6 improved performance by 183 percent over its baseline configuration of one active server and no resource management features. RHEV 3.5, in contrast, delivered only a 79 percent increase over its baseline. As you design your business’s infrastructure and applications, improvements such as those offered by VMware vSphere 6 DRS and Storage DRS can play a critical role by offering your users better application experiences. Optimized and modern resource management provided by VMware DRS can also help to lower your IT purchase and maintenance costs by reducing the number of servers necessary to run your applications.
System Center Cloud Services Process Pack Administration GuideKathy Vinatieri
The document provides instructions for installing and configuring the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack. It outlines the required prerequisites, including installing System Center 2012 products. It then describes how to install the Cloud Services Process Pack on the Service Manager server and how to install the Cloud Services runbooks on the Orchestrator server. The document provides various configuration and administration tasks that must be completed to fully implement the cloud services solution.
Database performance and memory capacity with the Intel Xeon processor E5-266...Principled Technologies
The Dell PowerEdge M620 offers 24 memory slots, 50 percent more than the 16 slots offered by the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8, which enables the Dell solution to provide greater performance while delivering memory error protection. We found that the Dell PowerEdge M620 solution, built on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600v2 Series, delivered 182.2 percent more database performance and 92.0 percent faster response times than the previous version Intel Xeon E5-2640 processor-based HP ProLiant BL460c Gen 8 solution, while providing 12.5 percent more available memory and error protection. The additional memory capacity of the Dell solution allowed us to engage FRM technologies and still have more overall RAM capacity compared to the 16-slot HP server. The Dell PowerEdge M620 offered maximum memory capacity and protection with Fault Resilient Memory to keep your database workloads running strong and available for your business needs.
Managing clients with Dell Client Integration Pack 3.0 and Microsoft System C...Principled Technologies
Client management is an important part of any enterprise. Employees have workstations in their offices or notebooks that travel with them around the globe, and efficient updates and remote management capabilities keep an organization’s IT assets ordered and secure. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 can provide a robust, efficient, management system for your IT infrastructure. Selecting clients that not only operate within your IT framework, but that have built-in software to integrate with it seamlessly to make client management tasks even easier is an intelligent strategy for your IT department.
In our tests, we found that Dell client management tools (Dell Client Integration Pack, Dell Client Configuration Toolkit, and Dell OpenManage Client Instrumentation) integrated in a typical SCCM 2012 environment reduced the steps it took to complete client management tasks by as much as 77 percent, and included a number of features that weren’t available with clients from HP and Lenovo.
Hp Polyserve Database Utility For Sql Server ConsolidationCB UTBlog
The document discusses how the Database Utility for SQL Server can help identify consolidation opportunities for SQL Server environments running on 20 or more servers. It presents the value proposition of using the utility to run more SQL instances on fewer servers with higher availability and storage utilization while reducing costs. The document outlines the sales cycle process, from identifying opportunities and doing a proof of concept to closing the sale. It provides examples of cost savings and performance gains customers have achieved by consolidating SQL Server workloads with the Database Utility.
The document discusses Oracle's Database as a Service (DBaaS) cloud solution. It describes how DBaaS addresses challenges related to managing a complex database estate through standardization, consolidation, and rapid provisioning of databases and schemas. It also discusses how HDFC Bank has used DBaaS capabilities like data cloning to address their database needs.
SQL Server 2008 R2 introduces two new premium editions, Datacenter and Parallel Data Warehouse, to meet the needs of large scale datacenters and data warehouses. It also offers expanded functionality across Enterprise and Standard editions. Datacenter is designed for high performance with support for over 8 processors, 256 logical processors, and memory limits up to the OS maximum. Parallel Data Warehouse provides a massively parallel processing architecture for scaling from tens of terabytes to petabytes of data.
Learn more about Embarcadero products at http://www.embarcadero.com/products. Embarcadero products make it easier to design, build, optimize, and run a wide variety of software applications, databases, and data governance initiatives. We invite you to explore (and try!) Embarcadero's award-winning tools in your own environment. And if you need assistance of any kind, contact us today.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment Pipeline with Apprenda on ON...Shrivatsa Upadhye
The document discusses integrating Apprenda PaaS with NetApp storage to enable continuous integration and continuous deployment workflows. Apprenda provides a platform for CI/CD pipelines, while NetApp provides the underlying storage. Integrating Jenkins with Apprenda and NetApp improves developer productivity by reducing build times and optimizing storage usage through features like snapshots. The integration allows applications to move faster through testing phases and onto production deployment.
RedPrairie is using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate to develop the next version of its business process management software. This will allow them to:
1) Extend workflow design capabilities to non-technical users by rehosting the workflow designer outside of Visual Studio.
2) Eliminate performance penalties for frequently persisted workflows by taking advantage of improvements to workflow persistence in .NET Framework 4.
3) Provide improved support for long-running workflows by allowing multiple workflow snapshots to be saved.
Through these enhancements, RedPrairie aims to increase developer productivity, provide a better user experience, and deliver higher quality software.
This document provides a competitive analysis of the web page http://www.redprairie.com/ for the search term "logistics management software". It analyzes the page and identifies ways it could improve its search engine ranking, including optimizing the document title, global link popularity, keyword usage, and other ranking factors. A sample of inbound links to the site is provided, noting many have empty link text. Overall, the analysis finds the page meets only 30% of requirements for a top 10 ranking.
Havant Academy - Microsoft Innovative School PresentationRichMarkey
This document summarizes the virtualization and software initiatives at Havant Academy, a secondary school in the UK. It discusses:
1. The school upgraded its aging server infrastructure by implementing Hyper-V virtualization. This replaced 13 physical servers with 29 virtual servers hosted on highly available storage with an intelligent UPS for resilience.
2. Hyper-V provided financial, performance, scalability and resilience benefits over the previous hardware. It integrated with Microsoft System Center products for management.
3. The school uses various Microsoft software like Deep Zoom Composer, Kodu, Ribbon Hero 2, Photosynth and AutoCollage to enhance learning. It also uses Lync for unified communications across devices and platforms
This document provides an overview of an IBM reference architecture for implementing high availability and disaster recovery for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 using AlwaysOn Availability Groups. The solution leverages IBM Flex System x240 compute nodes, Flex System V7000 storage, and Storwize V7000 and V3700 storage. It allows for automatic failover between two nodes in the main data center and manual failover to a node in a remote disaster recovery site, with the possibility of some data loss during asynchronous replication. The document describes the requirements, hardware components, architectural design, and deployment considerations for the solution.
Business Intelligence For It Professionals Part 2 Seamless Data Integration 90Microsoft TechNet
This document provides an overview and agenda for a training session on using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) for business intelligence and data warehousing. It discusses how SSIS can be used to extract, transform, and load data from various sources into a data warehouse. It also describes the key capabilities and components of SSIS, including connections to different data sources, transformations, and the graphical design tools.
Taashee is a 100% Linux and Open source software (OSS) company. Taashee uniquely offers a one-stop solution for all Linux and OSS related projects. We have a dedicated team of certified Linux engineers and passionate developers to handle any kind of projects related to implementation or development on Linux.
Taashee helps its customers to fully utilize the power of Linux and Open Source technologies. This results in, higher stability, higher security and higher performance with lower cost and lesser administrative overheads compared to Microsoft based solution. Even for long-time Unix users, who are stuck with limited and proprietary solutions, we offer migration services to switch over to Enterprise-grade Red Hat.
We specialize in high-availability and high-performance clusters; remote and on-site system management and maintenance services; Linux consulting services; Druid and Asterisk based VoIP solutions; Telco-grade Mail servers with uptime of as much as 99.999%; Application design and development using Open Source Technologies. Besides this, we provide comprehensive Jboss related services like: Development, Deployment, Clustering, Production-level optimization, Security etc & also Virtualization.
VMmark 2.5.2 virtualization performance of the Dell Storage SC4020 arrayPrincipled Technologies
The Dell Storage SC4020 array paired with Dell PowerEdge R620 servers supported 30 tiles of the VMmark 2.5.2 virtualization benchmark for a total of 240 running virtual machines. The system achieved a score of 31.35 at 30 tiles, indicating it can handle multiple virtualized applications and hypervisor operations while maintaining strong performance. Testing showed the SC4020 provided consistent I/O operations per second around 43,000 and latency mostly under 4 milliseconds. This performance demonstrates the SC4020 is suitable for increasing virtualized workloads supported by solid-state drives without degrading storage performance.
SQL Azure is a cloud-based relational database platform built on Microsoft® SQL Server® technologies. With SQL Azure, you can easily provision and deploy relational database solutions to the cloud. Trends in Data Management Organizations are seeing a proliferation of data as requirements to access and manage information increase
Virtualization and unified communications at the Havant AcademyRichard Markey
This document discusses how Havant Academy enhanced its server infrastructure through virtualization and unified communication technologies from Microsoft. It summarizes how the school replaced its 13 aging physical servers with a Hyper-V configuration running 29 virtual servers for improved resilience, performance, scalability and cost savings. It also describes how the school integrated System Center products like Virtual Machine Manager, Operations Manager, and Data Protection Manager to manage the Hyper-V environment. Finally, it discusses how the school adopted Lync 2010 to enable unified communication and collaboration across the campus through mobile access and control of IT support costs.
The document describes how Tideway Foundation can help populate a CMDB by regularly discovering configuration items (CIs) like servers, software, and dependencies across the IT environment. It captures this information and automatically transfers it to populate and maintain an accurate, up-to-date view in the BMC Atrium CMDB with minimal manual effort. Key benefits include accelerated CMDB deployment, improved data quality through regular updates, and generation of impact analysis reports for change management. The Tideway adapter transfers discovery data to Atrium using its Java API. Example outputs demonstrate the level of configuration data captured for servers and how dependencies are mapped into business services views that can be viewed in both Foundation and Atrium.
Migrating to Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on D...Principled Technologies
Migrating your legacy servers running Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 to a new Dell PowerEdge R720 running Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 can streamline your infrastructure and deliver savings to your business.
With careful planning, and by following the straightforward process that this guide presents, you can realize the benefits of switching to your new server-and-software solution in no time.
VMware View 4 is a desktop virtualization solution that allows companies to manage operating systems, applications, and user profiles independently from hardware using virtualization. It provides benefits such as streamlined management from a single console, lower costs by reducing IT infrastructure in remote offices, and increased security by keeping all data within the corporate firewall. The solution includes platform, management, and user experience tools to deliver a personalized desktop to users over any network from anywhere.
Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Podcast (hosted at podfeet.com) presented this at Blogworld Expo in October 2010 in Las Vegas. It focused on how to make both your podcast and your blog more accessibile to try and capture some of the 600,000 people worldwide who are visually or hearing impaired.
The document discusses how Blackboard sizes its Academic Suite software based on benchmarking. It provides details on the benchmarking methodology, including modeling user behavior, data growth, and performance objectives. The results showed how the software performed under different workload levels on various hardware configurations. The last part discusses using the benchmark results and sizing guide to determine an institution's adoption profile and appropriate hardware configuration based on factors like sessions per hour and page loads.
Database performance and memory capacity with the Intel Xeon processor E5-266...Principled Technologies
The Dell PowerEdge M620 offers 24 memory slots, 50 percent more than the 16 slots offered by the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8, which enables the Dell solution to provide greater performance while delivering memory error protection. We found that the Dell PowerEdge M620 solution, built on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600v2 Series, delivered 182.2 percent more database performance and 92.0 percent faster response times than the previous version Intel Xeon E5-2640 processor-based HP ProLiant BL460c Gen 8 solution, while providing 12.5 percent more available memory and error protection. The additional memory capacity of the Dell solution allowed us to engage FRM technologies and still have more overall RAM capacity compared to the 16-slot HP server. The Dell PowerEdge M620 offered maximum memory capacity and protection with Fault Resilient Memory to keep your database workloads running strong and available for your business needs.
Managing clients with Dell Client Integration Pack 3.0 and Microsoft System C...Principled Technologies
Client management is an important part of any enterprise. Employees have workstations in their offices or notebooks that travel with them around the globe, and efficient updates and remote management capabilities keep an organization’s IT assets ordered and secure. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 can provide a robust, efficient, management system for your IT infrastructure. Selecting clients that not only operate within your IT framework, but that have built-in software to integrate with it seamlessly to make client management tasks even easier is an intelligent strategy for your IT department.
In our tests, we found that Dell client management tools (Dell Client Integration Pack, Dell Client Configuration Toolkit, and Dell OpenManage Client Instrumentation) integrated in a typical SCCM 2012 environment reduced the steps it took to complete client management tasks by as much as 77 percent, and included a number of features that weren’t available with clients from HP and Lenovo.
Hp Polyserve Database Utility For Sql Server ConsolidationCB UTBlog
The document discusses how the Database Utility for SQL Server can help identify consolidation opportunities for SQL Server environments running on 20 or more servers. It presents the value proposition of using the utility to run more SQL instances on fewer servers with higher availability and storage utilization while reducing costs. The document outlines the sales cycle process, from identifying opportunities and doing a proof of concept to closing the sale. It provides examples of cost savings and performance gains customers have achieved by consolidating SQL Server workloads with the Database Utility.
The document discusses Oracle's Database as a Service (DBaaS) cloud solution. It describes how DBaaS addresses challenges related to managing a complex database estate through standardization, consolidation, and rapid provisioning of databases and schemas. It also discusses how HDFC Bank has used DBaaS capabilities like data cloning to address their database needs.
SQL Server 2008 R2 introduces two new premium editions, Datacenter and Parallel Data Warehouse, to meet the needs of large scale datacenters and data warehouses. It also offers expanded functionality across Enterprise and Standard editions. Datacenter is designed for high performance with support for over 8 processors, 256 logical processors, and memory limits up to the OS maximum. Parallel Data Warehouse provides a massively parallel processing architecture for scaling from tens of terabytes to petabytes of data.
Learn more about Embarcadero products at http://www.embarcadero.com/products. Embarcadero products make it easier to design, build, optimize, and run a wide variety of software applications, databases, and data governance initiatives. We invite you to explore (and try!) Embarcadero's award-winning tools in your own environment. And if you need assistance of any kind, contact us today.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment Pipeline with Apprenda on ON...Shrivatsa Upadhye
The document discusses integrating Apprenda PaaS with NetApp storage to enable continuous integration and continuous deployment workflows. Apprenda provides a platform for CI/CD pipelines, while NetApp provides the underlying storage. Integrating Jenkins with Apprenda and NetApp improves developer productivity by reducing build times and optimizing storage usage through features like snapshots. The integration allows applications to move faster through testing phases and onto production deployment.
RedPrairie is using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate to develop the next version of its business process management software. This will allow them to:
1) Extend workflow design capabilities to non-technical users by rehosting the workflow designer outside of Visual Studio.
2) Eliminate performance penalties for frequently persisted workflows by taking advantage of improvements to workflow persistence in .NET Framework 4.
3) Provide improved support for long-running workflows by allowing multiple workflow snapshots to be saved.
Through these enhancements, RedPrairie aims to increase developer productivity, provide a better user experience, and deliver higher quality software.
This document provides a competitive analysis of the web page http://www.redprairie.com/ for the search term "logistics management software". It analyzes the page and identifies ways it could improve its search engine ranking, including optimizing the document title, global link popularity, keyword usage, and other ranking factors. A sample of inbound links to the site is provided, noting many have empty link text. Overall, the analysis finds the page meets only 30% of requirements for a top 10 ranking.
Havant Academy - Microsoft Innovative School PresentationRichMarkey
This document summarizes the virtualization and software initiatives at Havant Academy, a secondary school in the UK. It discusses:
1. The school upgraded its aging server infrastructure by implementing Hyper-V virtualization. This replaced 13 physical servers with 29 virtual servers hosted on highly available storage with an intelligent UPS for resilience.
2. Hyper-V provided financial, performance, scalability and resilience benefits over the previous hardware. It integrated with Microsoft System Center products for management.
3. The school uses various Microsoft software like Deep Zoom Composer, Kodu, Ribbon Hero 2, Photosynth and AutoCollage to enhance learning. It also uses Lync for unified communications across devices and platforms
This document provides an overview of an IBM reference architecture for implementing high availability and disaster recovery for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 using AlwaysOn Availability Groups. The solution leverages IBM Flex System x240 compute nodes, Flex System V7000 storage, and Storwize V7000 and V3700 storage. It allows for automatic failover between two nodes in the main data center and manual failover to a node in a remote disaster recovery site, with the possibility of some data loss during asynchronous replication. The document describes the requirements, hardware components, architectural design, and deployment considerations for the solution.
Business Intelligence For It Professionals Part 2 Seamless Data Integration 90Microsoft TechNet
This document provides an overview and agenda for a training session on using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) for business intelligence and data warehousing. It discusses how SSIS can be used to extract, transform, and load data from various sources into a data warehouse. It also describes the key capabilities and components of SSIS, including connections to different data sources, transformations, and the graphical design tools.
Taashee is a 100% Linux and Open source software (OSS) company. Taashee uniquely offers a one-stop solution for all Linux and OSS related projects. We have a dedicated team of certified Linux engineers and passionate developers to handle any kind of projects related to implementation or development on Linux.
Taashee helps its customers to fully utilize the power of Linux and Open Source technologies. This results in, higher stability, higher security and higher performance with lower cost and lesser administrative overheads compared to Microsoft based solution. Even for long-time Unix users, who are stuck with limited and proprietary solutions, we offer migration services to switch over to Enterprise-grade Red Hat.
We specialize in high-availability and high-performance clusters; remote and on-site system management and maintenance services; Linux consulting services; Druid and Asterisk based VoIP solutions; Telco-grade Mail servers with uptime of as much as 99.999%; Application design and development using Open Source Technologies. Besides this, we provide comprehensive Jboss related services like: Development, Deployment, Clustering, Production-level optimization, Security etc & also Virtualization.
VMmark 2.5.2 virtualization performance of the Dell Storage SC4020 arrayPrincipled Technologies
The Dell Storage SC4020 array paired with Dell PowerEdge R620 servers supported 30 tiles of the VMmark 2.5.2 virtualization benchmark for a total of 240 running virtual machines. The system achieved a score of 31.35 at 30 tiles, indicating it can handle multiple virtualized applications and hypervisor operations while maintaining strong performance. Testing showed the SC4020 provided consistent I/O operations per second around 43,000 and latency mostly under 4 milliseconds. This performance demonstrates the SC4020 is suitable for increasing virtualized workloads supported by solid-state drives without degrading storage performance.
SQL Azure is a cloud-based relational database platform built on Microsoft® SQL Server® technologies. With SQL Azure, you can easily provision and deploy relational database solutions to the cloud. Trends in Data Management Organizations are seeing a proliferation of data as requirements to access and manage information increase
Virtualization and unified communications at the Havant AcademyRichard Markey
This document discusses how Havant Academy enhanced its server infrastructure through virtualization and unified communication technologies from Microsoft. It summarizes how the school replaced its 13 aging physical servers with a Hyper-V configuration running 29 virtual servers for improved resilience, performance, scalability and cost savings. It also describes how the school integrated System Center products like Virtual Machine Manager, Operations Manager, and Data Protection Manager to manage the Hyper-V environment. Finally, it discusses how the school adopted Lync 2010 to enable unified communication and collaboration across the campus through mobile access and control of IT support costs.
The document describes how Tideway Foundation can help populate a CMDB by regularly discovering configuration items (CIs) like servers, software, and dependencies across the IT environment. It captures this information and automatically transfers it to populate and maintain an accurate, up-to-date view in the BMC Atrium CMDB with minimal manual effort. Key benefits include accelerated CMDB deployment, improved data quality through regular updates, and generation of impact analysis reports for change management. The Tideway adapter transfers discovery data to Atrium using its Java API. Example outputs demonstrate the level of configuration data captured for servers and how dependencies are mapped into business services views that can be viewed in both Foundation and Atrium.
Migrating to Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on D...Principled Technologies
Migrating your legacy servers running Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 to a new Dell PowerEdge R720 running Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 can streamline your infrastructure and deliver savings to your business.
With careful planning, and by following the straightforward process that this guide presents, you can realize the benefits of switching to your new server-and-software solution in no time.
VMware View 4 is a desktop virtualization solution that allows companies to manage operating systems, applications, and user profiles independently from hardware using virtualization. It provides benefits such as streamlined management from a single console, lower costs by reducing IT infrastructure in remote offices, and increased security by keeping all data within the corporate firewall. The solution includes platform, management, and user experience tools to deliver a personalized desktop to users over any network from anywhere.
Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Podcast (hosted at podfeet.com) presented this at Blogworld Expo in October 2010 in Las Vegas. It focused on how to make both your podcast and your blog more accessibile to try and capture some of the 600,000 people worldwide who are visually or hearing impaired.
The document discusses how Blackboard sizes its Academic Suite software based on benchmarking. It provides details on the benchmarking methodology, including modeling user behavior, data growth, and performance objectives. The results showed how the software performed under different workload levels on various hardware configurations. The last part discusses using the benchmark results and sizing guide to determine an institution's adoption profile and appropriate hardware configuration based on factors like sessions per hour and page loads.
So Your Boss Wants You to Performance Test BlackboardSteve Feldman
This document provides guidance for performance testing the Blackboard Learn platform. It discusses setting clear expectations for the testing, including goals, objectives, schedules and metrics. It recommends planning testing scenarios based on functional analysis and log/data mining. Two recommended transaction types are HTTP drivers for load and browser rendering for end-to-end tests. Partial and full payloads as well as arrival rates should be considered. A variety of test types like endurance, adoption and regression are outlined. External performance engineering teams can assist with planning, execution and reporting if needed.
The document provides an introduction to load testing, including definitions of key terms, reasons for performing load testing, tools used, steps to prepare for load testing such as defining performance objectives and scenarios, and how to conduct load tests through initial configuration, calibration, establishing a baseline, collecting samples/measurements, and optimization.
Database administrators are responsible for maintaining high performance of databases like Oracle, SQL Server, and Red Hat that support enterprise applications like Blackboard. Quest Software's Spotlight tool helps administrators monitor and diagnose performance issues across various database platforms in real-time and historically. It provides visualizations of process flows, metrics, and alerts to identify bottlenecks and root causes of poor performance. Spotlight supports various database environments including Oracle, Oracle RAC, and SQL Server databases.
This document discusses an introduction to software performance engineering (SPE) presented by Steve Feldman, Tim Moore, and Ryan O'Neil from Blackboard's Performance Center of Excellence. It provides an overview of SPE methodology, which takes a systematic, quantitative approach to constructing software to meet performance objectives. The 7-step SPE process involves assessing performance risk, identifying critical use cases, selecting key performance scenarios, establishing performance objectives, constructing performance models, determining software resource requirements, and adding system resource requirements. The presentation also demonstrates applying SPE to develop a sample Blackboard building block called "Santa's Little Helper" for monitoring performance metrics.
Using database statistics and queries, this document discusses how to identify courses that meet criteria for archiving based on the number of new or modified course entities since the last archive. It provides an example SQL query to return the course ID and count of new/modified entities for each course, in order to determine which courses should be archived during the next run of the archival process. Administrative planning topics like archive frequency and impact on users are also covered. Strategic questions are posed around using database statistics to understand online testing capacity and potential database impacts.
This document provides numerous tips for improving Mac productivity and customizing the Mac interface. It describes shortcuts for quickly switching between apps and windows, moving and copying files, customizing the toolbar and sidebar, using Spotlight to find files, adding signatures in Preview, tweaking the Dock, accessing more file info, finding menu items and preferences, using accent keys, and various shortcuts using modifier keys like Option and Command. The tips are intended to help users work more efficiently on a Mac.
This document discusses the Dell/Blackboard solution for education, which provides a scalable and reliable infrastructure for deploying the Blackboard Academic Suite. Key components of the solution include Blackboard application software, Dell server and storage hardware, and Oracle Database software. Testing showed the solution could support over 30,000 concurrent user sessions per hour. The document provides details on system sizing, performance tuning, and a reference deployment configuration using Dell and Blackboard components.
The document discusses containers and Docker Enterprise Edition (EE). It notes that by 2020, over 50% of organizations will be running containers in production. Containers simplify infrastructure by allowing applications to run on any infrastructure. Docker EE provides additional capabilities for enterprises like security features, automation, and support that are required beyond the open source Docker Engine. It highlights customer examples where Docker EE helped accelerate projects, increase scalability, and migrate applications to the cloud. The document promotes Docker services to help customers develop a containerization strategy and achieve benefits like cost savings, agility, and productivity gains.
Organizations are facing increasing demands to process data and run mixed workloads across on-premise, cloud, and edge environments. Dell PowerEdge servers provide scalable platforms to optimize infrastructure and support these diverse workloads. PowerEdge servers enable workloads to run efficiently on-premise or in hybrid cloud environments, and provide high performance, security, flexibility and remote management. This allows IT organizations to seamlessly scale infrastructure as needs change.
Build your private cloud with paa s using linuxz cover story enterprise tech ...Elena Nanos
This article has been published as a cover story of Enterprise Tech Journal Jun 2013 issue, at - http://enterprisesystemsmedia.com/article/build-your-private-cloud-with-paas-using-linux-on-system-z.
Do you know that according to Gartner poll, Private Cloud project deployments are increasing significantly in 2013 and nearly 90% of customers are looking at Private Cloud implementation and are either in the planning or early deployment stages? Is your shop currently looking into Private Platform as a Service (PaaS) Cloud implementation? Have you looked into what zEnterprise has to offer in this space?
This article gives insight on Private Cloud Implementation on zEnterprise and can help you learn how your organization can benefit from implementing a Dev/Test private cloud using PaaS with Linux on System z and why WebSphere Application Server (WAS) may be a perfect fit for a Dev/Test Private Cloud.
Learn how your organization can cut IT costs by deploying “self-service” for developers, using Dev/Test Private Cloud.
This article goes over what Applications are a good fit for Dev/Test Private Cloud and the benefits of this implementation, such as :
• Reduce the number of Dev/Test WAS environments using dedicated resources
• Reduce hardware and software license costs
• Improve speed of upgrades
• Standardize procedures and software levels
• Let developers set up and use new environments in minutes instead of days or weeks
• Simplify WAS infrastructure management
Article also goes over the key differences in managing cloud infrastructure on distributed platforms vs. mainframes and shows how Linux on System z plays a critical role in creating PaaS clouds.
• Mainframes can scale vertically, while distributed servers can scale horizontally.
• Linux on System z has much higher densities of virtual machines per processor core compared to distributed servers.
• Cloud implementation on zEnterprise can dynamically allocate workloads to available pooled resources.
• Linux on System z leverages z/VM’s ability to virtualize CPUs and memory, as well as share those resources among many Linux guests. One IFL can run the equivalent of many distributed servers.
• Consolidation of Linux workloads on a single physical hardware server allows multiple Linux images to run on z/VM IFLs without affecting IBM software charges for existing System z general processors.
Creating private cloud to host dev/test environments can save your company money and increase efficiency. Start small, but think big; create a cloud strategy and roadmap that involves getting leadership buy in, building business cases and presenting them in stages within your organization, standardizing procedures and using a fit-for-purpose approach to select pilot applications.
Connect with author of this article, Elena Nanos, on Linkedin at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/elena-nanos/1/a47/70a
This document describes a virtual desktop solution for knowledge workers using VMware View 4.5 on a Vblock Series 700 infrastructure platform. It details the solution architecture, validation testing of 768 and 1536 desktops, and results. Testing showed the solution can support the workload characteristics of knowledge workers with good application response times and scalable server and storage utilization. The Vblock 700 provided a pre-integrated, validated platform that streamlined deployment of the virtual desktop environment.
Microsoft Azure Tutorial | Microsoft Cloud Computing | Microsoft Azure Traini...Edureka!
This Microsoft Azure Tutorial will get your basics right about Microsoft Azure. It starts from the basics, so shall be helpful to a beginner who doesn't know anything about Cloud Computing as well. Below are the topics covered in this tutorial:
1) What is Cloud?
2) What is Microsoft Azure?
3) Azure Job Trends
4) Different Domains in Azure
5) Azure Services
6) Azure Pricing Options
7) Demo on Azure
8) Azure Certifications
To take a structured training on Microsoft Azure, you can check complete details of our Microsoft Azure Certification Training course here: https://goo.gl/585NMJ
Develop an Enterprise-wide Cloud Adoption Strategy – Chris MerriganAmazon Web Services
Taking a cloud first approach requires a different approach than you probably had to consider for your initial few workloads in the cloud. You’ll be deploying hybrid environments, and that means taking a broad view of your IT strategy, architecture, and organisational design. In this session, we cover how the CAF framework offers practical guidance and comprehensive guidelines to enterprise organisations, particularly around roles, governance, and efficiency.
220929-Presentation-business case for moving to the cloud.pptxZiadHaidamous1
This presentation discusses migrating workloads and applications to the cloud with Microsoft Azure. It covers the core benefits of cloud migration including scalability, availability, and financial benefits. It then discusses the different cloud service models of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. The presentation provides steps for migrating to the cloud and different migration approaches. It highlights the benefits of migrating to Azure such as reducing costs, optimizing resources, improved security and compliance, and increased agility.
The document summarizes new features in the Autodesk Vault 2011 family of products. Key updates include deeper CAD integrations through data mapping and enhanced context menus, improved support for connecting global workgroups through full replication and selective replication, and enhanced usability through improvements to property management, document previews, and change order workflows. The Autodesk Vault 2011 release focuses on enabling better collaboration across sites through replication and deeper design tool integration.
This document discusses Microsoft Azure and its capabilities. It highlights that Azure has over 100 datacenters globally, with 19 regions currently online. It also notes that Azure has one of the top 3 networks in the world and offers larger VM sizes than AWS or Google Cloud. The document then summarizes some of Azure's core capabilities like compute, storage, databases, analytics and more. It provides examples of how customers can use Azure's tools and services.
The document discusses consolidating databases onto private clouds. Key benefits include reduced costs through increased efficiency and utilization, reduced complexity by standardizing configurations, improved quality of service through centralized management and monitoring, and improved agility allowing faster deployment and provisioning of resources. Private clouds are preferable to public clouds as they allow for control over quality of service levels and security of data within corporate networks and governance regulations. Oracle Database 11g can be successfully consolidated onto private clouds through different deployment models.
Gunasundari Govindaraj has over 3 years of experience as a project engineer working with databases like MS SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, and AWS. She has expertise in database administration, development, troubleshooting, capacity planning, backup/restore, and high availability configurations. She also has experience designing databases, writing SQL queries, and building ETL packages.
Gunasundari Govindaraj has over 3 years of experience as a project engineer working with databases like MS SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, and AWS. She has expertise in database administration, development, troubleshooting, capacity planning, backup/restore, and high availability configurations. She also has experience designing databases, writing SQL queries, and building ETL packages.
Containers and the Docker EE Difference and usecasesAshnikbiz
This document discusses containers and Docker Enterprise Edition (EE). It notes that by 2020 over 50% of organizations will be running containers in production. Docker EE helps cut complexity by allowing workloads to run across different environments. The document outlines typical ROI results customers see from Docker EE, including infrastructure savings of 20-40% and productivity gains of 30-60%. It also describes Docker EE accelerator, pilot, and production packages that help customers containerize applications and establish container operations at different stages.
This document outlines an agenda for a workshop on effectively using cloud computing to facilitate e-learning in primary schools. The agenda includes discussions on the benefits and drawbacks of using public versus private cloud systems in schools. It also covers hands-on demonstrations of Google Classroom and VMware as examples of setting up public cloud systems, as well as a discussion on implementing cloud-based educational examples in teaching. The workshop aims to discuss how cloud computing can be leveraged to advance IT education in primary schools.
RightScale Webinar: October 14, 2010 – In this Webinar, we demonstrate the RightScale Development and Test Solution Pack featuring Zend and IBM software stacks and show you how you can reduce the time you spend configuring hardware and managing resources.
CTE Ottawa Seminar Day - September 7th, 2012
This clinic introduces the key features and enhancements in SQL Server 2012. It is designed to provide a high-level overview of the product and the key new capabilities in this release.
This course is intended for technology managers and database professionals who want to understand the key capabilities of SQL Server 2012. In many cases, it is assumed that senior technical managers may attend this clinic in order to assess the further training that their technology-focused employees will need in order to adopt SQL Server 2012.
In this session, we explain how the new version of SQL Server will improve database operations, advance security and compliance and bring advanced analytics to all your data workloads.
Day 2 05 - steve feldman - logging mattersSteve Feldman
Steve Feldman gave a presentation at DevOps Days Washington, DC about the importance of log frequency and the hidden costs of excessive logging. He discussed how log frequency impacts resource usage and storage footprint, and how the costs of log management software are tied to log volume. Feldman also covered how to leverage log frequency metrics to detect anomalies and establish baselines, and emphasized that logging requirements should be defined upfront for features, with the same attention given to logging as unit tests.
PTOn...Finding the Time to Dedicate Individual Projects of Passion and Role Steve Feldman
A culture presentation about how my teams make use of a dedicated time model called PTOn for working on individual projects of passion and/or role on our team. It's similar to Google's 20% model, but a little different.
This document summarizes a three day outage in September that affected an organization's most important asset. The outage was caused by human error when a Unix machine was rebooted. Key lessons learned include the importance of always having monitoring systems on, keeping all stakeholders informed during a crisis, admitting mistakes, and practicing failure scenarios to improve response routines. The problems that led to the outage started long before and highlight the need for organizations to practice responding to failures.
The document discusses the importance of logs and log data analysis. It notes that most people do not properly utilize or manage log data from their systems. Logs can provide valuable insights into trends, system health, capacity planning, security threats and more. The document promotes log centralization and normalization using tools like Logstash and Kibana to facilitate log management and analytics. It provides examples of log sources like Apache access logs, Tomcat logs and challenges readers to setup a basic Logstash pipeline to process and visualize log data.
Cookbook for Administrating Blackboard LearnSteve Feldman
This document provides a summary of a presentation about administering Learn, Blackboard's learning management system. It discusses how past experiences may not always apply to present situations due to changing data and conditions. Two historical examples are presented: the French and American efforts to build the Panama Canal, and London's 1854 cholera epidemic. Both examples illustrate how data was key to understanding failures and successes. The presentation emphasizes looking at time-series data, outliers, and statistical variability to best understand user experiences and problems. Ignoring data or only looking at averages can lead to inaccurate conclusions.
This document discusses emerging technology challenges and forecasts future trends. It examines the importance of forecasting technology adoption curves and preparing populations for transitions. Examples are given of past technology misses like the Apple Newton and Pluto being demoted from planet status. The document then focuses on distributed caching systems and elastic Java virtual machines that can adjust memory allocation on demand. It argues these technologies allow applications to better handle usage spikes and periods of high demand. Finally, it discusses strategies for cloud computing and third-party analytics and monitoring services.
Scaling Blackboard Learn™ for High Performance and DeliverySteve Feldman
This document discusses scaling Blackboard Learn for high performance and availability. It provides a brief history of Blackboard's technology shift from Perl to Java. It describes the evolution of Blackboard's reference architectures (RefArch) over time to incorporate more features like logging, monitoring, cloud services and virtualization. It defines concepts like performance, scalability and availability, and discusses strategies used by Blackboard to achieve high performance, such as automated provisioning, complete monitoring, application lifecycle management and web optimization services.
The document discusses the Blackboard Reference Architecture, which provides a blueprint for optimizing enterprise application performance. It describes key components of the reference architecture, including platform infrastructure, web/application delivery and management, storage architectures, monitoring and management, and user performance management. The reference architecture aims to help institutions achieve a high level of performance maturity and optimize their systems to support user experiences.
This document provides an introduction to enterprise application management for Blackboard. It discusses the importance of understanding the various architectural components, having the right tools to manage the application, and developing plans for operations, capacity, disasters, and quality assurance. Going enterprise requires understanding user needs, technical foundations, and planning for growth and issues.
The document discusses performance engineering at Blackboard, including defining key concepts like performance, scalability, and the application performance index (Apdex). It outlines Blackboard's performance engineering process and methodology, including using tools like LoadRunner for testing and establishing performance archetype ratios to measure scalability. Planned performance engineering projects for 2007 are also mentioned, such as virtualization testing and monitoring initiatives.
The document describes a reference architecture for deploying Blackboard Learn online learning software on a scalable virtualized infrastructure. Key components of the architecture include:
1) An application tier with Blackboard Learn instances running on virtual machines for flexibility and high utilization. This tier is optimized to support over 100,000 concurrent users.
2) A storage tier using Dell EqualLogic storage arrays to provide pooled resources for virtual machine storage.
3) An optimized Oracle database configuration on powerful Dell servers to handle the database requirements.
4) A network environment and best practices to ensure high performance as the solution scales. Management and monitoring tools help maintain performance and availability.
Database administrators use Quest Software's Toad products to efficiently manage Blackboard Academic Suite databases. Toad allows administrators to automate daily, weekly, and monthly tasks like user management, backup scheduling, performance reporting, and SQL optimization. This helps control database environments that are constantly changing due to software upgrades, adoption growth, and other factors. Toad provides workflow flexibility and automation to simplify common administration processes.
This document introduces a reference architecture from Sun Microsystems and Blackboard for optimizing eLearning environments. It describes a performance maturity model with 5 levels for eLearning solutions and notes that most institutions are currently at the lowest, most reactive level. The reference architecture is designed to help institutions advance to higher, more proactive levels through proven, scalable components that can deliver consistently high performance in a cost-effective way. It includes guidance on optimizing the application, database, storage, and management tiers to meet the demanding requirements of mission-critical eLearning systems.
This document summarizes a presentation about deploying Tomcat clusters in an advanced Blackboard environment. The presentation introduces clustering concepts and techniques for planning and deploying Tomcat application clusters. It defines what clusters and nodes are, and explains the differences between clustered and load balanced nodes. The presentation reviews configuration requirements for setting up a Tomcat cluster and load distribution, and provides examples of cluster code. It also discusses session replication, guidelines for setting up clusters, and includes benchmark statistics comparing clustered and non-clustered configurations.
The document summarizes the results of benchmarking tests performed on the Blackboard Academic Suite to determine system sizing requirements. Key findings include:
- Tests showed a Unicode conversion taking minutes for small datasets, hours for moderate, and under 3 days for large datasets, meeting objectives.
- Regression performance from version 6.3 to 7.X met the objective of no more than a 5% degradation and potential for a 5% improvement.
- Benchmarking of different hardware platforms like Sun, Dell, and Windows showed performance varied based on configuration.
The document discusses performance forensics tools that can be used at different layers of the architectural stack and client layer to perform root cause analysis of performance or scalability issues. It introduces tools for analyzing the user experience layer using HTTP data, JVM instrumentation tools, database instrumentation tools focused on sessions and wait events, and log analyzers. Specific tools discussed include Fiddler2, Coradiant Truesight, JSTAT, -VerboseGC and -Xloggc, IBM Pattern Modeling Tool for Java GC, JHAT, JMAP, SAP Memory Analyzer, ASH, and the SQL Server Performance Dashboard.
This document provides best practices for optimizing Blackboard Learn performance. It recommends deploying for performance from the start, optimizing platform components continuously through measurements, using scalable deployments like 64-bit architectures and virtualization, improving page responsiveness through techniques like gzip compression and image optimization, optimizing the web server, Java Virtual Machine, and database through configuration and tools. It emphasizes the importance of understanding resource utilization, wait events, execution plans, and statistics/histograms for database optimization.
The document discusses deploying Blackboard learning management systems in a highly performant, scalable, and available manner. It covers key concepts around performance, scalability, and availability. It then discusses the drivers behind online learning growth and increasing user expectations. The rest of the document provides recommendations around deployment strategies that focus on flexibility, efficiency, adaptability, and reliability to ensure the continuous and optimal performance of Blackboard systems at any scale through virtualization, large memory allocation, distributed architectures, automation, and high-availability techniques.
071510 sun b_1515_feldman_stephen_forpublicSteve Feldman
This document discusses scaling Blackboard to support large online learning communities. It notes that online enrollments are growing significantly faster than overall higher education. Communities and stakes are getting larger as competition increases for students and funding. Blackboard must support larger class sizes, richer content, extended user sessions, and near 24/7 availability. This requires scalable, high-performance, and highly available systems through techniques like virtualization, fast provisioning, emphasis on asynchronous tools and databases, and advanced monitoring.
Microsoft Power Point Best Practices For Scaling Heavily Adopted And Concur...Steve Feldman
The document discusses various tools used for monitoring and optimizing performance in a Blackboard environment. It recommends using Toad as the primary database access tool for tasks like script execution and basic DBA work. It also recommends using PAO (Performance Analysis for Oracle) as the primary monitoring tool for its warehousing capabilities and ability to compare workloads over time. Foglight is highlighted as a favorite tool for its lightweight instrumentation, ability to define rule-based traces to identify slow method calls and SQL statements, and other features. Configuration examples are provided for optimizing Java settings like heap size and garbage collection with aggressive -XX options.
2. Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................... 3
Addressing All Aspects of Enterprise eLearning..................................................................... 3
Business Benefits of the Reference Architecture.................................................................... 4
Dell Reference Architecture for Blackboard Academic Suite.................................... 5
Designed for scalability ........................................................................................................... 6
Virtualized Application Tier .................................................................................................6
Benefits of Virtualization .....................................................................................................6
Components of the Reference Architecture............................................................................ 7
Key Benefits of the Reference Architecture ............................................................................ 9
Sizing Considerations ................................................................................................. 10
Active Sessions Defined ....................................................................................................... 10
Application Tier ..................................................................................................................... 10
Minimum and Optimal VM Configurations ........................................................................11
Capacity of Minimum and Optimal VM Configurations .....................................................11
Horizontal Scaling for Availability and Demand ................................................................12
Database Tier ....................................................................................................................... 12
Recommended Database Server .....................................................................................12
Capacity Requirements for the Database Tier..................................................................13
Storage Tier .......................................................................................................................... 13
Storage Capacity ..............................................................................................................13
Dell EqualLogic Storage Systems ....................................................................................14
Sizing Summary and Best Practices.......................................................................... 15
Sizing Guidelines .................................................................................................................. 15
Sizing Summary.................................................................................................................... 16
Configuration Best Practices................................................................................................. 17
Enabling Management Efficiency............................................................................... 18
Centralized Administration .................................................................................................... 18
Backup and Recovery........................................................................................................... 19
Performance Management ................................................................................................... 19
Capacity Management .......................................................................................................... 20
Summary....................................................................................................................... 21
For More Information ............................................................................................................ 22
Tables
Table 1: Reference Architecture Hardware Components................................................................ 7
Table 2: Reference Architecture Software Components ................................................................. 8
Table 3: Configuring VMs in the Application Tier .......................................................................... 11
Table 4: Sizing Guidelines for Blackboard Academic Suite .......................................................... 16
Table 5: Web Links for Additional Information............................................................................... 22
Figures
Figure 1: Logical Diagram of Dell Reference Architecture for Blackboard software ....................... 5
Figure 2: Quest and Vizioncore Management Infrastructure Across All Layers............................ 18
January 2009 Page 2 Dell Reference Architectures
3. Section 1
Introduction
As organizations continue to expand their eLearning initiatives, many are looking
to upgrade their IT infrastructure to support greater numbers of students and a
®
broader mix of course content. Many Blackboard customers initially
implemented the Blackboard Academic Suite™ as an online environment that
was simply intended to augment the in-classroom experience. These initial
®
implementations were often small in scale and were deployed using Microsoft
® ® ®
Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server . Due to the popularity of
Blackboard platform and the many available applications, many of these pilot
eLearning programs have since expanded to stretch the capacity limits of their
initial system architecture.
As organizations consider an upgrade to their Blackboard system infrastructure,
most would like to preserve their investments in their Microsoft SQL Server
infrastructure as this helps contain costs and avoids the need to retrain IT staff.
With this in mind, Dell, Blackboard, and Quest Software recently embarked on a
project to optimize Blackboard Academic Suite software for Windows and SQL
Server. The joint efforts have resulted in significantly greater scalability as well as
simplified management, enabling customers to run large campus
implementations on a cost-effective infrastructure. The project not only involved
optimization of the software, but also defined a reference architecture that would
take advantage of server virtualization and the latest management tools for
optimizing the Blackboard production environment.
These efforts to increase scalability and optimize the management environment
have been largely driven by customer demand. Many Blackboard customers
have expressed interest in server virtualization as an opportunity to improve
utilization of hardware resources and increase the adaptability of their IT
environment. Blackboard also observed that customers who were making use of
leading-edge management tools and applying good datacenter disciplines were
also achieving greater uptime and better performance with their Blackboard
systems. Since this topic was of high interest throughout the Blackboard
customer base, collaboration with Quest Software was initiated to define a
management environment that could help customers achieve high service levels
with their Blackboard Academic Suite implementations.
Addressing All Aspects of Enterprise eLearning
The collaboration between Dell, Blackboard and Quest encompassed every
aspect of an enterprise eLearning implementation. The Dell reference
architecture for Blackboard software, which resulted from the collaboration, is
based on the following technical investments by the three vendors:
• Optimizing Blackboard Academic Suite to improve overall throughput
when many active users are simultaneously accessing the system.
• Tuning SQL database access within Blackboard Academic Suite and
defining best practices for deploying SQL Server with Blackboard
Academic Suite.
January 2009 Page 3 Dell Reference Architectures
4. • Characterization testing to define an optimized configuration for
implementing server virtualization to deliver maximum throughput when
using multiple VMs with VMware ESX server.
• Designing a robust hardware server and storage architecture based on
virtualized Dell PowerEdge™ servers and Dell EqualLogic™ iSCSI
storage systems.
• Creating an end-to-end management infrastructure based on monitoring
and management tools from Quest Software.
Business Benefits of the Reference Architecture
The performance and scalability achieved with this architecture goes far beyond
what was previously possible. Customers can deploy a horizontally scaled
solution that supports up to 30,000 active users on a cost-effective infrastructure
of virtualized Dell servers and storage systems. The entire infrastructure, which
includes a simplified enterprise management environment, is designed to help
customers achieve:
• Reduced risk through proven reliability, scalability, and performance.
• Lower TCO due to outstanding price/performance and simplified
management.
• Investment protection in Microsoft Windows and Microsoft SQL Server
technologies and related staff expertise.
• High service levels due to the high-performance architecture and
simplified management environment that helps reduce downtime.
The remainder of this paper provides an overview of the reference architecture
and the advantages of the technology components within it.
January 2009 Page 4 Dell Reference Architectures
5. Section 2
Dell Reference Architecture for Blackboard Academic Suite
The Dell reference architecture for Blackboard software is a blueprint for
successfully optimizing the deployment and management of Blackboard software
on Dell servers and storage. It identifies key system components and
management processes that are required to achieve high service levels and
scalability along with efficient IT operations.
Figure 1 shows a logical representation of the architecture with mandatory and
optional components defined across the application, database, storage and
management tiers.
Figure 1: Logical Diagram of Dell Reference Architecture for Blackboard software
January 2009 Page 5 Dell Reference Architectures
6. Designed for scalability
The architecture is designed to support maximum scalability and high service
levels through virtualization and an optimized management environment. To
achieve a high volume of concurrent user sessions, the horizontally scaled
architecture uses load balancing across virtualized servers in the application tier.
Each application server runs multiple instances of the Blackboard Academic
Suite software as well as multiple instances of the Microsoft IIS Web Server.
Characterization tests have enabled Dell and Blackboard to define sample
configurations for different customer load scenarios so that customers can
choose a configuration that best suits their expected number of concurrent user
sessions. The sizing table in a later section of this document provides
recommended sizing guidelines.
Virtualized Application Tier
Application tier scalability is achieved by running multiple instances of the
Blackboard Academic Suite and the Microsoft IIS Web server on virtualized
servers. As shown in Figure 1, these instances can be deployed on
rackmountable servers such as the Dell™ PowerEdge™ R900 or PowerEdge
2950 servers. They can also be deployed on blade servers such as the Dell
PowerEdge M600 series.
In either case, the virtualized environment is achieved by using hypervisor
technology from VMware to run multiple instances of the Microsoft Windows
operating system on each physical server. VMware ESX Server 3.0 abstracts
server processor, memory, storage and networking resources so that each
operating system instance can have direct control over specific system
resources. Applications are then installed and can operate on these virtual
machines (VMs) in much the same way that they run on separate physical
servers. VMware ESX is the market leading hypervisor and is production-proven
at thousands of customers of all sizes.
In the virtualized environment of the Dell reference architecture for Blackboard
software, each virtual machine runs an instance of the Blackboard Academic
Suite and an instance of the Microsoft IIS Web server. An application delivery
®
switch such as the BIG-IP 3600 platform is used to balance the load of the traffic
across all Web server instances in all servers. Each Web server then
communicates with its corresponding instance of Blackboard Academic Suite
Benefits of Virtualization
With its virtualized application tier, the reference architecture can help customers
achieve:
• Lower costs – Increased utilization of servers enables good performance
on a low-cost consolidated infrastructure.
• Increased flexibility – Virtual machines can be easily moved to other
physical servers to redistribute workloads or recover quickly from a
hardware failure.
• Faster Deployment – With fewer physical systems to setup and
configure, less time is required for deployment.
January 2009 Page 6 Dell Reference Architectures
7. Components of the Reference Architecture
The backbone of the reference architecture is Dell PowerEdge servers and Dell
EqualLogic and PowerVault™ storage solutions. Characterization tests for these
systems were performed in Dell’s labs using a virtualized environment running
VMware ESX server. The results show dramatic scalability and specific
configurations were validated to offer specific levels of throughput, thus greatly
reducing the risk of unforeseen problems in enterprise implementations.
Tables 1 and 2 list the hardware and software components of the reference
architecture.
Hardware
Component Description
The PowerEdge R900 server is Dell’s most powerful
® ® ®
Dell PowerEdge Intel server, offering up to 24 Intel Xeon processor
R900 server cores. It is designed and optimized to provide
outstanding virtualization performance.
The high-performance, PowerEdge 2950 delivers
Dell PowerEdge 2950 excellent security, manageability, and energy efficiency
server in a 2U, rack dense chassis for customers seeking a
balance between expandability and rack density.
The PS5000E array is an intelligent virtualized iSCSI
Dell EqualLogic storage array that is designed to provide rapid
PS5000E iSCSI installation, simple management, and seamless
Array expansion. Its SATA disk drives provide cost-effective
high capacity storage for the application tier.
The Dell EqualLogic PS5000XV array is a virtualized
iSCSI SAN solution that combines intelligence and
automation with fault tolerance to provide simplified
Dell EqualLogic administration, rapid deployment, enterprise
PS5000XV iSCSI performance and reliability, and seamless scalability.
Array With 15,000 RPM SAS disk drives, the PS5000XV
array provides high transactional performance, making
it an ideal SAN platform for the database server in this
reference architecture.
The Dell PowerVault NX1950 is a unified network
storage solution that simultaneously stores both file
Dell PowerVault
and application data. It can be used as an integrated
NX1950 unified
storage solution or a NAS gateway and is deployed in
network storage
the reference architecture as a NAS gateway
solution
connecting to the Dell PS5000E storage system for
application tier storage.
F5 Networks BIG-IP The BIG-IP 3600 application network delivery platform
3600 application provides eight Gigabit Ethernet ports and is rated to
switch deliver 1.5 Gbps in traffic throughput.
Table 1: Reference Architecture Hardware Components
January 2009 Page 7 Dell Reference Architectures
8. Software
Component Description Version
The Blackboard Academic Suite includes
Blackboard's flagship Course Management
System (CMS), the Blackboard Learning
Blackboard Academic System™ as well as four other core Release 8,
Suite software applications, the Blackboard Community SP4
System™, the Blackboard Portfolio System™,
the Blackboard Content System™ and the
Blackboard Outcomes System™.
The reference architecture utilizes a number
Quest Management of monitoring and management tools from
n/a
tools for SQL Server Quest Software as defined in the chapter
titled, “Enabling Management Efficiency.”
Solutions for The reference architecture utilizes solutions
managing the from Vizioncore, a subsidiary of Quest
n/a
VMware virtual Software, to manage the VMware virtual
environment environment.
Windows Server 2003 R2 offers a platform for
cost-effective server virtualization and rich
Web services. It can help simplify server
management, improve identity and access
management, and reduce storage R2
Microsoft Windows
management costs. Note that the application Enterprise
Server 2003
tier of this reference architecture uses the 32- Edition
bit version of Windows Server while the
database tier uses Windows Server x64
Edition to take full advantage of the scalability
of 64-bit Dell systems.
Microsoft IIS 6.0 is a powerful Web server
available in all versions of Microsoft Windows
Server 2003. It provides a highly reliable,
Microsoft Internet
manageable, scalable, and secure Web
Information Services 6.0
application infrastructure that can help reduce
(IIS) Web Server
total cost of ownership through server
consolidation and simplified server
management.
SQL Server 2005 (64-bit) is an award-winning
data management and analysis platform that
Microsoft SQL Server is optimized to run on x64 systems. Service
SP2, 64-bit
2005 Pack 2 supports excellent scalability for
Blackboard Academic Suite on Dell
PowerEdge servers.
VMware ESX is a “bare-metal” hypervisor that
partitions physical servers into multiple virtual
v3.5
VMware ESX machines. Each virtual machine represents a
update 1
complete system, with processors, memory,
networking, storage and BIOS.
Table 2: Reference Architecture Software Components
January 2009 Page 8 Dell Reference Architectures
9. Key Benefits of the Reference Architecture
The reference architecture combines the above mentioned system components
with the management processes described later in this white paper to deliver the
following major benefits to educational institutions:
• Higher service levels – The architecture is designed to help optimize
service levels and provide a path to more mature operation of the
datacenter.
• Reduced cost – Virtualization technologies enable a consolidated
solution with higher resource utilization. Configuration and sizing
information defined with the reference architecture can help customers
avoid overprovisioning. Best practices for management can also reduce
the cost of maintaining the production environment.
• Faster time to delivery – The reference architecture saves institutions
time by greatly reducing the need for research or trial and error discovery
when building and optimizing a course management environment.
• Reduced risk – Validated hardware configurations and software partners
are combined with best practices for operational performance to greatly
reduce the risk of unforeseen problems in a production implementation of
Blackboard Academic Suite.
• Simplified management – Tools and best practices for maintaining high
service levels can save time and simplify the management process.
January 2009 Page 9 Dell Reference Architectures
10. Section 3
Sizing Considerations
This chapter describes key considerations when sizing a system for Blackboard
Academic Suite and provides capacity guidelines as well as recommended
platforms for the various components of the architecture.
Active Sessions Defined
The sizing guidelines for Blackboard Academic Suite are based on the concept of
an active session, which can be defined as an authenticated user who is
currently logged into the system. While each user may not be actively using
Blackboard Academic Suite during their entire login time, a session is still
considered active as long as the user is logged in.
The sizing recommendations in this white paper define configurations that
support a given number of concurrent active sessions based on some
assumptions about user activity. To get an accurate assessment of user activity,
it is recommended that institutions spend some time analyzing the number of
successful login attempts made to their systems in order to identify peak
requirements. Monitoring the number of logins per day and per hour over an
entire semester, for example, will make it easier to identify trends and peak login
periods. A system can then be configured to handle the peak loads that have
been observed. If user activity levels cannot be known when purchasing
Blackboard Academic Suite, it is a good idea to make a conservative estimate of
user activity and then resize the system after more data can be obtained.
It is worth noting that some functional areas such as exams and quizzes require
more system resources than others. Therefore, it is also important for customers
to identify the breakdown of how their users tend to utilize Blackboard Academic
Suite. In the benchmark tests that were conducted, the break down of activity
among the user sessions was simulated as follows:
• 32% reading or submitting content.
• 24% engaged in Discussion Boards.
• 16% taking exams or quizzes.
• 8% submitting assignments.
• 20% working in other areas such as Announcements, Calendar, Tasks,
Gradebook, and System Administration activities.
If this does not match the expected usage patterns in a customer environment,
configuration recommendations may need to be modified.
Application Tier
The application tier contains the Blackboard Academic Suite software and
Microsoft IIS Web server running on one or more Dell PowerEdge servers in a
virtualized environment. As described in Chapter 2, the virtualized application tier
January 2009 Page 10 Dell Reference Architectures
11. utilizes load balancing to distribute the user workload evenly across multiple
virtual machines.
Due to the virtualized nature of the application tier, the sizing recommendations
are based on the number of active sessions that can be managed by a single
virtual machine. The number of required VMs, and the required CPU and
memory capacity for the application tier is calculated based on the expected
number of active sessions.
Minimum and Optimal VM Configurations
In addition to the optimal configuration that is recommended, by Blackboard and
Dell, a minimum configuration has also been defined to provide some guidelines
for customers that may need to operate on more limited resources while
absorbing additional risk. The minimum configuration is more aggressive in terms
of minimizing cost per user while the optimal configuration provides more
potential for growth as well as greater buffer for unexpected peak usage. Table 3
shows a comparison of the recommended guidelines for a minimum versus
optimal configuration.
Minimum Optimal
Configuration Configuration
CPUs per VM 1 2
Memory per VM 3 GB 4 GB
Microsoft Windows Server Microsoft Windows Server
Operating System 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition
(32-bit) (32-bit)
Number of VMs
supported on a 16- 16 VMs 8 VMs
core server
Memory required to
support max VMs 48 GB 32 GB
on a 16-core server
Table 3: Configuring VMs in the Application Tier
Capacity of Minimum and Optimal VM Configurations
Benchmark tests revealed that optimum performance could be achieved on a
16-core Dell PowerEdge R900 server when 8 VMs were deployed. This resulted
in the definition of an optimal configuration as one that provides 2 CPU cores per
VM. This optimal configuration has been calibrated to support 750 to 1,000 active
1
sessions . If users are performing demanding operations such as concurrent
exams or quizzes, this number can certainly vary.
1
Benchmark tests indicated that the recommended configuration was able scale to 1,800 active
sessions per VM in a lab setting. Results will vary from institution to institution, but sizing for 750 to
1,000 active sessions per VM is considered a good general guideline for most institutions.
January 2009 Page 11 Dell Reference Architectures
12. The sizing guidelines in the remainder of this paper focus on the capacity of the
optimal configuration for each VM in the application tier. In general, the minimum
configuration should be expected to achieve something in the range of 50 to 75%
of the anticipated peak capacity of the optimal configuration. The minimum
configuration may also be able to achieve 750 to 1,000 active sessions, if, for
example, exams and quizzes are not being utilized.
By following the guidelines for memory and CPU resource requirements within a
VM, customers can mix and match different Dell servers within their architecture
to include any combination of blade servers or rack-mounted servers as long as
the CPU speed is comparable to that of the 2.93 GHz Xeon X7350 Quad Core
Processor used in the PowerEdge R900 servers in the benchmark tests.
Horizontal Scaling for Availability and Demand
Using the optimal sizing guideline of 1,000 active sessions per VM, it is easy to
size the application tier by simply dividing the expected number of concurrent
active sessions by 1,000 (use 750 if user workflows are more demanding). This
will provide the required number of VMs to yield the expected throughput. The
optimal number of CPU cores is simply twice the number of VMs and the number
of GBs of memory required is four times the number of VMs.
If a minimum configuration is desired, the number of CPU cores can be defined
as equal to the number of VMs. The number of GBs of memory required in the
minimum configuration is three times the number of VMs.
If 10,000 active sessions were expected at peak usage, the application tier
optimal configuration would consist of ten VMs deployed across a total of 20
CPU cores with 40 GB of total memory. These 20 cores could be spread across
any number of physical application servers or blades as long as each server or
blade were to include sufficient memory to allocate 4 GB of memory per VM.
Sample configurations for small, medium, and large campuses are shown in the
sizing summary section below.
Database Tier
The Microsoft SQL Server database is used to maintain user records and
indexes to application specific data such as course offerings, student profiles,
test results, etc. While the application tier uses a virtualized horizontally scaled
architecture, the database tier is not virtualized. In fact, the database itself
requires significant vertical scalability because a single large database instance
is used by all application tier components.
Tests conducted by Dell and Blackboard offer evidence that Microsoft SQL
Server can scale well beyond the needs of most Blackboard Academic Suite
customers.
Recommended Database Server
Blackboard and Dell recommend the Dell PowerEdge 2950 or Dell’s most
powerful Intel server, the Dell PowerEdge R900 server, as the hardware platform
for running Microsoft SQL Server in this architecture. These PowerEdge servers
offer the following advantages:
• Proven application performance with the Blackboard Academic Suite.
• Excellent price/performance.
• Ability to optimize the need for expansion capacity versus rack density.
January 2009 Page 12 Dell Reference Architectures
13. • Plenty of capacity for future growth with up to 24 CPU cores available in
the PowerEdge R900 server.
• Enterprise-class reliability features to help protect against unwanted
downtime.
Capacity Requirements for the Database Tier
The database server is optimized for 1,000 active sessions per CPU core. This
means that a 16-core Dell PowerEdge R900 server could handle 16,000 active
user sessions. Benchmark tests showed that the 16-core R900 server can
actually handle a load of beyond 30,000 active Blackboard user sessions, so the
recommendation of 1,000 active sessions per core leaves room for spikes in
demand and some room for growth.
For the Blackboard Academic Suite database, the most important performance
criterion is I/O throughput from the storage subsystem. The following section
provides more details on storage performance.
Storage Tier
The reference architecture provides a very flexible storage environment that can
utilize different types of storage solutions for different purposes. Blackboard and
Dell recommend different types of disk drives to serve the differing requirements
of the application tier and the database tier. Customers also have the option to
implement a storage area network (SAN) with dual connections to all servers and
storage devices for high availability.
The application tier uses the CIFS protocol to provide shared access to
networked storage resources. A Network Attached Storage (NAS) device such as
the Dell NX1950 (EqualLogic) gateway provides connectivity to the
Dell/EqualLogic PS5000E storage system. This allows the Blackboard Academic
Suite application to access the shared storage content regardless of which
physical server Blackboard Academic Suite is running on. While storage capacity
requirements for the application tier are significant, access speed is less
important, so 7.2K RPM SATA drives are recommended as the most cost-
effective way to meet the performance needs of the application tier.
The database tier requires high performance disk drives and a large number of
spindles in order to handle the high volume of I/O read requests from the SQL
Server database. Thus for database storage, it is recommended to use an iSCSI
storage array with 10K or 15K RPM SAS drives. The reference architecture
recommends the Dell/EqualLogic PS5000XV storage system, which offers both
the high performance of iSCSI and the ability to increase availability with a SAN
infrastructure. For the small and medium configurations, 10K RPM drives are
recommended and the large configuration should utilize 15K RPM drives to
deliver the high throughput required for that environment.
Storage Capacity
Storage at the application tier is primarily for the purpose of course and
institutional content. Storage capacity will vary by institution based on factors
such as data retention periods, user activity levels, and storage media types.
These factors should be taken into consideration to come up with appropriate
sizing recommendations for any institution. Based on historical client sampling,
Blackboard recommends an average storage requirement of 1 to 2 GB per user.
This accounts for personal and course-based multi-media content storage.
January 2009 Page 13 Dell Reference Architectures
14. Database storage capacity can also vary widely, but is generally in the range of
50 to 100 MB per user. This can be used as an estimate until more accurate
information about a customer's specific environment can be known.
Dell EqualLogic Storage Systems
Dell EqualLogic storage systems have been chosen because they offer
affordable enterprise-class iSCSI storage that is ideal for virtualized
environments such as the Dell reference architecture for Blackboard software.
Key advantages of Dell EqualLogic storage systems include:
• Fully virtualized SAN for fast deployment and simplified administration.
• Hypervisor-aware SAN-based snapshots and recovery simplifies data
protection.
• Automatic load-balancing and online volume migration for improved IT
responsiveness.
• Rapid deployment and provisioning.
• High performance with no tuning efforts.
• Seamless expandability as the Blackboard system implementation
grows.
• Optimized storage utilization.
January 2009 Page 14 Dell Reference Architectures
15. Section 4
Sizing Summary and Best Practices
Sizing Guidelines
The benchmark tests conducted in Dell’s labs provided a good baseline for
defining the conditions that result in optimal performance for Blackboard
Academic Suite and for defining specific configurations that can serve as a
baseline for meeting the performance and scalability needs of small, medium,
and large institutions.
Tests showed that optimal performance in the reference architecture could be
achieved when the following conditions are met:
• Application tier user sessions are load balanced across a number of
virtual machines and each VM is expected to serve no more than 1,000
active sessions at a time.
• Each VM deployed in the application tier has two processor cores and
4GB of memory allocated to it. (Note that the minimal configuration for a
VM is 1 processor core and 3GB of memory allocated, but optimal
throughput may not be reached with the minimal configuration.)
• The database server has at least one processor core per 1,000 active
sessions.
In addition to the above conditions for optimal performance, some guidelines
were established for sizing storage capacity. As mentioned earlier, storage
capacity requirements can vary widely between institutions because usage
patterns can vary widely. Thus it is best if the institution can take the time to
collect data about storage utilization of its own users. However, in the absence of
such detail, the following guidelines can provide a temporary starting point for
institutions:
• Application tier storage capacity can be estimated at 1TB per 5,000
users. Thus a community with a total user population of 25,000 would
require 5TB of storage for the application tier.
• Database storage capacity can be estimated at 200GB per 5,000 users.
Thus the same community of 25,000 users would require 1TB of storage
for the database tier.
January 2009 Page 15 Dell Reference Architectures
16. Sizing Summary
Table 4 shows recommended configurations three different sizes of institutions.
Small Institution Medium Institution Large Institution
Description
Configuration Configuration Configuration
User Community
1,000 to 10,000 10,000 to 50,000 50,000 to 100,000
Size (total users)
• 500 to 1,000 active • 1,000 to 5,000 active • 5,000 to 25,000 active
courses courses courses
Sizing
• Optimized for 4,000 • Optimized for 8,000 • Optimized for 16,000
Assumptions
active (concurrent) active (concurrent) active (concurrent)
sessions sessions sessions
Recommend either a bare Recommend either a bare
Recommend either a bare
metal architecture using metal architecture using
metal architecture using
Application Tier Dell M600 series blade Dell M600 series blade
Dell M600 series blade
Platform servers or a virtual servers or a virtual
servers or a virtual
Recommendations architecture using a Dell architecture using a Dell
architecture using the Dell
PowerEdge 2950 or R900 PowerEdge 2950 or R900
PowerEdge R900 server.
server. server.
2
• 4 VMs • 8 VMs • 24 VMs
• 8 Intel Xeon processor • 16 Intel Xeon processor • 48 Intel Xeon processor
cores cores cores
Application Tier • 16GB total memory • 32GB total memory • 96 GB total memory
Optimal
Configuration (Each VM supports 750 to (Each VM supports 750 to (Each VM supports 750 to
1,000 active sessions and 1,000 active sessions and 1,000 active sessions and
requires 2 CPU cores and 4 requires 2 CPU cores and 4 requires 2 CPU cores and 4
GB memory.) GB memory.) GB memory.)
Dell PowerEdge 2950 Dell PowerEdge R900 Dell PowerEdge R900
server server server
• 2 Intel Xeon processor • 16 Intel Xeon processor • 24 Intel Xeon processor
Database Tier cores cores cores
Configuration • 16 GB memory • 32 GB memory • GB memory
(Max capacity of 1,000 active (Max capacity of 1,000 active (Max capacity of 1,000 active
sessions per CPU core) sessions per CPU core) sessions per CPU core)
Dell EqualLogic Dell EqualLogic Dell EqualLogic
PS5000XV system for PS5000XV system for PS5000XV system for
database storage database storage database storage
• 4.8TB raw capacity • 4.8TB raw capacity • 7.2TB raw capacity
• 16 X 300GB 10K RPM • 16 X 300GB 10K RPM • 16 X 450GB 15K RPM
SAS drives SAS drives SAS drives
Dell EqualLogic PS 5000E Dell EqualLogic PS 5000E 2 X Dell EqualLogic PS
3
Storage Tier systems for app tier system for app tier storage 5000E systems for a total
storage • 12 TB total capacity of 24 TB of app tier
• 2 TB total capacity • 16 X 750GB 7.2K RPM storage
• 8 X 250GB 7.2K RPM SATA drives • 12 TB total capacity
SATA drives • 16 X 750GB 7.2K RPM
Dell EqualLogic NX1950 SATA drives
• Dell EqualLogic NX1950
server for NAS gateway
server for NAS gateway Dell EqualLogic NX1950
server for NAS gateway
Table 4: Sizing Guidelines for Blackboard Academic Suite
2
The large configuration has been sized with extra VMs in case total throughput of each VM is closer
to the low end of the expected range even though benchmark testing showed near linear scalability.
3
Note that storage needs vary by institution and the storage capacities shown in this table are only a
recommendation based on norms in the Blackboard user community.
January 2009 Page 16 Dell Reference Architectures
17. Configuration Best Practices
Overall performance and management efficiency can also be significantly
impacted by how the system is configured. Blackboard and Dell offer the
following guidelines for optimizing Blackboard Academic Suite software to run on
Dell servers and storage solutions:
• Blackboard content system files should be stored on a filer on the
network rather than in the local machine. This makes it easier to move
the Blackboard Academic Suite instances between servers in the
application tier without having to remount the file systems. This approach
saves time for administrators and can help avoid downtime.
• Database performance can be optimized by using separate drives for
different types of data stored in the database. There should be separate
drive(s) for the data files that comprise the database itself. Log files and
tempdb files should then be stored on other drives to reduce contention,
allowing these files to be read or written in parallel with database reads
and writes. This can help reduce I/O wait time.
The following chapter provides additional information about improving
performance and management efficiency through proper management of the
Blackboard Academic Suite environment.
January 2009 Page 17 Dell Reference Architectures
18. Section 5
Enabling Management Efficiency
Maintaining performance and availability of the Blackboard environment without
assigning a big IT staff requires having the right tools for efficient monitoring and
management. Quest Software provides all of the tools needed to simplify
administration, availability management, performance optimization, and capacity
planning. Quest Software and its subsidiary company, Vizioncore, provide all the
tools needed to simplify administration, availability management, performance
optimization, and capacity planning for both the underlying database and the
VMware ESX Server environment.
As illustrated in Figure 2, these Quest tools are integrated with VMware ESX
server and provide a management infrastructure that provides visibility across all
layers of the reference architecture.
Figure 2: Quest and Vizioncore Management Infrastructure Across All Layers
Centralized Administration
Today's IT organizations need an efficient means to assess and manage SQL
Server database instances and keep them performing well. SQL Server database
administrators (DBAs) must perform a diverse range of functions, often using a
January 2009 Page 18 Dell Reference Architectures
19. combination of tools such as SQL Server Management Studio and Visual Studio.
Since the Blackboard Academic Suite database will likely be only one of many
database instances that a single SQL Server DBA may be managing, it is
important to have tools that can make DBAs more productive and help improve
service levels.
Toad™ for SQL Server bridges the functionality gaps between Microsoft's SQL
Server Management Studio and Visual Studio and it does it all within a single
toolset that can be used to manage all critical aspects of the SQL Server
environment. The software includes administration tools to improve application
code quality and to help developers implement best practices and coding
standards. It is also designed to shorten the learning curve for new SQL Server
users. Users can access an online SQL Server knowledge base created and
moderated by industry experts at www.sqlserverpedia.com.
Centralized administration of the Dell reference architecture for Blackboard
software is also made easier with VMware Virtual Center, which is used for
provisioning virtual machines in the application tier. VMware Virtual Center is
used to create and deploy virtual machines as well as assign CPU and memory
resources during the setup process and for ongoing maintenance. It allows
administrators to quickly deploy virtual machines and easily move virtual
machines between physical servers.
Backup and Recovery
SQL Server backups must be performed quickly and efficiently while minimizing
the risk of data loss or lengthy downtimes during recovery. Quest offers two tools
that can help optimize backup and recovery processes for the database as well
as the virtualized infrastructure in the Blackboard application tier.
• LiteSpeed™ for SQL Server can help institutions reduce storage costs
and deliver SQL Server backup and recovery times that are up to 70
percent faster than with native tools. This low-impact, high-performance
compression tool gives administrators complete control over the backup
and recovery process and creates backup files that have compression
ratios of up to 95 percent.
• vRanger™ (Vizioncore) provides image-level hot backups while the
virtual machine is still running. Unlike agent-based backup solutions,
vRanger runs outside the guest OS and can be integrated with VMware
VirtualCenter and VCB. Thus the host system can continue to operate
without noticeable performance impact during backups. vRanger is also
VMotion aware, allowing it to follow virtual machines when moved to new
hosts so that changes to the environment do not affect system backups.
vRanger also supports Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) for
database consistency.
Performance Management
Consistent high service levels for Blackboard Academic Suite users can only be
achieved when administrators can effectively monitor and manage all
components and all layers of the system. Quest Software provides the following
tools to enable comprehensive performance management of the SQL Server
database and the virtualized environment of the application tier.
• Spotlight™ on SQL Server Enterprise Xpert is an easy-to-use
performance monitoring solution that can help administrators quickly and
January 2009 Page 19 Dell Reference Architectures
20. efficiently discover, diagnose, and resolve performance problems within
an SQL Server environment. Deep diagnostics enable quick identification
of the root cause of a performance bottleneck. SQL performance can be
optimized through detection of problematic SQL, automated SQL tuning
and benchmarking capabilities. Real-time alerts also allow administrators
to respond more quickly to performance problems.
• Foglight™ Performance Analysis for SQL Server provides detailed
historical and real-time analysis of performance issues. Its performance
management digital dashboard can help DBAs efficiently identify
performance issues and quickly isolate the root cause. Using Quest’s
proprietary StealthCollect™ technology, Foglight Performance Analysis
enables administrators to quickly correlate application SQL performance
with SQL Server and system resource consumption. The broad range of
advanced diagnostic features in Foglight Performance Analysis gives
DBAs comprehensive visibility as well as detailed granular views of
performance issues.
• vFoglight™ (Vizioncore) can be used to monitor the end-to-end
virtualized environment from the data center down to individual virtual
machines. It provides visibility into critical applications and can help
administrators reduce the mean-time-to-resolution for incidents and
problems because it exposes the relationships and interaction between
all components in the virtual environment.
Capacity Management
With fast growing application software such as Blackboard Academic Suite, it can
be difficult for administrators to stay on top of capacity requirements for disk
space and to fend off database performance issues.
Quest Capacity Manager for SQL Server provides an enterprise view of SQL
Server resource and storage utilization, allowing administrators to effectively plan
for future hardware requirements and ensure the most efficient use of existing
assets. It enables DBAs to better forecast their database capacity requirements
based on current growth rates of instances, databases, objects, CPU, memory,
and I/O. Capacity Manager also helps improve database performance through
intelligent defragmentation functionality. The index defragmentation process is
automated to ensure that it takes place during maintenance windows, thus
preventing this activity from competing for resources during peak hours.
January 2009 Page 20 Dell Reference Architectures
21. Section 6
Summary
Together, Dell, Blackboard and Quest have created a scalable reference
architecture that allows customers to achieve high service levels and predictable
performance with a cost-effective infrastructure. The architecture contains
multiple layers that contribute to the overall level of reliability and scalability. The
application tier provides application level clustering and load balancing support
across a virtualized infrastructure that enables very high system utilization. The
SQL Server database in Blackboard Academic Suite has been optimized for
higher performance and takes advantage of multi-core Dell servers and blades
as well as high performance iSCSI storage for higher throughput. As a result, the
database layer now scales to higher performance levels than were previously
achievable with Blackboard Academic Suite and SQL Server.
The end-to-end management infrastructure based on monitoring and
management tools from Quest Software can also help customers improve
service levels as well as management efficiency. It provides administrators with
effective tools that can simplify operational management and help improve the
performance of the VMware virtualized infrastructure on which the reference
architecture is based.
Institutions that utilize the reference architecture can benefit from:
• Reduced risk through proven reliability, scalability and performance
Scalability and performance has been proven in characterization tests in
Dell’s labs and all of the reference architecture components have been
proven to work together well. Management tools from Quest software
can also help customers reduce the risk of downtime by optimizing
performance and improving visibility throughout the system.
• Lower TCO
Dell PowerEdge servers and blade servers such as the M600 series offer
outstanding price/performance and allow customers to consolidate
multiple instances of Blackboard Academic Suite onto virtualized servers
for greater utilization of resources. The validated configurations
described in this guide also help avoid overprovisioning, allowing
customers to purchase the right size of system for their immediate needs
while providing the scalability for future needs. Management tools from
Quest also help keep administrative costs low by improving operational
efficiency.
• Investment protection
Because the reference architecture is based on Microsoft SQL Server
and the Windows operating system, it enables customers to leverage
their previous investments in their Microsoft infrastructure as well as their
in-house Microsoft expertise.
January 2009 Page 21 Dell Reference Architectures