Chip,

     System tuning is somewhat of a black art, but I have to agree with you
     that the current parameters set on your 995-500 seem out of whack to
     me too.  Your current environment has all three queues embedded into
     one another rather than overlapping one another or entirely separate from
     one another.  And with the queue quantum all set at the same low value, you
     are not getting any performance benefit for the different types (i.e.
     sessions or batch) of work that the computer is processing.

     This setup could be a major cause of your loader problems and erratic
     response times.  With such low quantum values, your computer is probably
     thrashing processes in and out of memory with very little time left to do
     any useful work.  Furthermore, I doubt that HP "recommended" your current
     system settings since they represent everything you are NOT supposed to do
     with system queue settings as I remember this subject being taught in their
     System Manager's course.

     My 959KS/300 system is tuned using the values below:

                         ------QUANTUM-------
     QUEUE  BASE  LIMIT  MIN    MAX    ACTUAL  BOOST  TIMESLICE
     -----  ----  -----  ---    ---    ------  -----  ---------
      CQ    152    202   1      200    8       DECAY    200
      DQ    198    212   200    200    200     OSC      200
      EQ    206    224   500    500    500     DECAY    200

     The above setup favors my 425-450 on-line users for interactive sessions in
     a MRP II environment.  But it also allows for timely batch performance in
     the "DQ" since I have overlapped it a little with the "CQ" and I also
     oscillated this queue.  My "EQ" is basically "no-man's land", but it too is
     overlapped a little with the "DQ".  I use it for any job that I really
     don't care how long it takes to complete.  My users enjoy sub-second
     response time more than 95% of the time regardless of workload mix using
     the above settings on my machine.

     I use the exact same settings on my recovery provider's computer which is a
     995-400 and I haven't experienced any erratic performance problems with it
     during my live recovery tests.  As always, your mileage may vary!!

     Just my thoughts on the subject,

     John Hornberger
     Sr. Systems Programmer / HP Platform Manager
     General Signal Services
     [log in to unmask]


______________________________ Original Message Follows ______________________

Subject: Seeking opinions on TUNEing
Author:  ChipDorm <[log in to unmask]> at Internet2
Date:    3/12/97 12:43 AM


I need some opinions.  During my career I have done some
processor schedule tuning on single processor 3000s.  The
current machine I am on has the tuning set this way:

                    ------QUANTUM-------
QUEUE  BASE  LIMIT  MIN    MAX    ACTUAL  BOOST  TIMESLICE
-----  ----  -----  ---    ---    ------  -----  ---------
 CQ    152    202   30     30     30      DECAY    200
 DQ    170    202   30     30     30      DECAY    200
 EQ    158    202   30     30     30      DECAY    200

HPCPUNAME = SERIES 995-500


I don't pretend to be any sort of expert here but this really
looks odd to me.  I have no access to be able to alter the
tuning, and the people who are responsible for this machine
say that this is the setting that HP recommended. {8-0

The response from the 3000 is at times poor, having long loader
times ( > 30 secs) and even longer file access problems.  There
are typically 650 user processes at any given time and most are
active.

Does this processor tuning look OK to y'all.  If so why or why
not?

Oddly, GLANCE does not seem to show that there are any problems.
Is it possible that GLANCE has a problem in a multiple-processor
machine?


Chip "I-Hate-Internal-Politics" Dorman