Welcome to BK’s IT Performance Assurance Pages

This section of the site provides details of my IT book Performance Assurance for IT Systems, plus significant additional free material.

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Performance Assurance - Summary of Additional Material By Month

Performance Assurance for IT Systems weighs in at 376 pages, consisting of ~108K words with over 100 diagrams. The additional draft material that you will find on this site is currently ~42K words with 37 diagrams and two spreadsheets (a soft copy of the rudimentary hardware sizing approach which is described in the book, plus a performance risk assessment utility).

For the moment I have ceased to add regular bi-monthly material that is solely based on my own ideas. While I may add items sporadically, I will concentrate on covering topics that are requested by readers and visitors to the site. If you have any ideas for topics that you would like to see covered here then please contact me by e-mail to discuss them.

November 2007

· TPC-E, new OLTP benchmark which replaces TPC-C, plus the announcement of other new benchmarks

· Changes to taster observations - Details of (and observations on) server announcements in the second half of 2007

· Version 1.1 of performance risk assessment utility (2007 chip announcements supported plus move to SPEC2006).

July 2007

· Changes to taster observations - Details of (and observations on) server announcements in the first half of 2007.

It was my intention at this time to provide support in the performance risk assessment utility for the new systems that have been announced in 2007. However, the delay in AMD’s announcement of Barcelona, their quad core chip, means that I will not now do this until after the announcement (probably around October time).

February 2007

• Changes to taster observations - Update on Intel and AMD Server Chips and Chipsets and Multi-Core CPU Chips to incorporate the latest information on Intel's quad core CPUs.
• Performance Assurance: A Cynic's Brief Collection of Dos and Don'ts. This is a bite-sized 5-pager that is only of interest to individuals who have not read the book

October 2006

• Enhanced version (V1.0) of the performance risk assessment utility
• a new taster observation,Update on Intel and AMD Server Chips and Chipsets

September 2006

• a new taster observation,Multi-core Chips (quads and above)
• additional observation for part 1, new SPEC CPU benchmark (CPU2006)

May 2006

• spreadsheet utility to assist in assessing performance risk on a proposed project at the bid or feasibility stage
• V0.2 of the taster, Server Consolidation: Virtualisation and Other Partitioning Techniques including more on IA32-based VMMs
• changes to the observations on Dual Core Processor Chips, including some thoughts on their current performance
• cosmetic changes to the downloadable spreadsheet version of the hardware sizing example in the book.

December 2005

• a new taster, Simultaneous Multi-Threading
• a new taster observation IO Interconnect Technologies: PCI Express, HyperTransport, and RapidIO

November 2005

• a new taster, Portals
• minor modification to the taster, Cluster Interconnect Technologies
• a new taster observation More on storage: Infiniband-based SANs
• a new taster observation Dual Core Processor Chips
• Benchmarking Tricks Of The Trade - Vertical Scaling, an additional observation that applies to part one of the book.

September 2005

• a new taster, Uses Of Cluster Interconnects: Distributed Shared Memory Systems, Computing Clusters and Cluster Filesystems / Databases
• More on IP storage: FCIP and iFCP
• Bid Consortia, an additional observation that applies to part one of the book.

July 2005

• a new taster, Cluster Interconnect Technologies.
• a new taster observation iSCSI and IP-based SANs
• one additional observation that applies to part one of the book (Technology Associations and Forums).

May 2005

• a new taster, Bandwidth Management
• a new taster observation – Intel/AMD confusion between 32-bit, "partial 64-bit", and 64-bit systems
• various additional observations that apply to part one of the book ("equal performance for a fraction of the price?" and "procurements: five minutes to midnight and time for a different solution")

March 2005

• a new taster, Hyper-Threading on SMP Systems
• various additional observations that apply to part one of the book (volumetrics "by numbers", working with limited user volumetrics, sizing for a technical refresh and production planning)
• chapter 1, Preparing for The Challenge of Performance Assurance for IT Systems can be downloaded.

January 2005

• a new taster, Thin Client Technology for Windows-based Systems
• a brief paper - some of the foibles of performance monitors
• various additional observations that apply to part one of the book (logon performance, sizing reviews)

November 2004

• a new taster, Server Consolidation: Virtualisation and Other Partitioning Techniques
• example downloadable checklist for the evaluation of stress testing tools
• various additional observations that apply to part one of the book (benchmarking, sizing information, and hardware sizing)

October 2004 Downloadable spreadsheet version of the hardware sizing example in the book.

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