Optimizing Windchill Performance for Global Collaboration

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Optimizing Windchill Performance for Global Collaboration Technical Brief Contents About This Document ................................................................... 3 Supported Releases and Products ........................................................................ 3 Audience ................................................................................................................ 3 Support Policy for Enterprise Deployment Resources........................................... 3 Challenges to Windchill Performance for Global Collaboration 4 Factors Impacting WAN Application Performance .................... 5 Bandwidth .............................................................................................................. 5 Latency................................................................................................................... 5 Congestion ............................................................................................................. 6 Packet Loss............................................................................................................ 7 Factors Affecting Windchill CAD WAN Performance................. 8 Example Global Windchill Architecture Scenario ...................... 8 Goal and Solution Requirements for example Global Windchill Architecture Scenario ............................................................................................................... 10 WAN Performance Optimization Options for LAN & WAN Users ............................................................................................ 10 Main Server Location ........................................................................................... 11 Windchill Content Replication .............................................................................. 11 WAN Accelerators ................................................................................................ 11 When to Consider Windchill Content Replication and/or WAN Accelerators with Windchill ............................................................................................................... 13 WAN Performance Tuning ................................................................................... 13 Configure the Web Server for Content Cache Expiration .................................... 13 Improve WAN Performance with Upload & Download Meta-Data & Content Compression ........................................................................................................ 14 Improve Network Performance ............................................................................ 14 Quality of Service (QoS) ...................................................................................... 15 Examples of WAN Performance Optimization .......................... 15 Example 1: Main server location .......................................................................... 16 Example 2: Architecting a solution for a site with CAD users .............................. 16 March 2011 Enterprise Deployment Resources 1 of 26

Transcript of Optimizing Windchill Performance for Global Collaboration

Page 1: Optimizing Windchill Performance for Global Collaboration

Optimizing Windchill Performance for Global Collaboration Technical Brief

ContentsAbout This Document ................................................................... 3 Supported Releases and Products ........................................................................ 3 Audience ................................................................................................................ 3 Support Policy for Enterprise Deployment Resources........................................... 3 

Challenges to Windchill Performance for Global Collaboration 4 Factors Impacting WAN Application Performance .................... 5 Bandwidth .............................................................................................................. 5 Latency ................................................................................................................... 5 Congestion ............................................................................................................. 6 Packet Loss ............................................................................................................ 7 

Factors Affecting Windchill CAD WAN Performance ................. 8 Example Global Windchill Architecture Scenario ...................... 8 Goal and Solution Requirements for example Global Windchill Architecture Scenario ............................................................................................................... 10 

WAN Performance Optimization Options for LAN & WAN Users ............................................................................................ 10 Main Server Location ........................................................................................... 11 Windchill Content Replication .............................................................................. 11 WAN Accelerators ................................................................................................ 11 When to Consider Windchill Content Replication and/or WAN Accelerators with Windchill ............................................................................................................... 13 WAN Performance Tuning ................................................................................... 13 Configure the Web Server for Content Cache Expiration .................................... 13 Improve WAN Performance with Upload & Download Meta-Data & Content Compression ........................................................................................................ 14 Improve Network Performance ............................................................................ 14 Quality of Service (QoS) ...................................................................................... 15 

Examples of WAN Performance Optimization .......................... 15 Example 1: Main server location .......................................................................... 16 Example 2: Architecting a solution for a site with CAD users .............................. 16 

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Example 3: Architecting a solution for a site with light or non-CAD Users ........... 20 Example 4: Architecting a solution for a site in Brazil .......................................... 20 Example 5: Architecting a solution for a site with remote External Users and Partners ................................................................................................................ 21 Example 6: Architecting a solution for multiple sites in a region .......................... 22 

Summary ...................................................................................... 24 Additional Information ................................................................ 25 

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About This Document This document provides an understanding of the factors affecting Windchill wide area network (WAN) performance. It is intended for managers, system administrators, and solution architects. This document provides performance data for Windchill in various global WAN environments and presents proven options for providing acceptable Windchill WAN performance for globally distributed users. This document uses a fictional global automotive company to illustrate the challenges of and solutions for providing acceptable Windchill WAN performance. The performance data presented in this document was derived from Windchill WAN performance testing conducted by the PTC Enterprise Deployment Center

Supported Releases and Products Windchill® 9.0 & Windchill® 9.1 Windchill PDMLink® Windchill ProjectLink™ Pro/INTRALINK® 9.0 & Pro/INTRALINK® 9.1

Audience This document is intended for managers, system administrators, and solution architects. It assumes that the reader has some working knowledge of the technology and concepts associated with the following:

• Information technology

• Enterprise systems

• Windchill architecture, capabilities, and system administration

• Operating systems, relational databases, LDAP, web servers, application servers, platforms, servers, storage, and networking

Support Policy for Enterprise Deployment Resources This document is a resource that PTC has created to assist customers with implementation and systems integration on specified system configurations. The document is not PTC product documentation and it may not be updated in the same way as PTC product documentation. Before using this document, verify that this document is applicable to the versions of PTC products that you are using. Because of the almost infinite variety of system configurations that customers can have, PTC cannot and does not warrant that this document will be entirely accurate for your particular configuration. Using the information in this document may require specific knowledge, skills, or expertise with PTC or third-party products. If incorrectly implemented, some of the information provided can have significant negative consequences.

Should you need consulting help with this document, you may be able to engage the PTC Global Services organization or a PTC services partner who can assist your company with its deployment of Windchill. If you require such assistance, contact your PTC sales representative or authorized reseller.

If you would like to provide feedback to PTC on this document or have a specific technical question about this document or about a PTC product, contact PTC Technical Support for assistance. Support for this document is provided in

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English. PTC Technical Support will endeavor to reply within two business days to requests for support of this document.

Challenges to Windchill Performance for Global Collaboration Enabling geographically distributed users to work productively with Windchill can be a complex and challenging effort if you are not aware of proven solutions. Geographically distributed collaboration is a dimension of nearly every product development business process -- from concept development, to regulatory compliance. Successful global collaboration demands fast system response regardless of location, network quality or congestion, or time of day.

Critical requirements of a global product development system include the ability to:

• provide responsive applications and deliver design information to users over networks of varying quality and congestion.

• deliver large volumes of content (such as CAD datasets) to and from remote users over a WAN

• deliver the same content over long distances to multiple sites all over the world

• manage server and network outages when users are on the system around the clock

Towards this end, it is critical to answer the following questions when architecting a global Windchill deployment:

• How well can Windchill perform over your company’s WAN?

• Will your current network provide acceptable performance for each site? How much bandwidth do you need at each global location?

• How well does Windchill work at high latencies?

• What are the options for deploying Windchill to support global deployments and deliver acceptable end-user system performance?

• How effective is each option at improving WAN performance?

• Can the various options be used together? If so, what are the cumulative benefits and/or drawbacks when several options are combined?

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Factors Impacting WAN Application Performance The factors that impact Windchill WAN performance are:

Bandwidth Latency Congestion Packet Loss

Latency (milliseconds or ms)

Bandwidth Response times for Windchill transactions are heavily dependent upon available bandwidth. Bandwidth represents the capacity of a network connection. It refers to the data rate supported by a network connection and is expressed in terms of bits per second (bps or Mbps). In general, higher bandwidths deliver faster system response times. However, other factors, such as latency, congestion, and packet loss are tightly coupled with bandwidth in influencing response times.

Latency Bandwidth is just one element of what is perceived as the speed of a network. Latency is another element that contributes to network speed. The term latency refers to any of several kinds of delays typically incurred in processing of network data. A low latency network connection is one that generally experiences small delay times, while a high latency network connection generally suffers from long delays. Although the theoretical peak bandwidth of a network connection is fixed according to the technology used, the actual bandwidth obtained varies over time and is affected by high latencies. Excessive latency creates bottlenecks that prevent data from filling the network pipe, thus decreasing effective bandwidth. The impact of latency on network bandwidth can be temporary (lasting a few seconds) or persistent (constant) depending on the source of the delays.

The graph below shows the impact of latency on response times for Windchill transactions for various bandwidths. As you can see, response times increase linearly with latency for all bandwidths.

Notes:

• Response time in the graph is the sum of time taken to execute all actions in the Windchill Pro/ENGINEER Data Management Performance Benchmark Test

• Response times for a 10Mbps and 1Gbps line are very close and hence show up as a single line in the graph

Bandwidth (bits per second, e.g. Mbps)

Packet Loss (%)

Congestion (% utilization)

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Response Time vs. Round Trip LatencyPacket Loss = 0.1%, Congestion = 40%

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Figure 1

Congestion Network congestion occurs when a link or node is carrying so much data that its quality of service deteriorates. Typical effects include queuing delay, packet loss or the blocking of new connections. A consequence of the latter two is that incremental increases in load lead either only to small increase in network throughput, or to an actual reduction in network throughput.

The graph below shows the predicted impact of congestion on response times for Windchill transactions for various bandwidths. As you can see, response times drastically increase with congestion rates of greater than 75%.

Latency (milliseconds or ms)

Bandwidth (bits per second, e.g. Mbps)

Congestion (% utilization)

Packet Loss (%)

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Figure 2

Packet Loss Packet loss is the failure of one or more transmitted packets to arrive at their destination. This event can cause noticeable effects in all types of digital communications. The causes of packet loss include inadequate signal strength at the destination, natural or human-made interference, excessive system noise, hardware failure, software corruption or overburdened network nodes. Often, more than one of these factors is involved.

The graph below shows the impact of packet loss on response times for Windchill transactions for various bandwidths. Response times stay flat for packet loss ranging from 0.1 – 1%. It is expected that packet loss of greater than 1% will have noticeable effects on response times.

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Factors Affecting Windchill CAD WAN Performance CAD users send files back and forth over the network frequently. These files can be very large in size. The CAD user transactions that are most impacted by a WAN are those involving uploading or downloading CAD files between the client and the server. These transactions are:

• Add to workspace (with Content Download)

• Upload

• Checkin with Upload

• Update operations

The performance of these key user transactions is dependent on

• The time required to transfer CAD files over the network

• The distance between the client and the server

• The available bandwidth between the client and the server

• Other key network characteristics between the client and the server, specifically latency, congestion and packet loss

Note: The larger the number of CAD users at a site the larger will be the bandwidth requirements for that site.

Example Global Windchill Architecture Scenario In this document we discuss a fictional global automotive company (World Car Motors) to illustrate the behavior of Windchill performance under varying WAN conditions. The data presented in this example illustrates the performance of Windchill for a variety of representative global network conditions and architecture options.

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The fictional World Car Motors is a global automotive company, an automotive OEM that designs, manufactures, and supports specialty vehicles globally. The company uses Windchill PDMLink & ProjectLink and Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire for the following activities: Project Management, Engineering, Manufacturing and Service. Its operations are spread over nine sites on four continents (eight internal sites & one supplier site). The functions executed at the various sites are: design, manufacturing, support as well as supplier functions. There are wide variations in the network conditions across the 9 sites:

• Bandwidths range from a of low of T1 (1.544 Mbps) to 10 Mbps and a high of 100Mbps

• Round trip latencies vary between 10 - 400ms

• Typical Congestion i.e. network utilization is 40%

The image below shows the product manufactured by World Car Motors as well as a map showing their operations.

Figure 4

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Goal and Solution Requirements for Example Global Windchill Architecture Scenario

The goal for World Car Motors is to design a Windchill Architecture that enables users to collaboratively develop products across all their globally located sites, ensuring acceptable performance for all users of the system regardless of location is paramount.

In developing the right solution for the company, defining clear requirements for the global deployment of Windchill is the crucial first step because:

• There are myriad solutions and combinations of solutions that can provide a wide range of performance

• It is extremely difficult to determine the right solution for a company without knowing the requirements and constraints of the company

• Defining clear and unambiguous criteria up front eliminates subjectivity and emotions when choosing an architecture

Below is a list of typical requirement areas to be aware of when designing a global deployment of Windchill. See the Windchill Deployment Planning Check List for more information:

• Performance: System Response Time for all users:

• LAN & WAN users

• CAD & non-CAD users

• System Availability & Recovery Time

• Network Quality (Load & Congestion)

• Level of System Maintenance Required

• Cost: Deployment and Maintenance

This technical brief will focus on delivering acceptable performance for:

• CAD & non-CAD users

WAN Performance Optimization Options for LAN & WAN Users The major options to consider when designing a solution providing optimal Windchill WAN performance are:

• Main Server Location

• Windchill Content Replication

• WAN Accelerators

• WAN Performance Tuning

• Improve Network

• Quality of Service (QoS)

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These options are explained below and the chapter that follows, “Examples of WAN Performance Optimization”, provides example scenarios where these options are applied to the hypothetical company - World Car Motors.

Main Server Location The location of the main server can have a huge impact on the performance experienced by the user community. Application response time for WAN Users is proportional to the distance between the user and the main server (i.e. the farther the distance, the greater the latency and the longer the application response time). Locating the main server to optimize WAN performance is a simple but often overlooked option. It may be difficult to seriously consider alternate server locations because a company’s corporate IT policies dictate the location of the server, perhaps within a central corporate data center, but when considering alternate server locations is an option, it should be considered.

The following are typical strategies for locating the main server:

• Minimize latencies between main server and remote sites

• Locate Main Server at Largest Site

• Locate main server at corporate headquarters or corporate data center

Windchill Content Replication The Windchill vaulting and replication technology is designed to minimize system response times for content transactions and to optionally segregate where content is stored, specifically on disk. Where the content is physically and geographically stored plays a key role in determining overall system response times. As part of the vaulting and replication set up process, Windchill file servers are located in all remote locations where it is desired to store physical content files. A typical global Windchill deployment has a main site (for the database and other essential components) and one or more remote sites (also called replicated sites) that have file servers installed to provide replicated content to remotely located users.

The data in Figure 5 below shows that applying Windchill Content Replication alone, reduces the time taken for the action “Add to Workspace” from 10 times to 1.6 times that of the LAN (in the case of a 10MBps bandwidth WAN with 275 ms latency, 40% congestion and 0% packet loss).

Please refer to the Windchill Vaulting and Replication Technical Brief for more information on Windchill Content Replication.

WAN Accelerators A WAN accelerator is a network appliance that optimizes bandwidth to improve the end user's experience on a wide area network. The appliance can be a physical hardware component or software program that speeds up the time it takes for information to flow back and forth across the WAN by using compression and data deduplication techniques to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. An accelerator caches duplicate files or parts of files so they can be referenced instead of having to be sent across the WAN

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again. For more information on WAN Accelerator, please refer to the following PTC reference documents:

• WAN Accelerators and Windchill Performance - Technical Brief

• Riverbed Deployment Guide for Windchill

• Cisco Distributed Research and Development Solution Deployment Guide for PTC Windchill

Deploying WAN Accelerators at the main server and remote sites will accelerate data transfer and reduce network congestion across the wide area network.

The data in Figure 5 below shows that deploying both WAN acceleration and Windchill Content Replication reduces the time taken for the action “Add to Workspace” from 10 times to 1.1 times that of the LAN (in the case of a 10MBps bandwidth WAN with 275 ms latency, 40% congestion and 0% packet loss).

Note: The performance data presented in this document was derived from Windchill WAN performance testing conducted by the PTC Enterprise Deployment Center and actual numbers may vary.

Figure 5

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When to Consider Windchill Content Replication and/or WAN Accelerators with Windchill

WAN accelerators show the most improvement in application response times when they are deployed across low bandwidth and/or high latency network connections. As a general rule, remote sites that are connected to the main Windchill server by networks with latencies above 100ms are good candidates for using a WAN accelerator to improve the user experience. Networks that experience packet loss may also be good candidates for the use of a WAN accelerator. As shown in previous examples, loss and latency combined can make a big impact on overall application performance.

If remote users are only working with small documents (such as PDFs or Microsoft Office files), then WAN accelerators alone may provide acceptable performance over networks with latencies above 100ms. However for remote users working with CAD content, it is highly recommended that Windchill content replication be used at a minimum and it is recommended that WAN accelerators be used in conjunction with Windchill content replication. For remote users working with CAD content, a WAN accelerator is a “complementary device” but not a substitute for the means to locally upload and download large CAD files to and from a remote file server deployed with Windchill content replication.

Note: Most WAN accelerators can be deployed with SSL (https). Please refer to the appropriate vendor documentation for more information on how to setup respective WAN accelerators with Windchill on https. Please refer to the links in Additional Information section to the Riverbed Deployment Guide for Windchill & the Cisco Distributed Research and Development Solution Deployment Guide for PTC Windchill.

WAN Performance Tuning This section highlights two valuable and proven techniques for tuning the Windchill system to provide improved WAN performance.

Configure the Web Server for Content Cache Expiration How to configure the web server for content cache expiration is described in PTC Support Technical Point of Interest Article number 141283 titled Best Practice to Reduce Workspace Refresh Time.

Implementing this TPI per the instructions will have the effect of reducing the number of requests to the Windchill server thereby improving performance on the WAN.

TPI 141283 discusses two items:

• Removing the "Compare Status" column from the workspace table display as Pro/ENGINEER must make additional requests to the server to obtain the latest status for all the objects in the workspace. These additional requests have an associated performance penalty as Pro/ENGINEER cannot simply query the local cache and provide updated status with little server interaction.

• Configure the web server for content expiration, i.e. configure the web server to instruct the client browser (standalone or embedded) to use files already cached in the client browser cache.

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Improve WAN Performance with Upload & Download Meta-Data & Content Compression

Improving WAN performance with upload & download meta-data & content compression will improve the performance of save, upload, check in, check out and download operations for Pro/ENGINEER users on the WAN and is documented in the PTC Technical Support Suggested Technique article titled – “Performance Tuning Recommendations For Client Systems And Windchill Servers That Manage CAD Models”. The section titled – “Client Property Settings” details config.pro options to compress metadata and content.

Improve Network Performance An obvious option to consider to improve WAN performance is improving the network, specifically the WAN used by remote Windchill. The key characteristics that impact network performance are:

• Bandwidth

• Latency

• Congestion

• Packet Loss

Figures 1, 2 and 3 above show the effect of latency, congestion and packet loss on Windchill response times over various networks. Managing each of these characteristics within acceptable limits can go a long way towards improving Windchill performance on the WAN.

Let’s look at the impact that the bandwidth between the WAN clients and the Windchill server has on WAN performance. Figure 6 below shows the effect of bandwidth on the action “Add to Workspace” of the WorldCar assembly containing 2374 objects.

Key observations from Figure 6:

• “Add to Workspace” is 10 times slower than the LAN when performed on a 10MBps bandwidth WAN with 275 ms latency, 40% congestion and 0% packet loss

• “Add to Workspace” is 8 times slower than the LAN when performed on a 100MBps bandwidth WAN with 275 ms latency, 40% congestion and 0% packet loss

• There is no appreciable difference in times between a 10MBps and 100 MBps line when using a WAN accelerator or a File Server

• Performance is the same for 10MBps line and 100 MBps lines when using both a WAN accelerator and a File Server

These results tell us that increasing bandwidth may not be as impactful as improving latency, congestion, or packet loss.

Note: The performance data presented in this document was derived from Windchill WAN performance testing conducted by the PTC Enterprise Deployment Center and actual numbers may vary.

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Figure 6

Quality of Service (QoS) The traffic on a company’s network typically comes from numerous business applications each having a different degree of importance to the company. Quality of Service or QoS is a network management technique that provides the means to prioritize network traffic and ensures that the most important data gets through the network as quickly as possible. With QoS, it is possible to prioritize traffic related to Windchill over others on the network to guarantee a certain level of performance.

Examples of WAN Performance Optimization To illustrate the application and benefits of the WAN performance optimizing options discussed above, this section presents examples with various network conditions and scenarios and investigates the impact of different optimizing options in an effort to provide a WAN Windchill architecture for a hypothetical global company - World Car Motors.

Example 1: Main server location

Example 2: Architecting a solution for a site with CAD users

Example 3: Architecting a solution for a site with light or non-CAD users

Example 4: Architecting a solution for a site in Brazil

Example 5: Architecting a solution for a site with remote external users and partners

Example 6: Architecting a solution for several sites in a region

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Example 1: Main server location In this example, we begin with determining which of the nine sites of World Car Motors will provide the best WAN performance.

The table and figure below show the following:

1. Bandwidth and Latency between the various sites of World Car Motors.

2. Average and Median latencies for each of the sites at World Car Motors.

If the objective is to minimize the latencies between the main server and each of the remote sites, then the data indicates that any of the three Hannover sites would result in the lowest average and median latencies. Therefore each of the Hannover sites should be considered optimal locations for main server.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

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PauloAverage Latency

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Tianjin China 10 - 250 250 250 100 0 325 200 400 222 250Alabama US 10 - 175 175 175 275 325 0 300 100 191 175Bangalore India 10 - 200 200 200 175 200 300 0 300 197 200Sao Paulo Brazil 1.544 - 250 250 250 325 400 100 300 0 234 250

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Figure 7

Example 2: Architecting a solution for a site with CAD users In this example, the objective is to architect a solution providing acceptable performance for a site with primarily CAD users. We will choose the Shanghai site of World Car Motors for this example.

The following characteristics typify a site with CAD users:

• Engineering design and/or manufacturing occurs at the locations

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• Large volumes of data move between the main server and CAD clients (CAD data is characterized by large data volumes)

• There are strict data security requirements since CAD data is expected to contain corporate intellectual property

A typical CAD user frequently performs the following tasks on a daily basis:

• Search for CAD data on the server

• Download CAD data from the server

• Make modifications to the CAD data

• Check in modifications to the server

Please refer to section titled – “Factors Affecting Windchill CAD WAN Performance ” for more information.

Given the above, the objectives when architecting a solution for a site with CAD users are to:

• Reduce the time required to transfer CAD files over the network

• Reduce the distance between remote CAD users and the server

• Ensure the site has adequate bandwidth

With the Shanghai site of World Car Motors as our example of a site with CAD users and with the server located in Hannover, this site has the following network conditions:

• Bandwidth – 10 MBps

• Latency between client and server – 275 ms

• Congestion – 40%

The figure below shows that the performance of the Add to Workspace operation for a 10 MBps line with 275 ms latency and 40% congestion is 10 times slower than the LAN.

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Figure 8

Let’s consider three options for providing acceptable performance for the Shanghai CAD users:

1. Deploy a remote file server

• Benefits

• Provide performance that is 1.6 times the LAN (as compared to 10 times LAN without a remote file server).

• Requires deploying a server with as little as 2 cores and 4 GB RAM

• Concerns

• Performance will be slower than on the LAN.

• Display performance of various Windchill HTML pages may be slow

• The remote file server represents an additional file vault location that needs to be managed by the administrator in addition to the master location in Hannover.

• Replication schedules need to be configured and managed by an administrator.

• Replication jobs can contribute to the congestion of the network which may in turn impact performance.

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2. Deploy a WAN accelerator

• Benefits

• Provide performance that is 1.3 times the LAN (as compared to 10 times LAN without a remote file server).

• Improve page display times, in part, by caching content from the Windchill HTML pages.

• Reduce the amount of redundant content being requested from the server thereby reducing network congestion.

• Allow all content to be stored in a central location. No additional file vault locations need to be managed by the administrator beyond the master location in Hannover.

• May not cost anything if the company is already using WAN accelerators

• Concerns

• Performance will be slower than on the LAN.

• Performance may be slow (10 times LAN) for non-cached content requested from the server. For example, the very first Add to Workspace of a CAD assembly will be very slow (10 times LAN) while subsequent requests for the same un-modified assembly will be delivered from the cache for as long as the assembly remains in the WAN accelerator cache.

• Performance may be inconsistent because the WAN accelerator storage capacity is undersized and lacks the necessary storage space for the large volumes of content used by sites that have CAD users

• May require a significant capital investment for new or additional WAN accelerators

• May require a significant capital investment because one of the pricing factors of WAN accelerators is storage capacity and higher end (more expensive) WAN accelerators may be required to support the large volumes of content used by sites that have CAD users

3. Deploy both a remote File Server and a WAN Accelerator

• Benefits

• This is the best option, providing performance that is as close to LAN as possible (1.1 times the LAN)

• Improve page display times, in part by caching content from the Windchill HTML pages.

• The WAN accelerator reduces:

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– The amount of redundant content transmitted over the WAN from the main server thereby reducing network congestion.

– The time required to replicate content making content available for download sooner from remote File Servers.

– The network congestion related to content replication by reducing the size of the content replicated over the network

• Requires less capital investment for the WAN accelerators since the large volumes of content used by sites that have CAD users will be provided by the remote file server

• Concerns

• May require a significant capital investment for new or additional WAN accelerators

• The remote file server represents an additional file vault location that needs to be managed by the administrator in addition to the master location in Hannover.

• Replication schedules need to be configured and managed by an administrator.

Example 3: Architecting a solution for a site with light or non-CAD Users In this example, we’ll look at a site with light or non-CAD users who are not expected to manipulate large volumes of data when compared with sites that have CAD users. Consequently these types of sites place far fewer demands on the network. But, like CAD sites, light or non-CAD sites are also negatively impacted by higher latencies and congestion. The most common problem for light or non-CAD sites operating over higher latency and/or higher congestion networks is longer page download times. The best option to improve performance at such sites is to:

• Configure the web server for content cache expiration

• Deploy a WAN accelerator

Example 4: Architecting a solution for a site in Brazil If the objective is to architect a solution providing acceptable performance for a site with a mix of CAD as well as light or non-CAD users, we could look at the Sao Paolo site with the server located in Hannover. The Sao Paolo site has the following network conditions:

• Bandwidth – 1.544 MBps

• Latency between client and server – 250 ms

• Congestion – 40%

The approach to architecting a solution for such a site is outlined in the previous two examples:

• 2. Architecting a solution for a site with CAD users

• 3. Architecting a solution for a site with light or non-CAD users

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Example 5: Architecting a solution for a site with remote External Users and Partners In this example, we look at working with partner sites and remote external user sites with lower bandwidth connections (e.g. T1) and a small number of users. While all the options discussed above under 2. Architecting a solution for a site with CAD users apply to a site with remote external users and partners, additional challenges must be considered:

• Security issues related to having a remote file server or WAN accelerator at such sites, especially if a remote file server is located on the premises of a partner

• The complexity and cost of deploying and maintaining for a site with a very small number of users, especially if a remote file server is located on the premises of a partner

Given these considerations, the best option might be to deploy a WAN accelerator at these sites. Most WAN accelerator vendors have software clients that could be deployed to smaller sites at lower cost. Some of the concerns associated with deploying just a WAN accelerator also apply in this situation:

• Performance may be slow (10 times LAN) for non-cached content requested from the server. For example, the very first Add to Workspace of a CAD assembly will be very slow (10 times LAN) while subsequent requests for the same un-modified assembly will be delivered from the cache for as long as the assembly remains in the WAN accelerator cache.

• Performance may be inconsistent because the WAN accelerator storage capacity is undersized and lacks the necessary storage space for the large volumes of content used by sites that have CAD users

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Example 6: Architecting a solution for multiple sites in a region In this example we look at how to provide a solution when the enterprise has several remote sites in a particular region (such as a country). World Car Motors, as shown below, has three sites – Tianjin, Shanghai, and Taipei - in the Asia Pacific region.

In order to design a solution providing acceptable performance for these three sites, we need to know:

• How many users are at each site?

• How many of these users are heavyweight/CAD users?

• What is the bandwidth, latency and congestion:

– Between the master site and each of these sites?

– Between each of these sites?

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Bangalore, India

3 Hannover Sites, Germany

Shanghai, China

Tianjin, China

North Carolina, USA

Taipei, Taiwan

Figure 9

For this example, the information about the users at each site is:

• Shanghai has a large number of CAD and non-CAD users.

• Tianjin has a very small number of CAD users.

• Taipei has only lightweight/non-CAD users.

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Site City Country Bandwidth Hannover Shanghai Tianjin Taipei Hong KongHannover Germany 100 0 275 250 275 275Shanghai China 10 275 0 100 35 45Tianjin China 10 250 100 0 115 115Taipei Taiwan 10 275 35 115 0 25Hong Kong China 10 275 45 115 25 0

Latency (ms)

Table 2

Options for Each Site Given the conditions between Shanghai and the main site at Hannover and that Shanghai has a large number of CAD and non-CAD users, option 3, Deploy both a remote File Server and a WAN Accelerator, in Example 2: Architecting a Solution for a Site with CAD Users, provides the best performance for Shanghai.

Since Taipei has only lightweight/non-CAD users, it is possible to deploy just a WAN accelerator to ensure acceptable performance.

The options for the Tianjin site are:

1. Deploy both a WAN accelerator and a Windchill file server with content replication – this will ensure the best possible performance but will increase administration since the remote file server in Tianjin needs to be managed.

2. Deploy only a Windchill file server with content replication – while improving performance, this has the same concerns discussed above, specifically it will increase administration.

3. Deploy only a WAN accelerator – while this will reduce administration and provide improved performance, users will need to deal with the limitations associated with deploying just a WAN accelerator.

A Solution for the Region By designing a solution from a regional perspective, it may be possible to further optimize the performance at some or all of the sites.

The options for Shanghai, Taipei, and Tianjin are:

Site File Server WAN Accelerator

Shanghai

Taipei

Tianjin

While Taipei and Tianjin will not have a File Server and content replication, the performance of content download and upload transactions can be improved for users at these sites by using the File Server in Shanghai as opposed to accessing content directly from the main server in Hannover.

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Figure 10

Summary

Enabling geographically distributed users to work productively with Windchill can be a complex and challenging effort if you are not aware of proven solutions.

In developing the right solution for the company, defining clear requirements for the global deployment of Windchill is the crucial first step. There are many solutions providing a wide range of performance and without defining the requirements and constraints of the company, there will be no objective way to measure and compare the effectiveness of the solutions. Defining clear and unambiguous criteria up front eliminates subjectivity and emotions when choosing a WAN architecture.

3 Hannover Sites, Germany

Shanghai, China

Tianjin, China

Taipei, Taiwan

WindchillFile

Server

115 ms100ms

35 ms

Content download & upload

Content download & upload

The typical requirement areas to be aware of when designing a global deployment of Windchill are:

• Performance: System Response Time for all users:

– LAN & WAN users

– CAD & non-CAD users

• System Availability & Recovery Time

• Network Quality (Load & Congestion)

• Level of System Maintenance Required

• Cost: Deployment and Maintenance

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The major options to consider when designing a solution providing optimal Windchill WAN performance are:

• Main server location

• Windchill content replication

• WAN accelerators

• WAN performance tuning

• Improve network

• Quality of Service (QoS)

This technical brief focused on delivering acceptable performance for CAD & non-CAD users and LAN & WAN users by providing example scenarios where the above options are applied to the hypothetical company - World Car Motors.

The performance of user transactions are dependent on the time required to transfer CAD files over the network , the distance between the client and the server, as well as the available bandwidth between the client and the server and other key network characteristics between the client and the server, specifically latency, congestion and packet loss. This technical brief showed that Latency and congestion are key network characteristics that can have a severe detrimental impact on WAN performance as illustrated in Figures 1 and 2. Interestingly, it was also shown that increasing bandwidth is not always the best solution to improve performance as illustrated in Figure 6.

The best options to ensure acceptable performance for non-CAD, i.e. Windchill HTML UI operations on the WAN are to:

• Deploy the server in a location that maximizes WAN performance

• Configure the web server for content cache expiration

• Deploy a WAN accelerator

The best options to ensure acceptable performance for CAD data management operations on the WAN are to:

• Deploy the server in a location that maximizes WAN performance

• Improve WAN Performance with upload & download meta-data & content compression

• Deploy Windchill content replication

• Deploy a WAN accelerator

Additional Information You can find the following guides on the PTC Reference Documents web site at http://www.ptc.com/appserver/cs/doc/refdoc.jsp:

• Windchill Architecture Overview

• Windchill Vaulting and Replication Technical Brief

• Windchill System Administrator’s Guide

• WAN Accelerators and Windchill Performance Technical Brief

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• Riverbed Deployment Guide for Windchill

• PTC Customer Service Guide

You can find the following guides on partner web sites:

• Cisco Distributed Research and Development Solution Deployment Guide for PTC Windchill

Document Change Record

Date Change Description

March 2011 Initial publication.

©2011 Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC). The information contained herein is provided for informational use and is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for PTC products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services and nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. PTC shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. For important Copyright, Trademark, Patent, Licensing and Data Collection Information see the About Box, or Copyright Notice, of your PTC software.