The Symphony testing tool: Symping

The Platform management console allows cluster and consumer administrators to test that the cluster configuration is correct by running test work. It also provides information on the cluster’s workload performance.

Use this tool to test your cluster configuration. Running this tool is often the last step in installation to make sure you have configured your cluster properly.

Advanced settings and output

Advanced settings and output displays the workload information by host and by task as well as some optional settings and authorization details.

Use the results from the task details and host summary to pinpoint problematic hosts (or connections to hosts). The task details table only displays a limited number of rows.

You can also export the results to save locally and compare them against results received at other times. When you export, all the task details are included.

What you cannot do with Symping

You cannot use your own application with the Symping interface. Although you can choose from all of your applications in the drop-down box under advanced settings, if the application you choose is not a Symping application, the tool does not work or yields unexpected results.

Optional settings

Use the optional settings to customize the tool.


Setting

Description

Test for...

Set the Symping tool to return useful information on workload cycle (default) or task overhead.

  • Complete workload cycle is optimized to run workload through the cluster with full recoverability enabled (session and history). It provides minimum, maximum, and average roundtrip times. The average processing time (averaged across all hosts) also displays.

  • Task overhead is optimized to calculate task overhead—the delay involved in processing work. Results include overhead for longest and shortest task, average overhead, and average processing time.

Session tag

Adds a session tag to any session created by Symping. A session tag that is shared among sessions provides the ability to query or control these related sessions with a single action.

Task tag

Adds a task tag to all Symping tasks. The task tag can later be used to filter only those tasks that share the given tag.

Application name

The name of the application that Symping submits the workload to. If you want to use Symping to submit workload to another application, you need to first register that application with Symphony. If you have a mixed cluster, refer to your installation guide to ensure you have made the necessary modifications for Symping to run.

Important:

As a best practice, name any applications using the Symping client with "symping" for easy identification. If you copy and rename this application, keep "symping" in the file name so that you can distinguish the applications related to the Symping client from those that are not.

Session type

Specifies the type of the session (for example, recoverable with task and session history enabled). Enabling history and recoverability increases the task and session overhead but more likely simulates a production environment.
  • RecoverableAllHistoricalData: Session is recoverable and task and session history are set to "All". This is the default session type when you choose to run Symping configured for workload submission.

  • RecoverableNoHistoricalData: Session is recoverable but no history (session or task) is kept.

  • UnrecoverableAllHistoricalData: Session is unrecoverable and task and session history are set to "All".

  • UnrecoverableNoHistoricalData: Session is unrecoverable and no history (task or session) is kept. This is the default session type if you choose to run Symping configured for task overhead.

Common data size

Specifies the size of the common data that is associated with the session and passed from the client to the service, in bytes by default.

Input message size

Specifies the size of all input messages for each task in the session, in bytes by default.

Output message size

Specifies the size of all output messages for each task in the session, in bytes by default.

Task processing time

Duration of the task processing time.

# of tasks

Specifies the number of tasks that are sent during the testing. If you do not specify the number of tasks, the client application creates one session with 20 tasks.

Consume CPU cycles

Select if the tasks should consume CPU cycles when running. Option only displays when testing for complete workload cycle.

Log option

Generates a service log file on compute hosts on which the symping service runs.

The log is written to:

  • Windows: %SOAM_HOME%\work

  • Linux: $SOAM_HOME/work

The log file is named according to session and task IDs: sessionID.taskID.

Without this option, no service log is generated.


Authorization

You can change the authorization details if you want to run the Symping tool under a different user account than the one you are logged in as.

Results

Test summary


Test for...

Result

Description

Complete Workload Cycle

Shortest Task Roundtrip

The roundtrip time (including overhead and processing time) of the shortest task.

Longest Task Roundtrip

The roundtrip time (including overhead and processing time) of the longest task.

Avg Task Roundtrip

The average roundtrip time (including overhead and processing time) it took for the tasks to complete.

Avg Processing Time

The average processing time (actual compute processing time, no overhead time) it to for the tasks to execute.

Task Overhead

Shortest Task Overhead

The shortest task overhead time (Symphony overhead for processing a single task) for all tasks run.

Longest Task Overhead

The longest task overhead time (Symphony overhead for processing a single task) for all tasks runs.

Avg Task Overhead

The average task overhead time (Symphony overhead for processing a single task) for all tasks run.

Avg Processing Time

The average processing time (actual compute processing time, no overhead time) for the tasks to run.


Task details output


Name

Description

Task ID

The identification number assigned to each task.

Compute Host

The host the task ran on.

SI Process ID

The service instance process ID assigned by the operating system.

Processing Time

The actual compute processing time of the task , not including overhead time.

Task Roundtrip

The roundtrip time (including overhead and processing time) for the task. Only returned when testing for complete workload cycle.

Task Overhead

Symphony overhead for processing the task. Only returned when testing for task overhead.


Host details output


Name

Description

Number of Tasks

The number of tasks that ran on each host.

Avg Processing Time

The average processing time (actual compute processing time, no overhead time) for the tasks to run.