Technical Brief
Contents
About This Document ................................................................... 3
Supported Releases and Products ........................................................................ 3 Audience ................................................................................................................ 3 Support Policy for Enterprise Deployment Resources........................................... 3
Challenges to Windchill Performance for Global Collaboration 4 Factors Impacting WAN Application Performance .................... 5
Bandwidth .............................................................................................................. 5 Latency................................................................................................................... 5 Congestion ............................................................................................................. 6 Packet Loss............................................................................................................ 7
Factors Affecting Windchill CAD WAN Performance ................. 8 Example Global Windchill Architecture Scenario ...................... 8
Goal and Solution Requirements for example Global Windchill Architecture Scenario ............................................................................................................... 10
WAN Performance Optimization Options for LAN & WAN Users ............................................................................................ 10
Main Server Location ........................................................................................... 11 Windchill Content Replication .............................................................................. 11 WAN Accelerators ................................................................................................ 11 When to Consider Windchill Content Replication and/or WAN Accelerators with Windchill ............................................................................................................... 13 WAN Performance Tuning ................................................................................... 13 Configure the Web Server for Content Cache Expiration .................................... 13 Improve WAN Performance with Upload & Download Meta-Data & Content Compression ........................................................................................................ 14 Improve Network Performance ............................................................................ 14 Quality of Service (QoS) ...................................................................................... 15
March 2011
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Example 3: Architecting a solution for a site with light or non-CAD Users ...........20 Example 4: Architecting a solution for a site in Brazil ..........................................20 Example 5: Architecting a solution for a site with remote External Users and Partners ................................................................................................................21 Example 6: Architecting a solution for multiple sites in a region ..........................22
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Audience
This document is intended for managers, system administrators, and solution architects. It assumes that the reader has some working knowledge of the technology and concepts associated with the following: Information technology Enterprise systems Windchill architecture, capabilities, and system administration Operating systems, relational databases, LDAP, web servers, application servers, platforms, servers, storage, and networking
English. PTC Technical Support will endeavor to reply within two business days to requests for support of this document.
Towards this end, it is critical to answer the following questions when architecting a global Windchill deployment: How well can Windchill perform over your companys WAN? Will your current network provide acceptable performance for each site? How much bandwidth do you need at each global location? How well does Windchill work at high latencies? What are the options for deploying Windchill to support global deployments and deliver acceptable end-user system performance? How effective is each option at improving WAN performance? Can the various options be used together? If so, what are the cumulative benefits and/or drawbacks when several options are combined?
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Bandwidth
Response times for Windchill transactions are heavily dependent upon available bandwidth. Bandwidth represents the capacity of a network connection. It refers to the data rate supported by a network connection and is expressed in terms of bits per second (bps or Mbps). In general, higher bandwidths deliver faster system response times. However, other factors, such as latency, congestion, and packet loss are tightly coupled with bandwidth in influencing response times.
Latency
Bandwidth is just one element of what is perceived as the speed of a network. Latency is another element that contributes to network speed. The term latency refers to any of several kinds of delays typically incurred in processing of network data. A low latency network connection is one that generally experiences small delay times, while a high latency network connection generally suffers from long delays. Although the theoretical peak bandwidth of a network connection is fixed according to the technology used, the actual bandwidth obtained varies over time and is affected by high latencies. Excessive latency creates bottlenecks that prevent data from filling the network pipe, thus decreasing effective bandwidth. The impact of latency on network bandwidth can be temporary (lasting a few seconds) or persistent (constant) depending on the source of the delays. The graph below shows the impact of latency on response times for Windchill transactions for various bandwidths. As you can see, response times increase linearly with latency for all bandwidths. Notes: Response time in the graph is the sum of time taken to execute all actions in the Windchill Pro/ENGINEER Data Management Performance Benchmark Test Response times for a 10Mbps and 1Gbps line are very close and hence show up as a single line in the graph
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ResponseTimevs.RoundTripLatency
PacketLoss=0.1%,Congestion=40%
0:07:12 0:06:29
ResponseTime(hh:mm:ss)
0:05:46 0:05:02 0:04:19 0:03:36 0:02:53 0:02:10 0:01:26 0:00:43 0:00:00 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 300 325 338 350 363 375 388 400
RoundTripLatency(ms)
Figure 1
Congestion
Network congestion occurs when a link or node is carrying so much data that its quality of service deteriorates. Typical effects include queuing delay, packet loss or the blocking of new connections. A consequence of the latter two is that incremental increases in load lead either only to small increase in network throughput, or to an actual reduction in network throughput. The graph below shows the predicted impact of congestion on response times for Windchill transactions for various bandwidths. As you can see, response times drastically increase with congestion rates of greater than 75%.
Latency (milliseconds or ms)
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Figure 2
Packet Loss
Packet loss is the failure of one or more transmitted packets to arrive at their destination. This event can cause noticeable effects in all types of digital communications. The causes of packet loss include inadequate signal strength at the destination, natural or human-made interference, excessive system noise, hardware failure, software corruption or overburdened network nodes. Often, more than one of these factors is involved. The graph below shows the impact of packet loss on response times for Windchill transactions for various bandwidths. Response times stay flat for packet loss ranging from 0.1 1%. It is expected that packet loss of greater than 1% will have noticeable effects on response times.
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ResponseTimevs.PacketLoss
RoundTripLatency=100ms,Congestion=40%
0:05:46
ResponseTime(hh:mm:ss)
0:05:02 0:04:19 0:03:36 0:02:53 0:02:10 0:01:26 0:00:43 0:00:00 0.10 0.16 0.21 0.27 0.33 0.38 0.44 0.49 0.55 0.61 0.66 0.72 0.78 0.83 0.86 0.89 0.92 0.94 0.97 1.00
PacketLoss(%)
Figure 3
The performance of these key user transactions is dependent on The time required to transfer CAD files over the network The distance between the client and the server The available bandwidth between the client and the server Other key network characteristics between the client and the server, specifically latency, congestion and packet loss
Note: The larger the number of CAD users at a site the larger will be the bandwidth requirements for that site.
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The fictional World Car Motors is a global automotive company, an automotive OEM that designs, manufactures, and supports specialty vehicles globally. The company uses Windchill PDMLink & ProjectLink and Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire for the following activities: Project Management, Engineering, Manufacturing and Service. Its operations are spread over nine sites on four continents (eight internal sites & one supplier site). The functions executed at the various sites are: design, manufacturing, support as well as supplier functions. There are wide variations in the network conditions across the 9 sites: Bandwidths range from a of low of T1 (1.544 Mbps) to 10 Mbps and a high of 100Mbps Round trip latencies vary between 10 - 400ms Typical Congestion i.e. network utilization is 40%
The image below shows the product manufactured by World Car Motors as well as a map showing their operations.
Figure 4
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Goal and Solution Requirements for Example Global Windchill Architecture Scenario
The goal for World Car Motors is to design a Windchill Architecture that enables users to collaboratively develop products across all their globally located sites, ensuring acceptable performance for all users of the system regardless of location is paramount. In developing the right solution for the company, defining clear requirements for the global deployment of Windchill is the crucial first step because: There are myriad solutions and combinations of solutions that can provide a wide range of performance It is extremely difficult to determine the right solution for a company without knowing the requirements and constraints of the company Defining clear and unambiguous criteria up front eliminates subjectivity and emotions when choosing an architecture
Below is a list of typical requirement areas to be aware of when designing a global deployment of Windchill. See the Windchill Deployment Planning Check List for more information: Performance: System Response Time for all users: LAN & WAN users CAD & non-CAD users
System Availability & Recovery Time Network Quality (Load & Congestion) Level of System Maintenance Required Cost: Deployment and Maintenance
This technical brief will focus on delivering acceptable performance for: CAD & non-CAD users
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These options are explained below and the chapter that follows, Examples of WAN Performance Optimization, provides example scenarios where these options are applied to the hypothetical company - World Car Motors.
WAN Accelerators
A WAN accelerator is a network appliance that optimizes bandwidth to improve the end user's experience on a wide area network. The appliance can be a physical hardware component or software program that speeds up the time it takes for information to flow back and forth across the WAN by using compression and data deduplication techniques to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. An accelerator caches duplicate files or parts of files so they can be referenced instead of having to be sent across the WAN
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again. For more information on WAN Accelerator, please refer to the following PTC reference documents: WAN Accelerators and Windchill Performance - Technical Brief Riverbed Deployment Guide for Windchill Cisco Distributed Research and Development Solution Deployment Guide for PTC Windchill
Deploying WAN Accelerators at the main server and remote sites will accelerate data transfer and reduce network congestion across the wide area network. The data in Figure 5 below shows that deploying both WAN acceleration and Windchill Content Replication reduces the time taken for the action Add to Workspace from 10 times to 1.1 times that of the LAN (in the case of a 10MBps bandwidth WAN with 275 ms latency, 40% congestion and 0% packet loss). Note: The performance data presented in this document was derived from Windchill WAN performance testing conducted by the PTC Enterprise Deployment Center and actual numbers may vary.
Figure 5
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When to Consider Windchill Content Replication and/or WAN Accelerators with Windchill
WAN accelerators show the most improvement in application response times when they are deployed across low bandwidth and/or high latency network connections. As a general rule, remote sites that are connected to the main Windchill server by networks with latencies above 100ms are good candidates for using a WAN accelerator to improve the user experience. Networks that experience packet loss may also be good candidates for the use of a WAN accelerator. As shown in previous examples, loss and latency combined can make a big impact on overall application performance. If remote users are only working with small documents (such as PDFs or Microsoft Office files), then WAN accelerators alone may provide acceptable performance over networks with latencies above 100ms. However for remote users working with CAD content, it is highly recommended that Windchill content replication be used at a minimum and it is recommended that WAN accelerators be used in conjunction with Windchill content replication. For remote users working with CAD content, a WAN accelerator is a complementary device but not a substitute for the means to locally upload and download large CAD files to and from a remote file server deployed with Windchill content replication. Note: Most WAN accelerators can be deployed with SSL (https). Please refer to the appropriate vendor documentation for more information on how to setup respective WAN accelerators with Windchill on https. Please refer to the links in Additional Information section to the Riverbed Deployment Guide for Windchill & the Cisco Distributed Research and Development Solution Deployment Guide for PTC Windchill.
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Improve WAN Performance with Upload & Download Meta-Data & Content Compression
Improving WAN performance with upload & download meta-data & content compression will improve the performance of save, upload, check in, check out and download operations for Pro/ENGINEER users on the WAN and is documented in the PTC Technical Support Suggested Technique article titled Performance Tuning Recommendations For Client Systems And Windchill Servers That Manage CAD Models. The section titled Client Property Settings details config.pro options to compress metadata and content.
Figures 1, 2 and 3 above show the effect of latency, congestion and packet loss on Windchill response times over various networks. Managing each of these characteristics within acceptable limits can go a long way towards improving Windchill performance on the WAN. Lets look at the impact that the bandwidth between the WAN clients and the Windchill server has on WAN performance. Figure 6 below shows the effect of bandwidth on the action Add to Workspace of the WorldCar assembly containing 2374 objects. Key observations from Figure 6: Add to Workspace is 10 times slower than the LAN when performed on a 10MBps bandwidth WAN with 275 ms latency, 40% congestion and 0% packet loss Add to Workspace is 8 times slower than the LAN when performed on a 100MBps bandwidth WAN with 275 ms latency, 40% congestion and 0% packet loss There is no appreciable difference in times between a 10MBps and 100 MBps line when using a WAN accelerator or a File Server Performance is the same for 10MBps line and 100 MBps lines when using both a WAN accelerator and a File Server
These results tell us that increasing bandwidth may not be as impactful as improving latency, congestion, or packet loss. Note: The performance data presented in this document was derived from Windchill WAN performance testing conducted by the PTC Enterprise Deployment Center and actual numbers may vary.
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Figure 6
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Site City Hannover 1 Hannover 2 Hannover 3 Shanghai Tianjin Alabama Bangalore Sao Paulo
Country Bandwidth Germany 100 Germany 100 Germany 100 China 10 China 10 US 10 India 10 Brazil 1.544
MAN 100 10 10 -
Latency (ms) 1 2 3 4 5 Hannover Hannover Hannover 1 2 3 Shanghai Tianjin 0 10 10 275 250 10 0 10 275 250 10 10 0 275 250 275 275 275 0 100 250 250 250 100 0 175 175 175 275 325 200 200 200 175 200 250 250 250 325 400
Alabama Bangalore 175 200 175 200 175 200 275 200 325 200 0 300 300 0 100 300
Average Median Latency Latency 146 188 146 188 146 188 216 275 222 250 191 175 197 200 234 250
Table 1
Figure 7
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Large volumes of data move between the main server and CAD clients (CAD data is characterized by large data volumes) There are strict data security requirements since CAD data is expected to contain corporate intellectual property
A typical CAD user frequently performs the following tasks on a daily basis: Search for CAD data on the server Download CAD data from the server Make modifications to the CAD data Check in modifications to the server
Please refer to section titled Factors Affecting Windchill CAD WAN Performance for more information. Given the above, the objectives when architecting a solution for a site with CAD users are to: Reduce the time required to transfer CAD files over the network Reduce the distance between remote CAD users and the server Ensure the site has adequate bandwidth
With the Shanghai site of World Car Motors as our example of a site with CAD users and with the server located in Hannover, this site has the following network conditions: Bandwidth 10 MBps Latency between client and server 275 ms Congestion 40%
The figure below shows that the performance of the Add to Workspace operation for a 10 MBps line with 275 ms latency and 40% congestion is 10 times slower than the LAN.
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Figure 8 Lets consider three options for providing acceptable performance for the Shanghai CAD users: 1. Deploy a remote file server Benefits Provide performance that is 1.6 times the LAN (as compared to 10 times LAN without a remote file server). Requires deploying a server with as little as 2 cores and 4 GB RAM
Concerns Performance will be slower than on the LAN. Display performance of various Windchill HTML pages may be slow The remote file server represents an additional file vault location that needs to be managed by the administrator in addition to the master location in Hannover. Replication schedules need to be configured and managed by an administrator. Replication jobs can contribute to the congestion of the network which may in turn impact performance.
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2. Deploy a WAN accelerator Benefits Provide performance that is 1.3 times the LAN (as compared to 10 times LAN without a remote file server). Improve page display times, in part, by caching content from the Windchill HTML pages. Reduce the amount of redundant content being requested from the server thereby reducing network congestion. Allow all content to be stored in a central location. No additional file vault locations need to be managed by the administrator beyond the master location in Hannover. May not cost anything if the company is already using WAN accelerators
Concerns Performance will be slower than on the LAN. Performance may be slow (10 times LAN) for non-cached content requested from the server. For example, the very first Add to Workspace of a CAD assembly will be very slow (10 times LAN) while subsequent requests for the same un-modified assembly will be delivered from the cache for as long as the assembly remains in the WAN accelerator cache. Performance may be inconsistent because the WAN accelerator storage capacity is undersized and lacks the necessary storage space for the large volumes of content used by sites that have CAD users May require a significant capital investment for new or additional WAN accelerators May require a significant capital investment because one of the pricing factors of WAN accelerators is storage capacity and higher end (more expensive) WAN accelerators may be required to support the large volumes of content used by sites that have CAD users
3. Deploy both a remote File Server and a WAN Accelerator Benefits This is the best option, providing performance that is as close to LAN as possible (1.1 times the LAN) Improve page display times, in part by caching content from the Windchill HTML pages. The WAN accelerator reduces:
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The amount of redundant content transmitted over the WAN from the main server thereby reducing network congestion. The time required to replicate content making content available for download sooner from remote File Servers. The network congestion related to content replication by reducing the size of the content replicated over the network
Requires less capital investment for the WAN accelerators since the large volumes of content used by sites that have CAD users will be provided by the remote file server
Concerns May require a significant capital investment for new or additional WAN accelerators The remote file server represents an additional file vault location that needs to be managed by the administrator in addition to the master location in Hannover. Replication schedules need to be configured and managed by an administrator.
The approach to architecting a solution for such a site is outlined in the previous two examples: 2. Architecting a solution for a site with CAD users 3. Architecting a solution for a site with light or non-CAD users
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Example 5: Architecting a solution for a site with remote External Users and Partners
In this example, we look at working with partner sites and remote external user sites with lower bandwidth connections (e.g. T1) and a small number of users. While all the options discussed above under 2. Architecting a solution for a site with CAD users apply to a site with remote external users and partners, additional challenges must be considered: Security issues related to having a remote file server or WAN accelerator at such sites, especially if a remote file server is located on the premises of a partner The complexity and cost of deploying and maintaining for a site with a very small number of users, especially if a remote file server is located on the premises of a partner
Given these considerations, the best option might be to deploy a WAN accelerator at these sites. Most WAN accelerator vendors have software clients that could be deployed to smaller sites at lower cost. Some of the concerns associated with deploying just a WAN accelerator also apply in this situation: Performance may be slow (10 times LAN) for non-cached content requested from the server. For example, the very first Add to Workspace of a CAD assembly will be very slow (10 times LAN) while subsequent requests for the same un-modified assembly will be delivered from the cache for as long as the assembly remains in the WAN accelerator cache. Performance may be inconsistent because the WAN accelerator storage capacity is undersized and lacks the necessary storage space for the large volumes of content used by sites that have CAD users
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Tianjin, China
Shanghai, China
Taipei, Taiwan
Bangalore, India
Figure 9 For this example, the information about the users at each site is: 22 of 26 Shanghai has a large number of CAD and non-CAD users. Tianjin has a very small number of CAD users. Taipei has only lightweight/non-CAD users. PTC Technical Brief
Table 2 Options for Each Site Given the conditions between Shanghai and the main site at Hannover and that Shanghai has a large number of CAD and non-CAD users, option 3, Deploy both a remote File Server and a WAN Accelerator, in Example 2: Architecting a Solution for a Site with CAD Users, provides the best performance for Shanghai. Since Taipei has only lightweight/non-CAD users, it is possible to deploy just a WAN accelerator to ensure acceptable performance. The options for the Tianjin site are: 1. Deploy both a WAN accelerator and a Windchill file server with content replication this will ensure the best possible performance but will increase administration since the remote file server in Tianjin needs to be managed. 2. Deploy only a Windchill file server with content replication while improving performance, this has the same concerns discussed above, specifically it will increase administration. 3. Deploy only a WAN accelerator while this will reduce administration and provide improved performance, users will need to deal with the limitations associated with deploying just a WAN accelerator. A Solution for the Region By designing a solution from a regional perspective, it may be possible to further optimize the performance at some or all of the sites. The options for Shanghai, Taipei, and Tianjin are:
Site Shanghai Taipei Tianjin File Server WAN Accelerator
While Taipei and Tianjin will not have a File Server and content replication, the performance of content download and upload transactions can be improved for users at these sites by using the File Server in Shanghai as opposed to accessing content directly from the main server in Hannover.
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Tianjin, China
Content download & upload
100ms 115 ms
Windchill File Server
Shanghai, China
Content download & upload
35 ms
Taipei, Taiwan
Figure 10
Summary
Enabling geographically distributed users to work productively with Windchill can be a complex and challenging effort if you are not aware of proven solutions. In developing the right solution for the company, defining clear requirements for the global deployment of Windchill is the crucial first step. There are many solutions providing a wide range of performance and without defining the requirements and constraints of the company, there will be no objective way to measure and compare the effectiveness of the solutions. Defining clear and unambiguous criteria up front eliminates subjectivity and emotions when choosing a WAN architecture. The typical requirement areas to be aware of when designing a global deployment of Windchill are: Performance: System Response Time for all users: LAN & WAN users CAD & non-CAD users
System Availability & Recovery Time Network Quality (Load & Congestion) Level of System Maintenance Required Cost: Deployment and Maintenance
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The major options to consider when designing a solution providing optimal Windchill WAN performance are: Main server location Windchill content replication WAN accelerators WAN performance tuning Improve network Quality of Service (QoS)
This technical brief focused on delivering acceptable performance for CAD & non-CAD users and LAN & WAN users by providing example scenarios where the above options are applied to the hypothetical company - World Car Motors. The performance of user transactions are dependent on the time required to transfer CAD files over the network , the distance between the client and the server, as well as the available bandwidth between the client and the server and other key network characteristics between the client and the server, specifically latency, congestion and packet loss. This technical brief showed that Latency and congestion are key network characteristics that can have a severe detrimental impact on WAN performance as illustrated in Figures 1 and 2. Interestingly, it was also shown that increasing bandwidth is not always the best solution to improve performance as illustrated in Figure 6. The best options to ensure acceptable performance for non-CAD, i.e. Windchill HTML UI operations on the WAN are to: Deploy the server in a location that maximizes WAN performance Configure the web server for content cache expiration Deploy a WAN accelerator
The best options to ensure acceptable performance for CAD data management operations on the WAN are to: Deploy the server in a location that maximizes WAN performance Improve WAN Performance with upload & download meta-data & content compression Deploy Windchill content replication Deploy a WAN accelerator
Additional Information
You can find the following guides on the PTC Reference Documents web site at http://www.ptc.com/appserver/cs/doc/refdoc.jsp: PTC Technical Brief Windchill Architecture Overview Windchill Vaulting and Replication Technical Brief Windchill System Administrators Guide WAN Accelerators and Windchill Performance Technical Brief 25 of 26
You can find the following guides on partner web sites: Cisco Distributed Research and Development Solution Deployment Guide for PTC Windchill
Document Change Record Date March 2011 Change Description Initial publication.
2011 Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC). The information contained herein is provided for informational use and is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for PTC products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services and nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. PTC shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. For important Copyright, Trademark, Patent, Licensing and Data Collection Information see the About Box, or Copyright Notice, of your PTC software.
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