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April 19, 2007 - Caché and Ensemble on Microsoft Vista

InterSystems has identified a number of characteristics of Microsoft Vista that require changes to Caché and Ensemble.

Starting with Caché 2007.2 and Ensemble 2007.2, InterSystems will fully support Microsoft Vista Business and Microsoft Vista Ultimate as a server platform, and all editions for Microsoft Vista as a client platform.

While Microsoft Vista is not supported for production environments with versions prior to 2007.2, InterSystems will assist customers who want to experiment with Vista and Caché 2007.1.  We have assembled a list of currently-known workarounds to run Caché 2007.1 on this operating system version.

Please check http://www.intersystems.com/vista for updates to this document as we become aware of further Microsoft Vista related issues.

For additional information, you can contact InterSystems through the WRC Online system or by contacting InterSystems Support directly at support@intersystems.com.

Caché 2007.1 is available for customers as part the Developer Download Program.

Documentation

 

April 5, 2007 – Advisory: Caché and Ensemble on 64-bit Microsoft Windows

InterSystems has discovered an issue with Windows memory management that has important implications with the larger Caché buffer pools possible on 64-bit Windows platforms.  The issue is that memory requirements on Windows platforms are larger than on similarly configured UNIX Platforms.

Large buffer pools (i.e. large shared memory segments) require that each Caché or Ensemble process set aside a significant amount of private memory for internal use by Windows (called Page Table Entries or PTEs).  On 64-bit Windows, where very large buffer pools can be defined, the cumulative effect can be considerable.  To ensure good performance sufficient physical memory must be available - paging of the PTEs can lead to very poor performance,

For example, a 16GB shared memory section will require 32MB per process of Windows internal memory management tables. Thus 1000 processes will require 32GB of memory just for page table entries.

InterSystems can assist with calculating memory requirements for customers considering a 64-bit Windows platform.

If you have questions please contact InterSystems Worldwide Response Center (WRC).

March 11, 2007 – InterSystems Products and VMware Virtualization Software

InterSystems has determined in benchmark and customer testing that VMware environments running Caché and Ensemble require significantly greater CPU capacity than native installations on the same hardware.  In multi-user tests, CPU load is typically twice as great (200%) of the same tests run on the same operating system natively (i.e. without VMware) on the same hardware.  Additionally, there are application specific implications for response time for interactive jobs.

InterSystems, along with a number of its customers, have reported this problem to VMware and VMware is investigating.  For updates on the status, please contact VMware Global Alliance team.

This affects all versions of all InterSystems products.  Until a solution is available from VMware, InterSystems recommends that any customers contemplating a VMware deployment

  • Ensure that available CPU capacity is at least twice as large as a native installation and
  • Conduct application specific testing to ascertain what, if any, response time impact will be noticed by users.

Please contact InterSystems Worldwide Response Center (WRC)  before deploying Caché or Ensemble on VMware.

March 6, 2007 – Caché, Ensemble and Microsoft Vista

InterSystems testing has revealed a number of issues that prevent installation and operation of existing Caché and Ensemble versions on Microsoft Vista.  Many of these are related to new operating system security features.  Based on what we have discovered to date -- and we need to keep in mind that more issues may yet surface -- our plan is as follows:

  1. The 2007.2 versions of Caché and Ensemble will fully support Microsoft Vista for both server and client configurations.
  2. It is possible that the 2007.1 versions of Caché and Ensemble will run on Vista with certain limitations and some manual "work arounds".  For instance, Vista introduces a new version of Microsoft's IIS Web server which drops support for the mechanism (called ISAPI) which is used to connect CSP to IIS.  The work around is to manually re-enable ISAPI support in IIS.  (Alternatively, customers may decide to use Apache instead of IIS.)  In 2007.2 we will move to a new IIS connection mechanism for CSP.
  3. Caché and Ensemble versions prior to 2007.1 will not be supported on Microsoft Vista.

From a licensing standpoint, Microsoft Vista is not a new platform.  We will continue to have three Windows platforms: x86 32 bit, x86 64 bit, and Itanium.  Moving from one Windows version to another does not constitute a platform change.  Moving from one processor family to another is a platform change, whether or not the Windows version changes.  For instance:

  • Moving from Windows XP on an x86-64 computer to Vista on that same computer is not a platform change.
  • Moving from Windows XP on an x86-32 computer to Vista on an x86-64 computer is a platform change.  (Making the same change from an x86-32 computer to an x86-64 computer with Windows XP on both is also a platform change.)

If you have any additional questions about our plans for Vista, please contact Andreas Dieckow (Andreas.Dieckow@intersystems.com).