Using FCS Capacity Tester
for Logging and Performance Charting

This zip package contains the FCS Capacity Tester files. This document provides instructions for using the logging and charting capabilities of the FCS Capacity Tester. The FCS Capacity Tester is a complete capacity testing harness for the FCS server, and is highly flexible and extensible. The harness is itself a FCS application and utilizes a FCS server (capacity master) to apply load and measure performance of any FCS server (target server). This document only explains the logging and charting aspects of the system, a complete description is beyond its scope. Also a good knowledge of developing and administering FCS applications is necessary.

Package Contents

The package consists of a number of files and folders. The following are of particular interest -

1. README.htm - this is the document you are currently reading.
2. ct_master/ - the main capacity application
3. xcl_ct_viewer/ - a tool that converts logs generated by ct_master

System Requirements

You will need to have two separate FCS servers, let's assume that they are accessible as cap_master.foo.com and cap_target.foo.com. Please substitute appropriate names for these as you see fit. We will refer to these machines as cap_master and cap_target in the rest of the document. You will also need Microsoft Excel installed on the machine that will be used for generating charts, and it should have at least one printer driver installed (though need not be attached to a printer).

Installation

1. Unpack the contents of the zip file in some temporary location.
2. Copy the ct_master folder into the FCS applications folder cap_master server.
3. Restart the FCS server on cap_master.

Generating Performance Logs

• Bring up the ct_master console by launching .../ct_master/ct_master.html
• Enter the appropriate url for the capacity master application, for e.g. rtmp://cap_master.foo.com/ct_master and click the 'Connect' button.
• We only need to work with the 'TEST PARAMETERS' panel, the rest of the gui may be ignored.Even in this panel we need to worry only with a few input fields. Enter the appropriate values for these fields as follows,
  1. Enter the url of the target server, for e.g. rtmp://cap_target.foo.com, note that only the protocol and the host name need be specified. The protocol must always be rtmp.
  2. Make sure the admin port is correct, the default is 1111 and should be ok for most of the installations. You only need to enter a different number if you know that you changed the configuration and made the FCS admin server listen on a different port.
  3. Enter admin username and password for the FCS server on ct_target.
  4. Leave the 'LOAD PROFILE' choice menu as is.
  5. The logging may be performed either for a fixed duration or forever. In either case you can stop the logging manually at any time. However if you have opted for a fixed duration, the logging will stop automatically at the end of the duration.
  6. You can choose the frequency at which the server statistics are gathered by entering appropriate values for 'UPDATE LOAD EVERY' and 'SAMPLE' input fields. The default values of 20 and 4 give rise to a sampling interval of 20/4 = 5 seconds. If you desire a sampling interval of 2 seconds, simply change the values to 2 and 1 for the above fields. It is simpler to enter 1 for the'SAMPLE' field and the desired sampling interval for the 'UPDATE LOAD EVERY' field.
  7. The next two fields 'BEGIN' and 'END' determine the amount of time the target server is allowed to settle before and after running tests. Since we are only doing performance logging you can set both of these to 0.
  8. [IMPORTANT] The 'Enable Logging' check box determines whether log files are created. Keep this checked to generate the log files. If you only desire to monitor the target server visually by observing the 'TEST OUTPUT' text field but do need to log or chart the data, then you may uncheck this option.
  9. You can leave the METRICS options as is.
• Begin logging the target server by clicking the 'Run' button. This button is state sensitive and will only be enabled if it is able to perform the action indicated by its label.
• Load the target server by starting up the client applications (these should not be running on the target machine) that connect to the target server.
• After loading the target server for the desired duration, stop the client applications.
• Stop logging the target server by clicking the 'Stop' button, this is the same 'Run' button which changes its label to 'Stop' when it has successfully started performance logging.

Charting Performance Logs

The performance logs are written out as flv streams. A special charting tool is provided in the package which is integrated into Microsoft Excel is provided that can process these logs and generate standard charts. Follow the steps below to generate charts for the previously generated logs.

1. Make sure you have MS Excel installed on the system being used to generate the performance charts. The charting tool uses macros, so please enable them.
2. You should have at least one printer driver installed on this system.
3. Next ensure that you have all the files from xcl_ct_viewer/ folder in the package available on this system.
4. Double click the xcl_logviewer_tool.xls file, this should bring up MS Excel. If you are asked whether to enable Macros, please enable them, the tool will not work with this.
5. Next type <Ctrl-Shift-L>
6. This will bring up a form 'EXCEL CAPACITY LOG PARSER'
7. Enter the appropriate server url, for e.g. rtmp://cap_master.foo.com/ct_master, please note that the trailing /ct_master must be present regardless of the hostname.
8. If you are able to successfully connect to the cap_master, you will be presented a list box with all the available log files, they are always named as Capacity_YYYYMMMDD_hhmmss, for e.g. Capacity_2003Sep02_17.13.47. These files are simply the flv streams created when generating performance logs. The flv files can be found on cap_master in the applications folder under ct_master/streams/_definst_/. You can also type in the flv file name explicitly (without the trailing .flv) in the 'LOG FILE' input text field.
9. Click 'View Log' button to generate the charts. IMPORTANT - 'Remove Log' permanently removes the performance log so be careful in its usage.
10. The time taken to generate the chart depends upon the length of the performance log. The cpu usage can be quite high during chart generation and can be used to determine when it is done. Typically though it should not take more than a couple of minutes.
11. Once the generation is complete you will have a workbook with a number of graphs and spreadsheets of raw data. You will need to save this into an appropriately named file. DO NOT OVERWRITE xcl_logviewer_tool.xls file.