Stress Testing a Server

BigJon · 7 Oct 2009 at 19:39

Hi Guys

I have a HP ProLiant DL585 G2 8222 which may or may not have a hardware fault, and I need a way of testing it under simulated conditions so I know if it is faulty by next Monday.

It was running 2003 x64 but kept falling over each night with no errors in the event log, I tried installing 2008 R2 today and it blue screened part way into extracting the install files. After 45mins with HP support, they suggested update the firmwares and try again. I ran the Update disk, and this appears to have allowed it to install, I left it on the desktop as I went home at 5.
It also passes the HP diag tests with no issues, it also did this before the bios updates, so i'm not convinced the updates did anything useful.

Does anyone have any recommendations how I can stress it out so I can see if its really working correctly by Monday. It will be used as a MS-SQL Sever either 2005 or 2008 (if I have a license for it) but it will be running the backend db for our call logging software, so it needs to be reliable, or else I will get it in the neck.

It has raid + backup and all that jazz so I wont lose "much" data if it crashes, but it needs to be almost 100% reliable so that the helpdesk + others can keep on working.

Does anyone have any ideas,

At least if I know its faulty, I can give up and use the VM Cluster, but it seemed like a good use for a spare (previously broken, then repaired (badly)) server.

Thanks in advance

Jon

Ringiho · 7 Oct 2009 at 19:53

Also take a look at SQLIOSim. Its a Microsoft tool to create SQL type usage. Its good as it uses RAM and obviously HDD access. Maybe through Prime95 on so its at about 50% CPU. Gives it a resonable test thats pretty realistic.

SQLIOSim: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/231619

BigJon · 7 Oct 2009 at 20:05

Thanks guys i'd totally forgotten Prime, someone else had already done IOMeter in the past, ( it was on with the 2003 install).

Ringiho, That SQLIOSim looks perfect, I shall give it a try, tomorrow. With luck I shall know if I can use it by the weekend.

If only it would take a graphics card, I could leave it doing 3D mark, I recon the 4 Dual Opteron 3Ghz & 16G of ram would have produced a nice result as well. :eek:

Thanks for the info.

Jon

Ringiho · 7 Oct 2009 at 20:07

Not a problem. We normally run our 'iffy' machines through a Windows install, update drivers and then some Prime95+SQLIOSim. Seems to do the trick.
You soon get rid of the weak 'uns

Good luck!

With SQLIOSim, it only defaults to 300 seconds. Make sure to change that over to something worth while. Hours, days or even weeks

oneilldo · 12 Oct 2009 at 20:24

yeah running SQLIO with a seperate a read and write file with random access on each array for 24 hours is a fairly good test.

mikeh501 · 12 Oct 2009 at 21:27

if you have the budget then the facilita performance test solution is very good. It can completely simulate your applications activities against SQL, the .net framework, file activity whatever. Might take longer than a week to setup

Basically it works either by collating queries being entered into SQL and replaying them over many threads (its a distributed application too, so consider many threads on many boxes if need be). The other way of doing it which is more sophisicated is to write your own .net routines and have them executed by the facilita system. It can distribute, orchestrate and rampup the load and report on the consequences. We've used it a number of times.