Cluster Mail workload and test preparation

The Cluster Mail workload executes Notes® transactions that model a cluster for mail users at sites relying on a two-way Domino® cluster for messaging.

About this task

The Cluster Mail workload script models an active user sending and reading mail on a client. It contains an average of eight minutes of waiting; therefore, an average user executes this script no more than seven times per hour. For each iteration of the script, there are five documents read, two documents added, two documents deleted, one view-scrolling operation, one database opened and closed, one view opened and closed, and some miscellaneous operations. One message is sent to the recipients approximately every 90 minutes.

Messages that each driver user sends are delivered to mail users in the cluster. The updates are then cluster-replicated to all replica copies of the users' database. The ClusterMail test models reading, submitting, delivering, and retrieving messages. As such, the mail users must have a corresponding $Person entry in the Domino® Directories on clients and servers in order to receive mail. Run the agent, "Create NotesBench Mail Person Documents," to create these entries.

Since simulated users are connecting to the cluster, instead of to a specific server, they generate their mail from the server they are currently failed-over to. Each iteration of the script provides an opportunity for the user to fail-over to a different node depending on the availability of specific node resources.

The measurements obtained by this test include:

  • Throughput of completed Notes® operations
  • Average response time at maximum capacity
  • Maximum number of mail users supported

The resulting capacity metric for a cluster under test is the maximum number of users that can be supported before the average user response time becomes unacceptable.

Complete the following procedure to prepare for running the test:

Procedure

  1. Perform all the required "setup" procedures that apply to your configuration for this test, including setting up the NOTES.INI file and the destination servers.
  2. On the SUT, start the Domino® server. The router, replicator, and update server processes must be started. You can run additional server programs at your discretion.
  3. Run the workload Cluster Mail Initialization to create replicas on the clustered server defined by [ClusterServer2] in the test driver's NOTES.INI file. The tester determines how many, and on which node, replicas should be placed.

NOTES.INI settings on the test driver for the ClusterMail test

About this task

Enter the following values in each child's NOTES.INI file.

Table 1. NOTES.INI values

Variable

Action

NBTestReset

Enter one of the following to designate how to handle existing documents at the start of the test:

  • 1 -- To delete existing documents
  • 0 -- To ignore existing documents
Note: The number of documents deleted is dependent on the value set for the variable MaxDocToDelete.

MaxDocToDelete

Enter the number of documents to delete when the test starts. After deleting documents, the initial document count is high.

NumMessageRecipients

Enter the number of recipients for each message. Recommended value is 3.

NthIteration

Enter the frequency for how often a message is sent, instead of the message being sent on every script iteration, the message is sent once per n iterations of the script. Recommended value is 6.