Connecticut Computer Measurement Group
Autumn CCMG Conference and Membership Meeting
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cromwell - Friday, October 17, 2008

The Connecticut Computer Measurement Group announces its Autumn Conference, with again a mix of national, international and local guest speakers. We extend a warm welcome to all who wish to expand their knowledge and share their insights by attending this informative meeting. We have planned a two track meeting in the morning with a lineup of exceptional speakers. Tony Mungal will speak on Multi-Core Processing and the Tiered Storage Model. He is president of CMG Canada and we are pleased to have him join us. Irwin Kraus, who is well known to many of us in CMG, is back with a presentation “X86 Grows Up”, how X86 clusters are an alternative to mainframe and mid-range. We have grouped these presentations into a Technology Track in the morning. Eric Landrieu, who recently presented at Philadelphia CMG, will discuss Managing Capacity and Performance of a Virtualized Data Center. Debbie Sheetz, known to many of us, will present “Predicting the Relative Performance of CPU’ to round out the Open Systems track. Our combined sessions will feature Ron Potter, a CCMG member and friend, who will guide us in best practices for writing a Capacity Report. Yiping Ding, who has presented many times at CCMG as well as National & International CMG, will complete our day with a presentation on Analytic Modeling for Application Performance Index. APDEX is a new standard in the characterization of response time based on user satisfaction.

We thank TeamQuest for sponsoring the Continental Breakfast and Refreshment Breaks. Their sponsorship helps subsidize the price of admission to our CCMG events.

AGENDA

Connecticut Computer Measurement Group
Autumn CCMG Conference and Membership Meeting
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cromwell - Friday, October 17, 2008

About the Speakers

Irwin Kraus is the North East technical sales manager for Verari Systems.  He has 40 years of experience in the IT industry, both as a customer and a vendor, and has been a frequent speaker at CMG and Share conferences in the United States and Europe.

Dr. Yiping Ding is a Vice President of R&D, OPNET Technologies. He is responsible for Panorama and Systems Modeling Solutions at OPNET. Before joining OPNET, Yiping was a Chief Scientist at Akorri. He also worked for BGS Systems and BMC Software for more than 15 years as a scientist, Sr. manager and architect. He has authored and coauthored over 50 papers and holds five patents in the performance analysis and capacity management area.

Debbie Sheetz is a Capacity Management Architect and Support Analyst based in BMC Customer Support, at the Waltham, Massachusetts/USA location. She provides applied solutions for performance analysis and capacity planning challenges for customers, business partners, and BMC field consultants. She works with product R&D and marketing on refining existing solutions and designing new solutions. Prior to working with Distributed Systems performance management products, she had extensive involvement with AS/400 and mainframe product support and development. Originally hired to work on the first version of BEST/1 at BGS Systems, she has 32 years experience developing and supporting performance analysis software with BMC Software/BGS Systems.

Ron Potter has been involved in IT for over 30 years, working in number of different industries. Before retiring, he was closely involved with a multi-year IT improvement initiative at the healthcare company that embraced the ITIL framework and associated best practices.  He established a predictive capacity modeling process working closely with business, application development and infrastructure teams.  His team was charged with building capacity models for all business units for their mission critical applications. He is currently working part-time spoiling grandchildren and, when not tackling that tough assignment, he is Best Practices Manager at TeamQuest Corporation.

Anthony G. Mungal is a Consulting Corporate Systems Engineer with the EMC Corporation in Massachussetts. He lives, and is based, out of Boca Raton, Florida. He has been with EMC since July 1993 in various positions including: Consulting Systems Engineer, SE Consultant and Senior Product Manager. He is a 31 year veteran of the IT industry and has held positions such as: Product Manager, Large Systems Account Specialist, Regional Systems Engineer, Regional Product Specialist, Systems Engineering Management, Product Management, Systems Programmer, Business Systems Analyst, and Senior Programmer.

He is a graduate of the University of Toronto with honours in both Mathematics and Computer Science. He has participated on many IT discussion panels, authored and published numerous papers on Processor Performance, Memory Management, I/O Subsystems Configuration & Performance, Storage Management, IT Infrastructure and Architecture Design & Implementation, and other related topics which he has presented at forums such as Computer Measurement Group (National and Regional meetings), CMG International meetings (Australia, South Africa & the UK), SHARE, GUIDE and an assortment of other local IT related user groups. He is an active member of both the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE).

Eric Landrieu has been working for PERFMAN since 1997.  Eric is a Software Development Manager for PERFMAN, responsible for the PERFMAN for VMware, and is a VMware Certified Professional.

Connecticut Computer Measurement Group
Autumn CCMG Conference and Membership Meeting
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cromwell - Friday, October 17, 2008

Agenda

08:00-08:30 Registration and Coffee

08:30-08:45 Introductory Remarks

Technology Track

08:45-10:00 Multi-Core Processing and the Tiered Storage Model

Anthony G. Mungal, EMC Corporation

Most enterprise class I/O subsystems today employ multiple types of storage technologies meant for deployment using a “tiered storage” model in support of the trend of increasing capacity and performance driven largely by application and computing trends. Indeed, tiered storage as an effective I/O strategy is a necessary step in the ongoing effort to capitalize on technological developments while lowering overall cost to the user. However, there is a tendency for these deployment strategies for application and consolidated workloads to become convoluted, and even ineffective.

This presentation discusses the multi-core and multi-processing computing trends which affect the application deployments, and its pronounced effect on the I/O subsystem. Topics such as data growth, access patterns, traffic characterization, and the working set are used to introduce the need for technologies such as larger drives, flash disks, multi-tiering, dynamic cache partitioning, virtual provisioning and the like. Further, it examines the technologies, their lifetime expectancies, their suitability to various workloads and applications, and where applicable, the next steps. .

Open Systems Track

08:45-10:00 Managing the Capacity and Performance of a Virtualized Data Center Eric Landrieu – PERFMAN

This session will discuss important metrics and best practices in managing virtualized data centers.  We will also explore the possible consequences of improperly configured servers and virtual machines.  Various virtualization technologies will be covered, with VMware as the primary focus. 

10:00-10:15 Break

Technology Track

10:15-11:30 X86 Grows Up

Irwin Kraus - Verari Systems

There is a gradual shift underway in enterprise computing from mainframe and midrange systems increasingly toward x86-based systems.  This shift is being driven by several factors including the high cost of mainframe and midrange hardware and software, and is largely enabled by the growing capabilities and performance of x86 based systems.  Other major factors include strong open source OS and middleware as well as robust virtualization offerings.  Finally, new stateless, highly parallel application architectures are emerging which are ideal for large clusters of x86 systems.  This presentation will discuss the background, history, and development of these trends.

Open Systems Track

10:15-11:30 Predicting the Relative Performance of CPU

Debbie Sheetz - BMC Software Inc.

When an analytic model or sizing tool predicts CPU Performance, it uses (1) queuing theory calculations and (2) a representation of relative performance for each CPU configuration. This session focuses on (2) using a sample CPU rating system from www.spec.org. Our research results include an algorithm for finding functions to describe relative performance, as well as specific properties of general and vendor-specific functions. These results can be directly applied to any case where the CPU vendor supplies limited benchmark data compared to the number of CPU configurations actually available.

11:30-12:30 Lunch (Provided) 

Combined Sessions

12:30-1:45 Writing a Capacity Planning Report

Ron Potter –TeamQuest

Never written a capacity planning report or not quite sure what should go into one?  Your report is one of the most important aspects of the capacity planning process.  The report clearly explains the results of your work, helps management understand any issues, and provides the information necessary to drive consensus on getting any actionable items resolved. Ron Potter will provide ideas on simple ways to use PowerPoint slides to tell your story with impact that technical, IT management and business staff will understand.

01:45 – 2:00 Break

02:00 - 3:15  An Analytical Model for Application Performance Index

Yiping Ding - OPNET Technologies

Application Performance Index (Apdex) is a single number used to quantify user satisfaction with application performance. This paper presents an analytical model to study the relationship between Apdex and the capacity of the system that supports the applications. The analytical model provides system-capacity guidelines to achieve the desired Apdex rating. It also helps us to better understand the correlation among application response time thresholds set by the users, the user satisfaction level, the Apdex value, and the mean response time delivered by the system.

Crowne Plaza Hotel and Conference Center has told Connecticut CMG that free WiFi is available should you need to stay in touch with your office while attending the meeting.

Connecticut Computer Measurement Group

Old State House Square, P.O. Box 230453, Hartford, CT 06123-0453

Autumn 2008 CCMG Conference and Membership Meeting, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cromwell

Friday, October 17, 2008

REGISTRATION INSTRUCTIONS

The Autumn meeting will again utilize an e-mail registration, in addition to the regular mail registration. Pre-registration fee is $55.00, which includes lunch.

*** If you use the email pre-registration process, normal pre-payment is not required until Friday, October 17 *****

Simply e-mail your intention to attend, to ctcmg@yahoo.com no later than October 10, 2008, to qualify for the pre-registration fee. You should receive an acknowledgement within 24 hours. Remember payment is required at the door. On-site registration fee is $65.00. PLEASE NOTE: We will once again be at the Crowne Plaza Hotel & Conference Center in Cromwell, CT. Directions can be found on the attached Directions Sheet or on our web site http://regions.cmg.org/regions/ctcmg/ .

We must receive completed registration form and payment (if regular mail registration) by Friday, October 10, 2008. Make check or money order payable to Connecticut CMG.

Mail registration and payment to:

Connecticut CMG

Old State House Square

P.O. Box 230453

Hartford, CT 06123-0453

If you have any questions at all, please call Program Chair, Jane Shipman (860)-636-6492 or Chairman Pat Cyr (860) 547-4701.

______________________________________________________________________

Connecticut Computer Measurement Group

Old State House Square, P.O. Box 230453, Hartford, CT 06123-0453

Autumn 2008 CCMG Conference and Membership Meeting, Crowne Plaza, Cromwell

Friday, October 17, 2008

REGISTRATION FORM

Name: ________________________________________________________________

Company: ________________________________________________________________

Address: ________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

Phone: ____________________________ E-mail address: ____________________________

• Occasionally, CCMG shares our mailing list with other organizations. Please check this box if you DO NOT wish to have your name released to other computer related groups.

Connecticut Computer Measurement Group

Old State House Square, P.O.Box 230453, Hartford, CT 06123-0453

Autumn 2008 CCMG Conference and Membership Meeting

Crowne Plaza Hotel & Conference Center

Cromwell, Connecticut

Friday, October 17, 2008

MEETING PLACE

Crowne Plaza Hotel & Conference Center / Cromwell

100 Berlin Road

Cromwell, CT 06416

Phone: (860) 635-2000

Message Center: (860) 635-2000 specify CCMG meeting

DIRECTIONS

( FREE PARKING )

Traveling North: (From New York City)

Interstate 95 North to Interstate 91 North (junction in New Haven, CT).

Interstate 91 North to Exit 21 - Rte 372. Turn Left.

Traveling South: (e.g. from Boston)

Interstate 90 Massachusetts Turnpike to Interstate 84 West.

Follow I-84 West to Interstate 91 South (Junction in Hartford, CT).

Interstate 91 South to Exit 21 - Rte 372. Turn Left.

Traveling East:

Follow Interstate 84 East to Interstate 91 South (Junction in Hartford, CT).

Interstate 91 South to Exit 21 - Rte 372. Turn Left.

Traveling West:

Follow Interstate 84 West to Interstate 91 South (Junction in Hartford, CT).

Interstate 91 South to Exit 21 - Rte 372. Turn Left.

From the airport:

Follow signs to Hartford - Route 20 East to I-91 South.

Follow southbound directions above.

Web Enabled – Please Bookmark us in your browser’s “Favorite Sites”

http://regions.cmg.org/regions/ctcmg/