[Hidden-tech] finding systems to test on

[Daniel Fried]

Thanks Chris, several people have recommended similar approaches.

Unfortunately, our data is covered under HIPAA laws, and there is no way we
can use a shared infrastructure.  As such, I am concerned that as I try to
benchmark for future needs, I would not be able to get a true test that
would help me gauge what system characteristics I need to look at.

-Dan

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 1:04 PM, Chris Hoogendyk <hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>wrote:

>
>
> Daniel Fried wrote:
>
>> I have a resource intensive application that I need to test for
>> performance scaling with hardware, specifically I want to be able to get a
>> better idea of where my bottlenecks are by testing the application on
>> systems with faster processors/more cores and database performance with
>> faster drives.
>>
>> Can anyone give me some ideas on where I might be able to find some
>> systems I can test on?  I have a .Net application that talks to a MySQL
>> database.  The current dev and qa systems require Windows for the
>> application, but can run MySQL on either Windows (same or different system)
>> or Linux.
>>
>> Any help would be appreciated.
>>
>
> One of the major points that was made at the Cloud Camp yesterday (by the
> folks from TNR Global, who, I believe, were using the Amazon cloud services)
> was that it made prototyping and testing incredibly easy and cost effective.
> One of their guys described building out a significant sized virtual cluster
> to test disaster recovery. Once the test was completed, the whole system
> could be torn down. Since there were no physical machines to be spec'ed out,
> purchased, set up, configured, etc., the whole process could be done in the
> same day, and the cost was just the cost of the resources used that day.
>
> This would give you the flexibility of doing tests on variable sized
> virtual instances. You could run a test today with specifications for number
> of compute units, memory and disk size. Using those results you might
> continue your development, tweak your settings, and then next week run
> another test with a virtual machine specified to twice that number of
> compute units, memory, etc. In the time between now and then there are no
> physical machines hanging around and no cost.
>
> Since I haven't done it myself, I can't tell you the cost, and the guy from
> TNR Global didn't say what their costs were. Only that they were extremely
> affordable and almost nothing compared to the alternative of setting up real
> physical machines. So, you'll have to look into the costs for yourself to
> know if it works for you.
>
>
> --
> ---------------
>
> Chris Hoogendyk
>
> -
>  O__  ---- Systems Administrator
>  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
> (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
> ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst
> <hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>
>
> ---------------
> Erdös 4
>
>
>
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