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Presenter:	Dr. Neil J. Gunther, Performance Dynamics, USA
Dates:	5-6 November 2008
Location:	Melbourne

About this Course

Application scalability is a perennial hot topic. This year’s JavaOne conference, for example, included presentations on caching, collocation, “parallelization,” and pooling, all aimed at achieving better application scalability. Such How-To’s are good to know but they are only qualitative descriptions. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. How can the impact of such How-To recipes be quantified?

This question is taking on renewed significance in light of the industry rush toward multi-tier applications running on multi-core servers. Such haste has also led to a number of very public embarrassments at Twitter.com, Cuil.com, Apple iStore and Google Gmail. Highly scalable applications are also desirable for lower development cost, higher availability, simpler maintenance, flexibility and heterogeneity. Amazon.com CTO, Werner Vogels, has stated: “Scalability is hard because it cannot be an after-thought. Good scalability is possible, but only if we architect and engineer our systems to take scalability into account.” This 2-day course will show you how.

Assumed Knowledge: The material presented is technical but entirely self-contained, with the appropriate mix of theory and practice using detailed case studies. No previous background in performance analysis is assumed and there are no prerequisite courses. All the necessary materials will be supplied but you are encouraged to bring your laptop.

Target Audience

The course is aimed at practicing application developers, system architects, software engineers, performance engineers, QA engineers, capacity planners and their respective managers; whether in a mainframe or open-system environment.

Brief Course Outline

This course, will present a relatively simple technique for quantifying all of the abovepoints, based on Dr. Gunther’s own methods which he has developed over the past20 years, starting from his days at Pyramid Technology. This method is not availableelsewhere and is as simple as it gets.

Day 1. The first day will include a review of some elementary, but limited, approaches toassessing application scalability. We will then introduce the more powerful method tobe applied in Day 2. Topics covered include:

• Review of classical scaling laws due to Amdahl and Gustafson, and their limitations when applied to multiprocessors and multicores.
• Review of statistical methods including ANOVA and multivariate regression using Excel, R and Mathematica.
• Quick introduction to queuing theory for those who can’t wait.
• Introduction to the generalized Universal Scalability Law (USL) with sample applications.

Day 2. During the second day, we will apply the new methods established in Day 1 to someactual case studies. Topics covered include:

• Applying the USL to WebSphere benchmarks.
• Quantifying scalability for web-based CRM and middleware applications measured on test rigs using tools like HP-Mercury’s LoadRunner and Microsoft’s Web Application Stress tool.
• Analysing scalability data from a major, multi-tier, web site in the USA.
• Scalability analysis of VMware and WebLogic virtualized servers.

Textbook: Each attendee will receive a copy of Dr. Gunther’s book Guerrilla Capacity Planning: A Tactical Approach to Planning for Highly Scalable Applications and Services.

About the Presenter

Neil Gunther is an internationally recognized IT consultant who founded Performance Dynamics in 1994. He holds an M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics (La Trobe University), and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics (Southampton University, UK). Prior to starting Performance Dynamics, he held teaching, research and management positions at San Jose State University, JPL/NASA, Xerox PARC and Pyramid/Siemens Technology. His training classes have been given world wide at both corporate and academic institutions including AOL.com, Boeing, FedEx, Motorola, Nokia, Stanford University and Sun Microsystems. Dr. Gunther has written several books on performance analysis and capacity planning as well as many papers on the same subjects. He is a member of the AMS, APS, ACM, CMG, and IEEE.

How to Register

To register fill out the registration form and fax it to +61-8-8302-3115 or scan and email it to industryeducation@nicta.com.au.

Cancellation Policy

At least 4 weeks notice is required for cancellation of a place in a short course for full reimbursement. If cancellation is later than 4 weeks then the place can either be given to another person or the registrant can be provided with a credit towards other NICTA training.