acceleration performance tests for ibm rational clearcase ... clearcase... · white paper page 1...

White Paper

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November 2008

Acceleration Performance Tests for IBM Rational ClearCaseRemote Client (CCRC)

Conducted by Certeon for IBM Ready for Rational CCRC Certification

Table of Contents

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Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................................................3

Introduction ..........................................................................................................................................................................3

The Impact of the WAN on Remote Application Access ....................................................................................4

aCelera Virtual Appliance for Application Acceleration ....................................................................................4

Certeon CCRC Performance Tests ................................................................................................................................6

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................16

References............................................................................................................................................................................16

Certeon AccelerationPerformance Testsfor IBM RationalClearCase RemoteClient (CCRC)

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Executive SummaryIBM® Rational® ClearCase® is an industry-leading software configuration management (SCM) solution thatimproves productivity by providing sophisticated version control, work space management, parallel develop-ment support and build auditing. It is typical for developers using IBM Rational ClearCase to be geographicallydistributed, working remotely either in small branch offices or from home. The IBM Rational ClearCase Remote Client (CCRC) allows remote developers to connect to distributed ClearCase databases and performall SCM-related operations remotely; however, wide area network (WAN) latency can negatively impact application response time for operations that modify and transfer files across the WAN. This can result in lostproductivity and higher development costs. For mission-critical applications such as IBM Rational ClearCase,alleviating the performance degradation of both unsecured and secure content over the WAN is imperative.

This white paper discusses the demonstrable response time performance gains that can be achieved by theIBM Rational ClearCase application suite when used with Certeon’s aCelera Virtual Appliance for ApplicationAcceleration software. The performance tests discussed in this document were conducted by Certeon for the Ready for Rational CCRC Certification effort. The testing scenarios illustrate an improvement of up to 93 percent in CCRC response time.

This paper also provides an overview of Certeon’s aCelera software and its unique Application AccelerationBlueprint for IBM Rational ClearCase. It discusses Certeon’s Secure Acceleration Technology (SAT), whichallows Certeon to effectively accelerate encrypted SSL traffic over the WAN without compromising dataintegrity.

Key findings from these performance tests:

• Certeon speeds CCRC performance up to 93 percent.

• CCRC performance with aCelera improves as documents increase in size.

• CCRC performance with Certeon is consistent as the number of users increases.

IntroductionThis technical white paper describes the impact of the WAN on the performance of centralized virtual applications, as experienced by remote office users. It also introduces Certeon’s aCelera Virtual Appliance (VA)for Application Acceleration software, the first and only true virtual appliance to improve remote applicationperformance for encrypted and unencrypted WAN traffic.

Specifically, the paper describes how aCelera software improves remote application and file access responsetime using Application Acceleration Blueprints for IBM Rational CCRC. Actual results of testing were completedby Certeon using IBM Rational Performance Tester Agent to illustrate how aCelera can improve CCRC remoteresponse time by up to 93 percent.

Certeon AccelerationPerformance Testsfor IBM RationalClearCase RemoteClient (CCRC)

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The Impact of the WAN on Remote Application AccessMore and more enterprises are consolidating application and file resources and services at the data center in order to manage costs and maintain control of management and security. As consolidation moves data and applications away from remote office users, one of the largest groups of consumers of these resources,those users must carry out their daily work by accessing these services remotely over the WAN.

The negative effect of the WAN on application performance has long been recognized. This negative effect has roots in the generally inferior characteristics of these long-range networks, as compared to the 100- or 1,000-mbps LAN networks deployed locally within a corporate office or campus.

These poor WAN characteristics include:

• Limited bandwidth: less than 1 to 10’s mbps

• Latency: 10’s to 100’s ms

Depending on the protocol or application running between the remote office and the data center, the WANcan significantly impact performance. Some protocols, such as FTP or HTTP, suffer mainly from bandwidth limitations, especially when they are used to transfer large files. Chattier protocols such as CIFS, which provides file-sharing services, are sensitive to both limited bandwidth and high latency on the WAN, and suffer even poorer performance. Increasingly, IT managers are addressing WAN issues by adopting acceleration appliances. These appliances traditionally are repackaged server computers containing proprietary software for acceleration. Deployed both in the data center and in remote office locations, theywork together to intercept traffic flows between remote office workers and data center servers and to performoperations that accelerate these flows. They typically perform some or all of the following operations:

• Data compression and de-duplication

• Protocol optimization

• TCP optimization

• Traffic prioritization or shaping

If implemented correctly in the acceleration appliance, these techniques can mitigate the WAN effect and significantly improve the performance of consolidated applications accessed by remote office users. Certeon’saCelera Virtual Appliance software is the first and only true virtual appliance to deliver these applicationacceleration techniques without the need for proprietary hardware.

aCelera Virtual Appliance for Application Acceleration Certeon’s aCelera is the first virtual appliance software to run natively within a virtual machine (VM) infra-structure and to provide true application acceleration across the WAN. aCelera software delivers the samereduction in application response time as its proprietary hardware appliance counterparts do, with the addedbenefit of eliminating the hardware footprint and high cost of separately managed, single-purpose boxes.

aCelera Virtual Appliance software runs on industry-standard x86 system platforms and can be deployed easily in a data center and sent to remote sites within either virtualized or nonvirtualized environments.aCelera supports Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX and ESXi hypervisors. Users can request that Certeon preconfigure aCelera software on a Dell server, enabling IT managers to deploy anout-of-the-box aCelera Physical Appliance to remote users who currently do not have a server running in their branch office.

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The acceleration, virtualization, and manageability benefits of aCelera application acceleration enable IT managers to deploy virtualized applications to remote branch offices easier, faster, and at a lower cost, bringing greater productivity to all their users.

Application Acceleration Blueprint for CCRC

Certeon’s Application Acceleration Blueprints, which are embedded in the aCelera Virtual Appliance software,understand application protocols and semantics with greater accuracy than traditional packet compressionand optimization solutions do. aCelera accelerates all generic HTTP/HTTPS traffic and, with the help of theBlueprints, optimizes specific mission-critical applications such as IBM Rational CCRC, Microsoft Office, andSharePoint. A unique Object Differencing Engine works with the knowledge provided by the Blueprints totransmit only changes in the data, thus significantly reducing the amount of traffic that goes over the network.This reduction in network traffic over the WAN drastically cuts down application and file access responsetimes, in some cases by more than 95 percent.

Secure Application Technology (SAT)

Enterprises today are increasingly concerned about the security of information, especially in remote-officelocations where security is weaker and IT and security staffing is limited. For this reason, enterprises areadopting SSL to ensure privacy between authorized users and corporate servers. In Web-based portals andapplications, this takes the form of HTTPS, a transport protocol between clients and servers.

SSL presents a fundamental problem for products that accelerate application or file traffic between remoteoffices and data center servers. With SSL, all session-layer data is encrypted and is not compressible. BecauseSSL uses cryptographic keys that vary depending on time of day and individual user session, no two sessions’traffic streams look the same; thus, differencing of this encrypted data is not possible. In order to overcomethese problems, Certeon has implemented a patent-pending Secure Application Technology (SAT) within itsaCelera Virtual Appliances.

The SAT achieves the following two key goals:

• Transparency — aCelera utilizes native server certificates for SSL session initialization, eliminatingthe cost and complexity of managing certificates on individual acceleration devices.

• Security — Private server keys never leave the secure data center.

By achieving these goals, aCelera Virtual Appliances can inspect and accelerate SSL-encrypted traffic over theWAN securely and with neither additional management of certificates nor private keys.

Certeon CCRC Performance TestsThe following tests demonstrate how aCelera software dramatically improves CCRC performance over a WAN.The results collected using the IBM Rational Performance Tester Agent show the benefits of the performanceimprovements achieved before and after adding aCelera software to the test configuration.

Test ConfigurationThe test configuration, (see Table 1 and Figure 1) was made up of a ClearCase Content Server, a RationalPerformance Tester Agent simulating a CCRC client, and two aCelera Physical Appliances, each “residing” on either side of the WAN. aCelera software can be loaded on a industry standard server and configured witheither VMware ESX or ESXi or Microsoft Windows Server 2008 hypervisors. In this configuration, VMware ESXiwas used. Unlike proprietary hardware WAN acceleration appliances, aCelera-based physical appliances arenot “closed” and can support other applications.

The test configuration variables included file sizes and types. All but one of the test scenarios were configuredfor a single user. See test results for Test #9 for response times for the Rational Performance Tester CCRC multi-user load test. For all of the test configurations, the network bandwidth was limited to 1Mb/s speed with 200ms of latency.

Table 1 – Test Configuration

CCRC Client using Rational Performance aCelera Physical Appliances

ClearCase Content Server Tester Agent (SQA-CC/DC-SQA-CC)

Server Class Pentium IV Pentium IV Pentium IV

Number of CPUs 1 1 4 Virtual CPUs

CPU Details 2.6 GHz 2.3 GHz 2.3 GHz

Main Memory 2 GB 2 GB 2 GB

Operating System Windows Server 2003 SP2 Windows XP SP3 Certeon Proprietary

Test Case ScenariosCerteon performance was examined in multiple tests with the following attributes:

• 1Mb/s link speed and 200 ms latency

• Multiple file types

Test ResultsThe tests results demonstrate the performance of the first pass of traffic over the WAN, where the aCeleraappliance has not learned about the CCRC traffic, compared to the performance of the second pass, where theaCelera appliance has learned about the traffic and performed the optimization and differencing of the CCRC

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WAN

CCRC ClientrunningRational

PerformanceTester Agent

ClearCaseServer

Figure 1 – Test Configuration

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traffic. Performance improvements in the certification tests varied depending on a number of factors (e.g. different file types, file size, utilization of the aCelera by other applications). These tests resulted in Certeonreceiving the IBM “Ready for Rational” certification for CCRC.

Test 1 – HTTP Check-in Response Time (Seconds)

Goal: Compare the effects of check-in files with different file sizes (1MB, 10MB) and types (Word and PPT),

both with and without Certeon’s aCelera enabled.

Results: Certeon aCelera appliances reduced the check-in response time by as much as 92%. Responsetime improved as files sizes increased.

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HTTP Check-In

Seco

nds

1MB PPT 10MB PPT 10MB Doc

No Acceleration 1st Pass 2nd Pass

Certeon Connection 1MB PPT 10MB PPT 10MB Doc

Without Certeon 19 158 238

1st pass with Certeon 9 54 28

2nd pass with Certeon 5 19 20

Improvement % 74% 88% 92%

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Test 2 – HTTP Check-Out Response Time (Seconds)

Goal: Compare check-out of files with different file sizes (1MB, 10MB, and 45MB) and types (Word and PPT),

both with and without Certeon’s aCelera enabled.

Results: Certeon aCelera appliances reduced the check-out response time by as much as 86%. Response time improved as files sizes increased.

Certeon Connection 1MB PPT 10MB Doc 10MB PPT 45MB Multi

Without Certeon 11 68 150 825

1st pass with Certeon 9 19 59 224

2nd pass with Certeon 4 10 22 116

Improvement % 64% 85% 85% 86%

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HTTP Check-Out

Seco

nds

1MB Doc 10MB Doc 10MB PPT Multi Files45MB


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Test 3 – HTTP Add File to Source Response Time (Seconds)

Goal: Compare response times when adding file to source with different file sizes (1MB and 10MB).

Results: Certeon aCelera appliances reduced the check-out response time by as much as 84%. Response timeimproved as files sizes increased.

Certeon Connection 1MB Doc 10MB Doc

Without Certeon 23 160

1st pass with Certeon 14 34

2nd pass with Certeon 8 26

Improvement % 65% 84%

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HTTP Add file to source

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Test 4 – HTTPS Check-in Response Time (Seconds)

Goal: Compare check-in of files with different file sizes (1MB, 10MB) and types (Word and PPT), both with andwithout Certeon’s aCelera enabled.


Certeon Connection 1MB PPT 10MB Doc





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HTTPS Check-In

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nds

1MB PPT 10MB Doc


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Test 5 – HTTPS Check-Out Response Time (Seconds)

Goal: Compare check-out of files with different file sizes (1MB, 10MB) and types (Word and PPT), both withand without Certeon’s aCelera enabled.







120

100

80

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40

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HTTPS Check-Out

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1MB Doc 10MB Doc


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160

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HTTPS Add File to Source

Seco

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1MB Doc 10MB Doc


Test 6 – HTTPS Add File to Source Response Time (Seconds)

Goal: Compare response times when adding file to source with different file sizes (1MB and 10MB).

Results: Certeon aCelera appliances reduced the add to source response time by as much as 90%. Response time improved as files sizes increased.

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Certeon Connection Add to Source 1MB Check-Out 1MB + 0.5MB Check-In 1.5MB

Without Certeon 21.2 9.8 25

1st pass with Certeon 12.7 7.6 14

2nd pass with Certeon 7.7 4.9 6.6


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HTTP Performance of Changed Data — Add Delta after Check-Out

Seco

nds

Add to Source1MB PPT

Check-out1MB PPT+0.5MB

Check-In1.5MB Doc


Test 7 – HTTP Performance of Changed Data – Add Delta After Check-Out Response Time (Seconds)

Goal: Compare response times before and after changing data file: Add file to source, check-out, and check-inwith different file sizes (1MB and 1.5MB).

Results: Certeon aCelera appliances reduced the response times by 63% for add file to source, 50% for check-out, and 77% for check-in.

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Certeon Connection Add to Source 1MB Check-Out 1MB Check-In 1MB

Without Certeon 21.2 10.3 18

1st pass with Certeon 11 8.4 9.4

2nd pass with Certeon 8 2.5 5.5


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HTTP Binary Data — Add, Check-Out, Check-In

Seco

nds

Add to Source1MB Doc

Check-out1MB Doc

Check-In1MB Doc


Test 8 – HTTP Binary Data – Add, Check-Out, Check-In Response Time (Seconds)

Goal: Compare response times for: add file to source, check-out, and check-in for HTTP binary data.

Results: Certeon aCelera appliances reduced the responses time by 62% for Add to Source, 77% for check-out,and 70% for check-in.

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Test 9 – HTTP RPT Data – Multiple Transactions, Multiple Users Response Time (Seconds)

Goal: Compare response times for multiple transactions (ClearDiffPred, Check-in, MakeFile Elem, and

SetConfigSpec/LoadView) and twenty-five (25) users.

Results: Certeon aCelera appliances reduced the responses time by 87% for ClearDiffPred, 77% for Check-In,70% for MakeFileElem, 70% for SetConfigSpec/LoadView.

Certeon Connection ClearDiffPred Check-In 1MB MakeFileElem 1MB SetConfigSpec/LoadView

Without Certeon 7.7 18 19 178

With Certeon 1 4.2 5.7 55

Improvement % 87% 77% 70% 70%

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HTTP RPT Data —Multiple Transactions, Multiple Users

Seco

nds

ClearDiffPred Check-In1MB File

MakeFileElem1MB File

SetConfigSpec/LoadView

No Acceleration Acceleration On

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©2008 Certeon Inc. The Certeon logo is a registered trademark of Certeon Inc. SecureAcceleration Technology, aCelera, ApplicationAcceleration Blueprints, and Secure ApplicationNetworking™ are trademarks of Certeon. All othercompany names and/or product names aretrademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

4 Van de Graaff DriveBurlington, MA 01803USA: 781.425.5200Toll Free: 877.221.6688EMEA: +33 (0)[email protected]

ConclusionCerteon’s aCelera, with its embedded Application Acceleration Blueprint for IBM Rational CCRC, acceleratescontent transfer across the WAN for content formats employed by ClearCase Content Servers, without modification to client, server, or application software. In addition, this testing effort resulted in Certeon receiving IBM Ready for Rational certification for CCRC.

aCelera securely accelerates content transfer over the WAN to enable outstanding performance — an improvement of up to 93 percent. Response time performance improves with larger file sizes.

With Certeon aCelera appliances, CCRC users can reduce the response time of remote transactions to mereseconds. The reduction in network bandwidth utilization and improvements in IBM Rational ClearCase application responsiveness cuts down on time-consuming delays. This results in increased productivity for developers in remote source control management environments.

To learn more about Certeon’s aCelera, contact www.certeon.com.

ReferencesaCelera Virtual Appliance for Application Acceleration White Paper, July 2008Certeon aCelera Data Sheet Certeon IBM Data SheetCerteon Web Site: www.certeon.com

To learn more about additional testing results on the Native ClearCase client, contact Certeon Sales at877.221.6688.

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