Mission-critical HP-UX 11i v2 WebSphere Reference Architecture White Paper

Transcription

1 Mission-critical HP-UX 11i v2 WebSphere Reference Architecture White Paper Designed for WebSphere Application Server 5.1, Oracle 9i and 10g for HP 9000 Servers Table of Contents Executive Summary... 2 Architectural Design and Configuration... 3 Software Infrastructure... 3 Hardware Infrastructure... 3 Test Results... 3 Application Stack Integration... 3 High-Availability... 4 Recommendations... 7 Oracle 10g Performance Tuning... 7 Disregard Installation Warnings... 7 Appendix A Hardware Environment... 8 HP Server rp8400 for Oracle Database... 8 WebSphere Application Servers... 8 Web Servers... 8 Appendix B Software Environment... 9 Database Server... 9 WebSphere Application Servers... 9 WebSphere Network Deployment Servers... 9 Web Servers Load Generation Call to action FIGURE 1. ONE-HOUR ENDURANCE TEST - HITS PER SECOND/RESPONSE TIME... 4 FIGURE 2. WEBSPHERE CLUSTER SERVER INSTANCE FAILOVER TEST - HITS PER SECOND/RESPONSE TIME... 5 FIGURE 3. DATABASE UNPLANNED FAILOVER TEST WITH A SYSTEM RESET - HITS PER SECOND/RESPONSE TIME... 5 FIGURE 4. DATABASE PLANNED FAILOVER TEST WITH SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE - HITS PER SECOND/RESPONSE TIME... 6

2 Executive Summary The Virtual Server Environment Reference Architecture described in this white paper centers around the HP-UX 11i v2 operating environments, HP 9000 Servers, WebSphere Application Server 5.1, and Oracle 9i/10g. The primary focuses of the testing efforts were to validate the integration of the entire application stack and to verify the high availability characteristics of the infrastructure. The testing efforts documented in this paper can be divided into the following categories. Software Stack Integration Testing High Availability Testing The software stack integration testing successfully verified that all of the hardware and software components could be installed and configured in order to construct a fully functional application stack. The Virtual Server Environment components that were utilized in this stage of testing included hard partitions (npars) and Serviceguard. Upcoming testing will involve additional VSE components such as virtual partitions and Instant Capacity. The high-availability testing successfully validated the fault tolerance capabilities of the reference architecture. In this particular environment, HP Serviceguard and Oracle Database 9i/10g was implemented at the database tier and WebSphere clustering was implemented at the application tier. A series of planned and unplanned failovers were performed against Serviceguard/Oracle and WebSphere in order to validate the integration of the high availability components. In all cases, the synergistic technologies provided effective fault tolerance and high availability of the entire application stack. In summary, the testing efforts validated the following: Successful integration and deployment of the complete application stack Demonstrated stability with a one-hour application stack endurance test Verified high-availability of the application infrastructure Test Clients Web Servers rp2450 HP-UX Apache Server rp2450 IBM Power Apache Server Deployment Manager Application Servers L2000 rp8420 rp8420 DB Servers rp8400 HP Storage Works rp8400 Topology Diagram 2

3 Architectural Design and Configuration Software Infrastructure The main goal of this white paper is to illustrate that WebSphere Application Server can be successfully integrated and deployed within the HP-UX 11i v2 Operating Environments on HP 9000 servers. Also, the combination of WebSphere with other best of breed software components such as HP Serviceguard, HP-UX Apache-based Web Server, and Oracle Database Server provides for a highly-available, scalable, and reliable multi-tier application environment. The software components in this particular reference architecture are as follows: HP-UX 11i v2 Operating Environments HP-UX Apache-based Web Server HP Serviceguard WebSphere Application Server 5.1 IBM Power Apache Server Oracle Database 9i and 10g The Trade3 application was used to validate the integration and operation of the software stack. Trade3 is IBM s end-to-end performance application which encompasses the J2EE environment. Hardware Infrastructure The test environment is a multi-tier architecture consisting of a mixture of HP-UX PA-RISC servers, storage devices, and network devices. This architecture is built to closely model how actual customers utilize the hardware and software components in their own environments. Database Servers: An HP Server rp8400 was configured with two hard partitions in a Serviceguard cluster configuration running both Oracle 9i and 10g. An HP SureStore XP512 disk array was used as shared storage. Application Servers: An HP Server rp8420 was configured with two hard partitions. The two partitions created a highly available application cluster running WebSphere Application Server 5.1. Web Servers: Two HP Server rp2450s were utilized at the web server tier. One server ran HP-UX Apache-based Web Server and the other ran IBM Power Apache Server. Test Results The goals of the WebSphere testing were to verify the integration of all of the hardware and software components and to validate the effectiveness of the high-availability mechanisms at the database and application server tiers. Application Stack Integration The application stack integration test involved building the entire infrastructure from the bottom up. The HP-UX 11i v2 Operating Environment served as the base operating system across all servers in the reference architecture. HP Serviceguard, Oracle Database 9i, Oracle Database 10g, WebSphere Application Server 5.1, HP-UX Apache-based Web Server, and IBM Power Apache Server were all successfully installed and configured in the HP-UX 11i v2 Operating Environments. In order to validate the integration of the entire application stack and to assess its stability, a one hour endurance test was performed with a mixture of both SSL and non-ssl transactions. This test involved a sustained load of over 600 hits per second. Figure 1 displays the hits per second and transaction response times for the one-hour endurance test. 3

4 Figure 1. One-Hour Endurance Test - Hits per second/response Time High-Availability High-availability of a complex application infrastructure is often a principal design issue. In this particular architecture, both the application and database server tiers provided high-availability by eliminating single points of failure. At the database tier, HP Serviceguard managed a two-node cluster with Oracle Database 9i/10g. At the application tier, WebSphere clustering was used to create a two-node WebSphere application cluster. In order to assess the high-availability characteristics of the reference architecture, various failover scenarios were performed while the application stack was under sustained load. The failover scenarios involved shutting down a WebSphere cluster server instance and ensuring that the remaining server instance was able to service incoming requests. Similarly, various planned and unplanned failovers were performed at the database layer to validate the redundancy of the second database server. All test scenarios passed successfully, thereby validating the high-availability and fault tolerance of the application infrastructure. The results are summarized in the following table: Description WebSphere Cluster Server Instance Failover Oracle Database Planned Failover (command: shutdown immediate ) Oracle Database Unplanned Failover (command: shutdown abort ) Oracle Database Unplanned Failover (system reset/restart of one node) Pass/Fail PASS PASS PASS PASS WebSphere Application Server High-Availability Figure 2 depicts the throughput and response time of the application stack during the WebSphere cluster server instance failover test. After the load was ramped up to over 600 hits per second, one of the WebSphere cluster server instances was shutdown. At this point, the remaining WebSphere server instance was able to manage all incoming requests with minimal impact to both throughput and response time. 4

5 Figure 2. WebSphere Cluster Server Instance Failover Test - Hits per second/response Time Oracle Database High-Availability Figure 3 illustrates a database failover scenario where the server running the active database instance was unexpectedly reset/rebooted. This test case simulates a catastrophic system failure at the database tier. A similar situation could occur as a result of a power failure or system panic. In this case, Serviceguard successfully detected the node failure and operations were properly migrated to the second database instance. When the primary database instance was restarted, Serviceguard migrated the package from the secondary node back to the primary. Even though there were brief performance disruptions when the failovers occurred, the infrastructure provided a level a fault tolerance and quickly recovered from the unexpected malfunction. Figure 3. Database Unplanned Failover Test with a system reset - Hits per second/response Time 5

6 Figure 4 illustrates the planned failover scenario which was less disruptive than the reset test. The shutdown immediate command was issued to halt the database package on the active node. The unplanned failover scenario provided similar results. In both test cases, the Serviceguard database package was properly migrated to the standby node with minimal impact to application throughput and transaction response time. Figure 4. Database Planned Failover Test with shutdown immediate - Hits per second/response Time 6

7 Recommendations Based on our experience with integrating and validating the Virtual Server Environment Reference Architecture, the following recommendations can be made for those who plan to implement similar application architectures. Oracle 10g Performance Tuning During the course of integration testing, it was observed that the CPU utilization steadily increased over time. As a result, application throughput decreased and response time increased. In order to eliminate this problem, issue the following commands after loading the trade3 schema for the trade user: % sqlplus trade_username/trade_user_password SQL> execute DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SCHEMA_STATS('trade_username'); PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL>exit These commands will gather statistics for the tables and indexes which will allow the Oracle Cost Based Optimizer (CBO) to generate accurate execution plans for queries. Once these accurate statistics are gathered, CPU utilization should remain stable over time. Disregard Installation Warnings Two warning messages appeared during the installation procedure when using WebSphere 5.1. Both were due to the fact that HP-UX 11i v2 is a relatively new release version which has not yet been properly integrated into the WebSphere and Oracle installation scripts. Both warnings can be safely ignored. The WebSphere warning was as follows: Operating System Level Check A supported operating system was not detected. Installation may not be successful The Oracle warning message was as follows: Starting Oracle Universal Installer... Checking installer requirements... Checking operating system version: must be B Actual B Failed <<<< >>> Ignoring required pre-requisite failures. Continuing... In both cases, the installation was successful and the applications functioned as expected. Please note that these warning messages appeared while installing WebSphere 5.1. Installation testing with WebSphere 6.1 succeeded without error. 7

8 Appendix A Hardware Environment HP Server rp8400 for Oracle Database A single 8-way HP Server rp8400 was configured into two hardware partitions to host the database servers. Partition Number of CPUs Memory GBytes Server Description Comment /800/S16K-A 875 MHz PA /800/S16K-A 875 MHz PA-8800 Oracle DB server 1 Oracle DB server 2 WebSphere Application Servers A single 8-way HP Server rp8420 was configured into two hardware partitions to host the WebSphere Application Servers Partition Number of CPUs Memory GBytes Server Description Comment /800/rp GHz PA /800/rp GHz PA-8800 WebSphere server 1 WebSphere server 2 An HP Server L2000 was also utilized as the network deployment server for WebSphere Server Description Number of CPUs Memory GBytes Comment 9000/800/L Network Deployment Server Web Servers Two HP Server rp2450s were used to host the web servers. Server Description Number of CPUs Memory GBytes Comment rp2450 (9000/800/A500) 550 MHz PA-8700 rp2450 (9000/800/A500) 550 MHz PA HP-UX Apache-based Web Server 2 2 IBM Power Apache Server 8

9 Appendix B Software Environment Database Server HPUX11i-OE-MC B B3901BA C B3913DB C T1456AA T1457AA Oracle 9i Database Oracle10g Database HP-UX Mission Critical Operating Environment Component HP C/ANSI C Developer s Bundle for HP-UX 11i (S800) HP ac++ Compiler (S800) Java2 1.4 SDK for HP-UX (700/800) Java2 1.4 RTE for HP-UX (700/800) Oracle 9i Database Oracle10g Database , Enterprise Edition WebSphere Application Servers HPUX11i-OE-Ent B WSBAA MQSERIES B HP-UX Enterprise Operating Environment Component WebSphere Application Server WebSphere MQ WebSphere SDK WEMP B gsk7bas IBMHTTPServer Oracle10g Client WebSphere Embedded Messaging Publish and Subscribe Edition IBM gsk7 RUNTIME KIT IBM Power Apache Server Oracle10g Client WebSphere Network Deployment Servers HPUX11i-OE-Ent B WSNAA HP-UX Enterprise Operating Environment Component WebSphere Network Deployment 9

10 MQSERIES B WebSphere MQ WebSphere SDK Web Servers HP-UX Apache-Based Web Server HPUX11i-OE B HpuxwsApache B gsk7bas HP-UX Foundation OE HP-UX Apache-based Web Server IBM gsk7 RUNTIME KIT IBM Power Apache Server HPUXi-OE B IBMHTTPServer gsk7bas HP-UX Foundation OE IBM Power Apache Server IBM gsk7 RUNTIME KIT Load Generation LoadRunner 7.8 Mercury Interactive Load Runner 10

11 Call to action Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Itanium is a trademark or registered trademark of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries and is used under license. 11