Benchmarking BMC Remedy ITSM version 9.0 with Scapa TPP
Although the latest release of BMC Software’s Remedy ITSM platform – version
9.0 – contains no major new features, it has been re-engineered from a C-based
into a Java-based application. The significance of this change will, doubtless,
be to facilitate future development of this business-critical system.
Scapa Technologies has a vast amount of experience in testing and monitoring
this type of system and, along with our partners at Alderstone Consulting, we
didn’t want to let the release of this milestone ITSM version pass by without
conducting our own research into its potential performance levels. We,
therefore, conducted a number of benchmark tests comparing version 9.0 against
the last 2 major releases of ITSM.
Three identical environments were set up in order to conduct a fair analysis of
how these ITSM releases compare. We installed ITSM 7.6.04, ITSM 8.1 SP2 and
ITSM 9.0 with default configurations and used Scapa Test and Performance
Platform (Scapa TPP) to perform the performance tests.
Our initial findings show that ITSM 9.0 has very similar performance
characteristics to ITSM 7.6.04. However, ITSM 8.1 SP2 showed marginally
improved stability at the edge of capacity than either of the other two
versions. The graph below shows how the performance varies between the three
main systems as the user count ramps up.
Benchmarking Remedy ITSM
Both ITSM 7.6.04 and ITSM 9.0 begin to behave erratically and user response
times spike when the concurrent user load increased from 160 to 260, whereas
the ITSM 8.1 environment remained constant. The full report of the results and
findings of our tests, published by Alderstone Consulting, can be downloaded
here.
Although these tests and the analysis of the results provide an interesting
insight into the core stability and performance of these versions of ITSM, they
are based on a very limited set of use cases. Similar tests examining the
relative performance of your own system running version ITSM 9.0 would, without
doubt, produce different findings, given that usage and environment, amongst
other factors, all have an effect. Both Scapa Technologies and Alderstone
Consulting can help you understand how your system would perform on ITSM 9.0.
Alderstone Consulting is a product and services company, focusing on very high
quality solutions in the IT Service Management, Data Centre Management, Cloud
and Banking markets.
Scapa Technologies’ tools measure the end to end performance of the system,
from the users’ perspective – the measurement that is most meaningful to your
business operations, productivity and profits AND which produces the most
accurate results. Our approach to testing, benchmarking, capacity planning,
regression testing and production monitoring – by replicating real users’
actions to obtain their perspective of how your systems perform – is unique.
Our tools are capable of testing many systems, as well as a mixture of API and
GUI tests at the same time, so you can identify bottlenecks and other potential
issues quickly, to maintain performance and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
Our expertise in building custom workflows for a wide range of systems is
second to none. This experience, coupled with the flexibility of our tools, is
the best solution for building a robust, reliable testing framework for your
unique application mix.
http://www.scapatech.com/benchmarking-bmc-remedy-itsm-version-9-0-with-scapa-tpp/
UPDATE: We have received an initial response from BMC on these preliminary
findings, and they have provided some useful insights. Scapa and Alderstone
will be working with the BMC performance teams over the next few weeks to pull
together a more exhaustive and representative report based on production class
environments using their recommended hardware sizing and configuration. Watch
this space!
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