Edwin wrote:
> That's a pretty bold statement, ND is fast OK , about the stability , I'd
> consider that a vague issue , since you can easily write buggy ND code
> & configure ND in such a way that it will be unstable.
Hi Edwin, you make good points. I'll try to clarify.
In the engineering tests I have seen, ND5 is orders of magnitude faster
than ND4, Kiva, and WebLogic. These tests were run on high end Sun
multiprocessor servers, with distributed multimachine configurations.
The testing setup was designed to be most similar to the setup of our
large customers who are running very large websites and intranets on ND.
The testing app was a mix of dynamic web pages, user sessions, lots of
database reads, and some database writes; our aim was to simulate
a large e-commerce website something like Amazon.Com for book sales.
For robustness, ND5 scaled cleanly across multiple processors and multiple
machines, up to 8 processors and 8 machines (the maximum hardware setup we
tested). This result totally blew away every other appserver, all of which
tended to fall apart above 4 processors or 4 machines.
For stability, we tested ND5 on the system above, under huge load
(hundreds of pages per second) and found no degredation after 24
hours. Our field tests with real customers sites have shown similar
stability, when everything is configured correctly.
As you point out, correct configuration is very important.
We paid careful attention to all the system settings, including
things like the network paramters, Solaris OS settings, database
tunings, and so on. Web sites are a complex environment, and it
definitely is wise to have experts take a look at your tuning.
One notable result from Kiva/NAS is that it did very well on
fault-tolerance, such as someone accidentally unplugging a machine
(without a UPS) or crashing a drive (without RAID); of course your servers
should be using UPS and RAID, so this may not be a big deal to you.
We will definitely be incorporating this Kiva/NAS fault-tolerance into the
iPlanet app server.
> I can't say I'd agree with Kiva being blazingly scalable at non-java code.
Our benchmarks showed that the new version of Kiva was pretty impressive
at non-Java code. The Kiva engineers were still tuning things this summer,
so I don't know how much of the optimizations have made it into production
code yet.
> At least you're admitting (seemingly) that it's not blazingly fast at
> java code. I know ND can be pretty fast and is definetely more
> scalable than Kiva,
The Kiva benchmarks on Java also improved quite a bit this summer.
> but that part of the ND code is not
> what will be in the iPlanet code-base AFAIK.
I don't know the specifics. The Kiva engineers seem very motivated to do
anything possible to make things faster.
> Judging from this , I'd say we get a blazingly slow ND server when iPlanet
> AS 6.0 is released.
All I can say is "wait and see" and that I have seen Kiva improve quite a
bit due to the Sun-internal competition and races between NAS and ND. :-)
> Hard to check if everyone stays on board, hard to believe too.
Why hard to believe? We all have great jobs building a great product
with great people for great customers.
Our core engineering team is Yarden Malka, Dave Brewster, and Ken Ebbs.
They have all been at ND for three years or more, and you can call our
switchboard at 650-462-7600 and verify that they're staying at Sun.
Most of the other engineers and support people are staying on as well.
I expect that as Kiva programmers come up to speed, the NetDynamics
engineers will start pushing the envelope on the next generation.
> Spreading FUD on BEA is not going to help us either
Fair enough. Want to see two funny things about WebLogic?
First, visit http://www.weblogic.com and get a 404 NOT FOUND.
You would think that an advanced appserver company like WebLogic
would at least know how to do a webpage redirect, right? :-)
Second, compare the product diagrams.
See the NetDynamics diagram from a year ago:
http://www.netdynamics.com/art/product/nd2.jpg
Then look at the brand new WebLogic diagram:
http://www.beasys.com/products/images/solution_chart2.gif
WebLogic's artist seems to have some plagarism issues. :-)
Anyways, all kidding aside, I do think WebLogic a a great product.
I would always recommend that any customer carefully research
alternatives, read press reviews, talk to people who use other
appservers, and ask questions about the companies and the future.
I will also be the first to admit that Sun has done a lousy job of
informing NetDynamics customers about our future plans, and the
integration of Kiva and NetDynamics. In almost all cases, it is
because we want to spend the time to carefully look at all the
pieces, including the code and the employees and the customers,
to see how to best fit things together and build the next rev.
> code is split in the NDOF for visual, EJB mixed with NDOF for business and
> PAC code (Query, Procedural and OO) for connectivity. Which parts will be
> and which will not be supported in the iPlant AS 6.0 ? I am guessing, call
> me pessimistic, that it will be the NDOF only.
Actually, everything I have heard is that the Netscape people really like
the PACs and very much want to focus on supporting PAC connectivity.
I can't make official comments on this of course, but it wouldn't surprise
me at all if the core ND team emphasized the connectivity and PACS.
> On the other hand, if AS6.0 *would* be ND on J2EE + Kiva templates ,
> maintaining the distributed CORBA architecture of ND , the 6.0 release
> would be excellent, since we would be mixing the best of both, or at least
> avoid the worst of Kiva, it's scalability!
Yes, exactly. I also hope this will happen, and I know that our customers
are in the driver seat and can have a lot of leverage with Sun/Netscape.
What the customers demand and encourage will definitely be top priority.
Cheers,
Joel ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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