Transcript Thin Client Performance Presentation

PERFORMANCE OF THIN-CLIENT
MULTIMEDIA IN A LOW BUDGET
ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT
Michael Gonzales
Damian Clarke
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Objective
• Tests the performance of web-based multimedia and video on
thin clients and X-Windows sessions
• Focus was placed on multimedia platforms, HTML 5 and Flash 10
• The hardware architecture included Sun Ray Thin Clients and RDP X-
Windows session in a Linux environment connected to a Solaris server
• Assess the feasibility of both multimedia platforms as a potential
education solution for content delivery
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Motivation
• Evolution of Computing Environment (Back to the past?)
• Large and centralized >>>
small and distributive >>>>
back to small and centralized.
• Cost
• A distributive specialization approach could address issues of
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cost-effectiveness
maintenance
performance
reliability
security
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Motivation
• Student Expectations
• convenient access to information; anytime, anywhere and on demand
access
• Native vs. Web Application
• Zero footprint installation (Silverlight work well here too)
• Cross-platform compatible (Yes, you can use one of the cross-platform
widget libraries too with native code, but Web is much easier.)
• Server-centralized control of logic, resources (data, CPU, et al), etc.
• Public facing application with highly sensitive data that needs to stay
behind a firewall
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Overview
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Related Works
J. Nieh, S. J. Yang, and N. Novik, “A Comparison of Thin-Client
Computing Architectures”
• Tested 5 thin clients
• Multimedia-intensive workloads degrades significantly over
WAN compared to LAN
• Higher-level encodings were shown to vary widely in graphic-
intensive multimedia with rapidly changing images.
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Related Works
A. Lai and J. Nieh, “Limits of Wide-Area Thin-Client Computing”
• Introduced a non-invasive slow-motion benchmarking
technique: packet monitoring and slow motion versions of
application benchmarks.
• Non multimedia-intensive over WAN
• Thin client computing can deliver acceptable performance
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Related Works
Y. Chang, P. Tseng, K. Chen, and C. Lei, “Understanding The Performance
of Thin-Client Gaming”
• Methodology for quantifying the performance of thin clients on
gaming
• Display frame rates and frame distortion were critical factors in
game performance.
• Differences in thin-client implementations may have different
levels of robustness against network impairments
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Related Works
A. Y. Wong and M. Seltzer, “Operating System Support for Multi-User
Remote, Graphical Interaction,”
• Effects of OS support for multi-user remote graphical
interaction and the performance via user-perceived latency
• Resource scheduling for both the processor and memory in
these systems is not well optimized for heavy concurrent
interactive use, with latency and jitter well above humanperceptible levels.
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Uniqueness of this Work
• Systematically focused on server instrumentation due to the
proprietary and closed-source nature of the thin client platform
used.
• None of the previous work analyzed the behavior of the server
at runtime on the kernel level.
• Multimedia platforms: HTML5 and Flash
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Background: HTML5
• HTML5 is a synthesis of several new and existing technologies
(primarily JavaScript, CSS3, Canvas, and SVG),
• Allows deployment when the Flash plugin is not available
(Safari).
• Heavy graphics work: The <canvas> tag allows bitmap graphics
manipulation.
• Integration with other systems: WebSocket allows full-duplex,
persistent connections.
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Background: Flash
• Flash is a vector animation software, originally designed to
create animations for display on web pages.
• Manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of
text, drawings, and still images
• Flash is everywhere.
• A gigantic community and secondary market..
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Background: GIUMark2
• Vector Charting Test
• Simulating a streaming stock chart
with different alpha fills
• Bitmap Gaming Test
• Simulates a tower defense game.
Uses lots of bitmap resources and
animations for sprites on screen at
once.
• Text Column Test
• Tests rendering capability of various
text organizations and character
types.
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Background: Instrumentation
Utility
Description
sar(1)
General-purpose System
Activity Reporter
providing numerous
system statistics
vmstat(1M)
Reports virtual memory
statistics and
aggregate system wide
CPU utilization
mpstat(1M)
Per-CPU statistics
netstat(1M)
Network statistics
kstat(1M)
All available kernel
statistics
prstat(1M)
Process/thread statistics
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Experimental Setup
• Sun Ray Server 5.2 running on Solaris 11, 2.8Ghz, 3GB RAM
• Apple Airport Express Router
• Sun Ray Thin Client 2 and a 2FS
• 1-2 X-Windows Remote clients for comparison purposes
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PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS AND
RESULTS
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Performance Analysis and Results
• Evaluations based on GUIMark 2 frame rates for Adobe Flash
10.10 and HTML 5 using Firefox 7
• Conducted five tests per scenario for each application on a
given platform to normalize rates
• Assessed:
• Native Server
• Sun Ray
• Remote X
• Scalability case
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The Native Case…
• Results based on our Solaris 11 Server
• Performed for a base case assessment for comparison for our
Sun Rays and Remote session analysis
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Native vs. Single Sun Ray
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Frames per second
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10
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Sun Ray
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Native
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2
0
HTML 5
Flash
Vector Charting
HTML 5
Flash
Bitmap Gaming
HTML 5
Flash
Text Column
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Remote X Session Performance
• Assessment based on a remote X session using Firefox
• Performed frame rate measurements of the remote session, as
well as tests on the notebook natively
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Native Laptop vs. Remote X
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Frames per Second
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Native Notebook
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Remote X
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5
0
HTML 5
Flash
Vector Charting
HTML 5
Flash
Bitmap Gaming
HTML 5
Flash
Text Column
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Remote X vs. Sun Ray
35
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Frames Per second
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20
Sun Ray
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Remote X
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5
0
HTML 5
Flash
Vector Charting
HTML 5
Flash
Bitmap Gaming
HTML 5
Flash
Text Column
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Multiple Sun Ray Sessions
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10
Frames per Second
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6
Single
Two Session
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2
0
HTML 5
Flash
Vector Charting
HTML 5
Flash
Bitmap Gaming
HTML 5
Flash
Text Column
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D-Trace and Solaris System Tools
• Used to determine potential bottlenecks and
drawbacks of each respective application
• Performed on server during Sun Ray Session
• Performed analysis on three main components:
• CPU
• Memory
• Network I/O
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Flash Breakdown
• Flash utilized the most CPU time of the system
• Performed “yield” system call most frequently
• Lots of memory maps
• Most page faults on the system
• Xnewt, the Sun Ray X server, utilized most system calls
• Highest kernel function used were writes
• Utilized socket layer the most, higher than the scheduler
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HTML 5 Breakdown
• Scheduler top process using CPU time, followed by
Xnewt and Firefox
• Reads, writes, and mwaits were most common system
calls
• Reads and writes generated evenly between Xnewt
and Firefox
• Dtrace itself had most page faults, others unranked
• Similar to Flash, Xnewt largest process hitting network
socket
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Remote X Comparisons
• Remote X doesn’t use Xnewt
• Increases in performance where Xnewt hogged resources
• More CPU cycle utilization of sched
• Number of network reads/writes more even on X
• Xnewt shows as an additional process in HTML 5
• Suffers in cases where HTML 5 shows CPU utilization between
sched/Firefox as nearly equal
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Bringing it All Together…
• Sun Rays perform relatively well in web-based multimedia
• Xnewt creates bottleneck
• Work best with HTML 5 in terms of scalability
• Remote X best on powerful client in HTML 5
• Utilizes some of client resources due to X-server rendering
• Does not handle Flash well due to application dependencies
• Not targeted toward our intended environments
• Flash handles well on single Sun Rays, poor otherwise
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In Conclusion…
• Assessed two different types of thin clients
• Analyzed various scenarios of Adobe Flash and
HTML 5 rendering performance for different types
of hardware organizations
• Assessed the application impact on the server
under the hood
• Effectively determine what created bottlenecks
• Determine a best organization for such a
framework
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Further Areas of Exploration
• Better Remote X performance assessments
• How it handles multimedia rendering due to X-servers existing on the
client
• Chromebook Assessments
• Browser focused OS
• Presents users only a login to their Google Account, and the web
• Costs of around $350+
• How does this benefit if full netbooks cost less?
• Can have better performance, but pay more for hardware with less
functionality at the moment
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Questions
?