Hi,
What sort of connection could i have between an application and a database server in a 3-tier architecture that wouldnt bring the performance down a lot? Right now i have both of them crosswired and achieve a 1Gbps connection. I ran a sequential dump of tables on both the 3-tier and a 2-tier environment and found out that the sesssion on the 3tier ran 45%(difference in completion time) slower in comparison. I am sure there will be some dip in performance but this was a bit too much. Therefore i am looking for an alternative connectivity options like perhaps.. SCSI..with details on its setup..



sk

Sukesh,

I remembered those days where I played lot with this kind of things, of course in my previous company.

AFAIK three-tiers are slower than two-tiers. But believe me three-tiers are best for finding and detecting what's going wrong there at App and Db side.

Sort of connection -

As I read your other post "Quickie" wherein you wrote you are using ODBC, but do you know its slow. Why not go for just TWO_TASK, not sure it works for MSSQL, I tried it on Oracle and it worked perfectly.

One more thing, achiving 1GBPS through crosscable just wont work, you have to fine and tune your application, also again not sure MSSQL support it or not.

Let me know, if you have any questions.

regards,

-Suhas

Hi Suhas,
We look at 3-tier as an integral part of our High Availability plan. Performance was always a trade-of when you think of moving over from 2-tier to 3-tier. But i am sure that there would be connectivity options that could come so close to a disk to disk operation which you find in a 2-tier architecture.

Regarding ODBC..since you already been to my other post "Quickie", which has outgrown its title though, you would know that out of the three connection options i had "BaanNet", "MSQL_SERVERHOST" and "ODBC" only the third one really worked...i havent tried BaanNet..I am still waiting for a response from Infor on a case i put regarding documentation(proper one) on 3-tier installation.

Finally, we are not going to stick with the 1Gbps crosswiring when we go live with this setup. It was just used as a temporary connection setup before we settle down with something more robust and performance oriented...Bottomline..we would like to provide high availability to our users and even tolerate a small performance dip but not to the extend that it stands out like the 45%.....

Have you heard of any SCSI to SCSI connection between app and db servers? How did you finally achieve a good connection between your app and db?

sk

Sukesh,

We look at 3-tier as an integral part of our High Availability plan.

Not sure how you will use 3-tier for High Availibility in terms of data refresh rate on both the server. But there are many options to achieve HA.

But i am sure that there would be connectivity options that could come so close to a disk to disk operation which you find in a 2-tier architecture.

I dont think disk to disk operation can be achieved in 3-Tiers. Are you talking about NAS/SAN/ Oracle RAC or common repository database etc. They are quite expensive solutions for huge databases and they are having their own limitations. Thats why we used Oracle's DataGuard Time-based, Log-based in my previous company.

Have you heard of any SCSI to SCSI connection between app and db servers?

No...I have not heard. But I heard IIT Kharagpur had developed this kind hardwares using IEEE standards.

How did you finally achieve a good connection between your app and db?


Like ODBC we used Oracles Net 8 to connect DB server and seems fast.

Just curious, Are both servers having same config?

regards,

-Suhas

Hi,
Since its been done on test servers they arent that similar neither are they far apart..DB server's a G5 ML370/Raid10/3.25gb/3.2GhzDual core Xeon while the APP servers a G3 ML370/Raid5/2GB/2.8Ghz Xeon. The OS and SQL are the same and as you might have guessed the hardware's from HP.
There is some misunderstanding which i want to clear as far as my previous post is concerned. What i meant by achieving a disk to disk operation in a 3-tier is to do with speed at which transactions are entered into the DB Server. If i had the two servers connected through some sort of SCSI connectivity option(which my HA solution provider promises) then i can achieve a speed thats similar to a disk to disk operation speed..

As of now the two machines are connected through crosswiring giving a speed of 1Gbps. In comparison to a disk to disk speed, it was just about 45% slower(figure arrived through).

sk

Ask your solution provider to show demo. Normally it happens hardware seller promises anything.

Also check with EMC2 (EMC square), they are having this kind of solution.

regards,

-Suhas

The solution provider that promised us that sort of connectivty is infact EMC..

sk