Ensuring the Availability of Applications and Services

Testing Server Capacity

It is extremely important to test server capacity to avoid server failure when making applications and services highly available in your organization.

The following list identifies some of the hardware components you need to test:

Individual computer components such as hard disks and controllers, processors, and RAM.
External components such as routers, bridges, switches, cabling, and connectors.

The following are some of the stress tests you need to set up:

Heavy network loads.
Heavy disk I/O to the same disk.
Heavy use of file, print, and applications servers.
Large numbers of simultaneous logons.

The Windows DNA Performance Kit enables you to test and tune the performance of your applications. The kit allows you to tune applications in Windows NT 4.0 Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), COM+, IIS, and SQL Server to increase component load balance performance.

The Kit contains performance information about COM+ and IIS as well as tools to simulate the effect of many users accessing your IIS or COM+ application. Simulating many users is an important step in understanding the hardware requirements for your application.

Note

The Windows DNA Performance Kit is intended for use with Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Windows NT Server 4.0 with the Windows NT Option Pack.

For more information about the Windows DNA Performance Kit or about how to download the kit, see the Windows DNA Performance Kit link on the Web Resources page at http://windows.microsoft.com/windows2000/reskit/webresources.

For more information about creating test plans, see "Building a Windows 2000 Test Lab" in this book.