Serious Thread about Server side processing and Wan performance

[genevieve charbon]

Hi,

I propose this thread to gather all tips regarding proper coding for maximising performance on WAN with FM8 server.

For starters I'd like to know all the script steps, the king of fields, variables, all the things that the FM8 server can process itself server side ?

What should we avoid to minimise chat between client and server ?

[Wim Decorte]

WAN is not the same as WEB of course. A WAN connection typically implies connecting with regular FM Pro but from outside the LAN. In this scenarion FM8 Server can & will do some calculations just like with a normal LAN connection. How and what is not very well described by FMI, but you'll find some info in the FMI Knowledge Base.

A Web connection has 4 components:

- the client's browser

- the web server (with FM's web server module)

- the FM Web Publishing Engine (WPE)

- filemaker server

FileMaker server does not do more or less work in this scenario compared to regular LAN traffic. It's the web server and the WPE that take on the extra work. Think of the WPE as a copy of FMP that receives the requests from the client through the web server and executes them against FMS.

The WPE does all the work a normal copy of FMP does, with some limitations like only being able to execute web compatible script steps.

Your choice of web publishing technology (XSLT, PHP, ASP, Ruby,...) and your profiency in it dictates what is processed on the client or web server.

All FMSA requests act on a layout, so make sure that you make or use layouts that contain just the information you need to work on for the web request at hand. Otherwise you'll be sending info on and the data in those unnecessary fields with each request. Be especially careful with portals on your layout in this context.

Edited September 27, 2006 by Guest

[genevieve charbon]

I Know the difference between WAN and Web, and I'd like to keep focus on the thread of WAN.

I do understand that WAN is same as LAN, but its leser speed makes optimization more vital. Moreover a good WAN optimisation will lead to faster LAN operation also.

Thanks for the layout tip though. I already made the mistake of trageting a layout with many relationship and performances was awfull, after targeting another optimized layout it was much faster.

Anything else ?

[Steven H. Blackwell]

WAN performance will be influenced by a number of factors as Wim points out. Here are a few more:

Robustness of the Server hardware, including most significantly the hard disk subassembly.

Robustness of the workstation, including processor and memory. Also amount of free hard disk space.

Bandwidth of the WAN connection. but more impotantly, the latency of that circuit.

Solution architecture.

HTH.

Steven

[genevieve charbon]

Today I did some test. I've exported to xml 140 records (with 30 fileds). This export is very intensive as each records have many related fields, sometime with unstored calcs.

Server is 8.0v4, Windows 2003, Dual Xeon 2.8 (not core duo, the older one), Gigabit ethernet.

Client is dual 2.5Ghz G5 Mac.

To do the export with server-client it takes 627 seconds (down to 662s thanks to a minimalist layout).

If I take the database locally on the G5, it takes 254 seconds.

With the client server CPU usage on the server is never more than 25%, bandwith usage is 20KB/s, CPU usage on the G5 client is below 10%. Averall data exchanged is less than 16MB

-> CPU horsepower is unrelevant over the LAN, LAN throughput also (for this type of things of course).

Locally processing the file on G5 leads to a 100% CPU usage.

Here, latency seems to be the problem. Anyone using FMS on a infinaband network ? :-)

This is a total waste of ressource that of course pisses me a lot, why not just ask the server to do the work and send me the result when finished ?

FMSA definetely needs an headless client version integrated in it to do those kind of scripts.

A solution would be to run a client on the same machine as the server, but since I need that script to be followed by a mac only script that's not possible.

Unless someones figures out a way to launch a script on another FMP client trigered by another FMP client on the network (cross platform, PC then Macs).

[Wim Decorte]

Your test is flawed... the export of course happens on the client and the client must have had most of the data in its own cache which would explain the low bandwidth usage.

Not sure how you would do an export server side. Would open up all sorts of security problems in figuring out how to transfer the exported file from the server to the client.

[Steven H. Blackwell]

FMSA definetely needs an headless client version integrated in it to do those kind of scripts.

A solution would be to run a client on the same machine as the server, but since I need that script to be followed by a mac only script that's not possible.

Unless someones figures out a way to launch a script on another FMP client trigered by another FMP client on the network (cross platform, PC then Macs).

Exported from where to where? Server side scripting certainly has been discussed before. Introducing it into the FMS environment will require a major architectural rework of most systems. That said; it could be done.

There is a plug-in that launches scripts across machines. I believe it's from Troi, but I am not sure.

You do not want to run the FMP client on the same machine as FMS at the same time.

Steven

[genevieve charbon]

I'd be very happy if my client had the data in its cache (which is 223MB, enough to contain the whole DB), but if that's the case, why is it 3 times slower than if the files are local.

[Steven H. Blackwell]

I'd be very happy if my client had the data in its cache (which is 223MB

Is this client side cache or server side? If client side, that strikes me as a very high and unstable amount.

Steven

[genevieve charbon]

It's both on the client and on the server.

[genevieve charbon]

I di som other benchmarks yesterday I've run a client which is on the server (which is dual processor by the way).

I got 540 seconds, not really better than the 630 I got from a networked client.

The CPU usage on the server (running server and client) only 20-30%.

So I guess I'll never have good performance for that export, except if I run it locally.

Why isn't it faster, what's FMS is doing, we can't blame network speed here.

[Genx]

Thanks for the useful info on WAN performance guys!

[angelleye]

I would check out this thread on the matter:

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/180924/tp/3/

I've finally gotten FileMaker to acknowledge the problem and they say they're working on it now.