RMDS 6 Sizing Guide on Solaris 10 x64With or Without Solaris Containers

Author: Amjad KhanSun Microsystems Inc.Version# 1.0 – 11/06/09

IntroductionThis document is designed to provide an initial guide to example configurations to support ThomsonReuters RMDS 6 on Solaris 10 x64 with or without Solaris containers for server consolidationpurposes. It describes the characteristics of four RMDS scenarios of increasing capacity. All of theseare regarded as “Core”, i.e. as being the minimum components of RMDS 6 needed to offer a realisticservice. It does not include various optional components, remote location support, etc. In particular,they reflect the introduction of a new class of Sun™ x64 servers in 2009: the Sun Fire™ 4170. Theseservers are from a family of products designed by Sun to exploit the Intel Xeon(Nehalem) based CPUs.

One of the most pressing challenges for Financial Services industry firms is how to improve throughputperformance and reduce latency when accessing time-sensitive market data. The continued growth inthe volume of market data requires an ever increasing market data infrastructure to allow the businessto keep pace with these changes. At the same time customers are increasingly looking to reduce theTCO of the operational environment by exploiting standardized deployment platforms. These platformsare likely to be deployed using virtualization techniques like Solaris Containers to increase theirutilization.

The Sun product range allows customers to optimize for latency, throughput, price/performance or acombination of these to meet specific requirements. This document gives guidance on a generalapproach but if you have specific characteristics to optimize, we would encourage you to have detailedconversation with Sun to ensure that the latest techniques and considerations are applied to yourenvironment.

NOTE: It is recommended to use the Intel Xeon(Nehalem) based Sun servers with the fastest availableclock speed to achieve the best RMDS end-to-end latency for the high frequency trading platforms.

For an overview of RMDS 6 on Solaris 10 please refer to www.sun.com/thomsonreuters and thedocument Sun/Thomson Reuters RMDS 6 and Solaris 10 Overview.

RMDS 6The Thomson Reuters Market Data System (RMDS) provides an open platform for efficient andreliable distribution of Thomson Reuters, value-added and third-party data to client applications. Inresponse to the market demand for reduced total cost of ownership, improved performance, flexibilityand ease of implementation, Thomson Reuters supports the current Market Data System (RMDS 6) onthe Sun Solaris 10 operating environment on both the x64 and the SPARCplatforms.The new version of this low-latency market data platform has been comprehensively enhanced to giveincreased performance and increased flexibility. A key feature of RMDS 6 is a new binary messageformat, which substantially reduces the size of the market data updates. This increased efficiencyallows RMDS 6 to support higher update rates and comfortably manage the rapid growth in real-timeupdate rates in the market. RMDS 6 adds support for new data formats (OMM/RWF and RDM), theThomson Reuters Data Feed Direct (RDF Direct) and the Thomson Reuters Foundation API 6 (RFA).

Thomson Reuters has introduced the Open Message Model (OMM) and Thomson Reuters Wire Format(RWF) in the RMDS 6 - a new and open set of data modeling tools which deals with complex datatypes. This new message model gives Thomson Reuters customers and partners the ability to publishdata across their enterprise in a wide variety of formats via the RMDS platform. RMDS 6 deliverssignificant performance benefits over version 5.x with up to 50 per cent reduction in bandwidth, 84 percent drop in image sizes and a throughput increase of more than 45 per cent on like-for-like systems.RMDS 6 is also backward compatible with older version of RMDS 5. This means that customers canimplement RMDS 6 components alongside RMDS 5 elements, allowing new investment to be focusedon components which need new functionality or higher performance, while continuing to exploitpreviously deployed components. This flexibility is underpinned by the support for Solaris across bothRMDS 5 and RMDS 6. This allows skills, experience and capabilities to be re-used across both RMDS5 and RMDS 6 while allowing customers to choose the appropriate hardware platform from SolarisSPARCor X64 for each new component.

Sun and Thomson Reuters are working together to make additional components available on SolarisX64. You should check with Thomson Reuters for the latest status for General Availability and thetimescales for additional components being made available.

Solaris 10For many years Solaris has been the preferred deployment platform for customers implementingRMDS and it's predecessor products. The release of Solaris 10 on both the SPARC(TM) and the x64platforms dramatically increased Solaris' market penetration, offering customers a large number of Sunand third-party systems as deployment options. Solaris 10 also introduced a number of significantfeatures, such as Containers, DTrace, Service Management Facility, ZFS, FireEngine, and a numberof security enhancements including Trusted Solaris. Solaris 10 is the optimal platform for market dataand related systems deployment:SecuritySolaris 10 is viewed as one of the most secure general purpose Operating Systems. Solaris 10 providesadvanced security features such as Solaris Secure Execution and Process Rights Management thatallow you to protect your enterprise, safely deliver new solutions, and consolidate services with peaceof mind.

ObservabilityThe Solaris 10 release gives you observability into your system with tools such as Solaris DynamicTracing (DTrace), which enables real-time application debugging and optimization.

AvailabilityDue to the global nature of business today, downtime – planned or unplanned – is unacceptable. Solarisis well known in the industry for its uptime characteristics. With added features such as Predictive SelfHealing that supports automatic diagnosis and recovery from hardware and application faults, Solaris10 can pro-actively turn off failing components to prevent application downtime.

PerformanceSolaris 10 delivers indisputable performance advantages for database, web, and Java technology-basedservices, as well as massive scalability, shattering world records by delivering unbeatableprice/performance advantages.

NetworkingWith its optimized network stack and support for today’s advanced network computing protocols,Solaris 10 delivers high-performance networking to most applications without modification.

UtilizationThe Solaris 10 OS includes industry-first utilization features such as Solaris Containers, which let youconsolidate, isolate, and protect thousands of applications on a single server.

InteroperabilityUnderstanding that businesses rely on a mix of technologies from a variety of vendors, Solaris 10provides tools to enable seamless interoperability with hundreds of heterogeneous hardware andsoftware platforms.

Support and servicesBy offering a broad portfolio of world-class services, Sun can help you extract maximum value fromSolaris 10.

The latest information on Solaris 10 can be obtained fromhttp://www.sun.com/software/solaris/index.jsp

Solaris ContainersSolaris Containers are a virtualization technology that allow multiple Solaris environments to becreated and “booted” inside a single Solaris 10 instance, with complete security and fault isolation.Each Container can be tied to specific hardware resources, which can be dynamically tuned by Solarisor the administrator based on load conditions. Each Container has its own Filesystem Namespace, IPPort space, System V IPC Namespace, User Namespace etc. Processes within a Container view theContainer as a full fledged Solaris instance, however have no visibility to processes in otherContainers. The Global Container has full visibility into all processes running in all non-GlobalContainers. More details on Containers can be found here.

Containers make an ideal consolidation platform for Thomson Reuters RMDS. RMDS components areessentially single threaded applications, and don't consume more than one CPU core. An additionalCPU core is used by the transport – either RRCP or TIBCO RV.Most systems deployed for RMDScomponents are dual-socket. With quad-core CPUs, this wastes up to 75% of CPU resources. SolarisContainers offer a virtualization environment that can be used to consolidate multiple small RMDSsystems on a single system. The communication between different RMDS components if consolidatedon a single server takes place over the system backplane (ns latency), versus the network (µseclatency). Solaris Containers can be utilized to consolidate several RMDS servers into a fewer numberof multi-core/multiprocessor systems by utilizing the hardware more efficiently. Solaris Containers isthe only virtualization technology tested and supported by Thomson Reuters for consolidating theRMDS.

The following figure shows an example of RMDS deployment with and without Solaris Containers forRMDS servers consolidation on a single system. The exiting hardware with 2 socket quad-core systemcan be utilized to consolidate two instances of RMDS per box as shown in the figure below resulting inup to 50% reduction in TCO. The resulting performance characteristics are better than a typicaldeployment, which would utilize 8 individual 2-socket servers instead of only 4 2-socket servers. Theresulting “Performance per Rack Unit”, “Performance per Watt” and “Performance per NetworkDrop” benchmarks are an order of magnitude better than the typical deployment.

Server ConfigurationsThe document gives example server configurations for small, small/medium, medium, and largeRMDS 6.0 environments. These all carry the caveat that, while they are based on realistic metrics, theyare generalizations and any specific customer case will require more specific analysis.

All the configurations in this document use Solaris as the operating system and are based on the newSun Fire X4170 servers. While this document focuses on the Solaris X64 environment, all of theseimplementations can be deployed using the SPARCproduct set or in an hybrid environment of X64 andSPARC running Solaris 10 as well.

Why Sun?Sun has been a strategic partner of Thomson Reuters for many years, and the majority of customerinstallations of TIB Triarch and RMDS run on Sun. Sun has a major focus on the financial servicescommunity through our direct industry focused resources and through our extensive partnerships withorganizations, such as Thomson Reuters, to address the needs of our shared customers.

Sun is recognized as one of the few remaining IT companies with a technology vision committed to asystems approach – encompassing systems design, operating systems development and an openmiddle-ware environment, the Java Enterprise System. Sun actively undertakes innovative R&D, usingthis to address the critical issues our customers are addressing today. The delivery of Solaris 10 onSun’s Intel and AMD based servers is an example of the use of that R&D investment to addresscustomer demands for the availability of the best operating environment deployed on a low cost,industry-standard platform specifically designed by Sun to address the needs of high performancecoupled with low operational costs in terms of power, heat and space when compared with alternativeOS and platform options.

RMDS 6 Sizing Guide/Architectural Guide for Solaris 10 x64This sizing guide is intended as a starting-point for RMDS 6 deployment on Solaris 10 x64 platforms.The aim is to give an indication of the hardware/platform requirements for supporting RMDS 6 in atypical production environment. The following two RMDS parameters were used to define the differentsizing configurations:

IDN Watch-list/Cache Number of Users

In reality many other factors affect the definition of the production infrastructure; each individual sitewill have different requirements, including throughput performance. To know the maximum throughputcapacity for Sun Fire X4170 please visit the following website that contains the latest RMDSbenchmarks on these hardware.

http://www.sun.com/third-party/global/thomsonreuters/index.jsp

Based on the latest RMDS benchmarks it has been observed that the Sun's Solaris on Intel basedhardwares not only provide the best throughput performance and latency for a standard RMDSdeployment architecture but it also provides the reduction of TCP significantly when consolidatedmultiple components of RMDS in Solaris Containers environment.

1. SMALLConfiguration on Solaris 10 x64

● Watchlist/Cache <10,000● Up to 16 Users

For the small size configuration, there are three different type of deployment approaches proposed withor without Solaris containers depending on the each site requirements. Some of these proposed serverconsolidated approaches can help reducing the TCO for RMDS servers up to 75%.

a) SMALLRMDS Generic Architecture when each Component is Deployed on a DedicatedSystemAll servers are from the Sun Fire X4170 family with a single Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5520, 2.26 GHz,80W Processor, 1 x 146GB 10,000RPM internal disk and either 2GB or 4GB memory.

The hardware specification guidelines are as follows:

RMDS 6 Components Hardware Model Number of CPUs Memory DiskSource Distributor Sun Fire X4170 1 x QC Intel Xeon E5520 2GB 1 x 146GBP2PS Sun Fire X4170 1 x QC Intel Xeon E5520 2GB 1 x 146GBRTIC Sun Fire X4170 1 x QC Intel Xeon E5520 2GB 1 x 146GBDACS Server / RMS Sun Fire X4170 1 x QC Intel Xeon E5520 2GB 1 x 146GB

b) Proposed SMALLRMDS Architecture with Server ConsolidationIn this configuration, four RMDS servers have been consolidated into only two servers by takingadvantage of our Solaris 10 containers and multi-core Intel technology while keeping the RMDSdeployment configurations same as its running on dedicated boxes. It will help in reducing the TCO upto 50%.

All servers are from the Sun Fire X4170 family with 2 x Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5520, 2.26 GHz, 80WProcessor, 2 x 146GB 10,000RPM internal disks and 4GB memory. SF X4170 systems come asstandard with four network interfaces. For more than four interfaces an additional PCI network cardcan be added.

The hardware specification guidelines are as follows:

RMDS 6 Components Hardware Model Number of CPUs Memory DiskSource Distributor ,DACS Server and RMS

Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5520 4GB 2 x 146GB

P2PS and RTIC Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5520 4GB 2 x 146GB

c) Proposed SMALLRMDS Architecture with Server Consolidation When RTIC is NOTRequiredIn this configuration, three RMDS servers have been consolidated into a single server by takingadvantage of our Solaris 10 containers and multi-core Intel technology while keeping the RMDSdeployment configurations same as its running on dedicated boxes. This approach will not only help inreducing the TCO up to 75% , but it will also be providing much lower latency for RMDS since thecommunication between different RMDS components are done within the system over the backplane.

The server is from the Sun Fire X4170 family with 2 x Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5520, 2.26 GHz, 80WProcessor, 2 x 146GB 10,000RPM internal disks and 4GB memory. SF X4170 systems come asstandard with four network interfaces. For more than four interfaces an additional PCI network cardcan be added.

The hardware specification guidelines are as follows:

RMDS 6 Components Hardware Model Number of CPUs Memory DiskSource Distributor ,P2PS, DACS Server andRMS

Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5520 4GB 2 x 146GB

2. SMALL-MEDUM Configuration on Solaris 10 x64● Watchlist/Cache <25,000● Up to 64 Users

For the small-medium size configuration, there are again three different type of deployment approachesproposed with or without Solaris containers depending on the each site requirements. Some of theseproposed server consolidated approaches can help reducing the TCO for RMDS servers up to 75%.

a) SMALL-MEDIUM RMDS Generic Architecture when each Component is Deployed on aDedicated SystemAll servers are from the Sun Fire X4170 family with two Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5540, 2.53 GHz,80W Processor, 2 x 146GB 10,000RPM internal disks and 12GB memory.

The hardware specification guidelines are as follows:

RMDS 6 Components Hardware Model Number of CPUs Memory DiskSource Distributor Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5540 12GB 2 x 146GBP2PS Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5540 12GB 2 x 146GBRTIC Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5540 12GB 2 x 146GBDACS Server / RMS Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5540 12GB 2 x 146GB

b) Proposed SMALL-MEDIUM RMDS Architecture with Server ConsolidationIn this configuration, four RMDS servers have been consolidated into only two servers by takingadvantage of our Solaris 10 containers and multi-core Intel technology while keeping the RMDSdeployment configurations same as its running on dedicated boxes. It will help in reducing the TCO upto 50%.

All servers are from the Sun Fire X4170 family with two Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5540, 2.53 GHz,80W Processor, 2 x 146GB 10,000RPM internal disks and 12GB memory. SF X4170 systems come asstandard with four network interfaces. For more than four interfaces an additional PCI network cardcan be added.

The hardware specification guidelines are as follows:

RMDS 6 Components Hardware Model Number of CPUs Memory DiskSource Distributor andDACS Server / RMS

Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5540 12GB 2 x 146GB

P2PS and RTIC Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5540 12GB 2 x 146GB

c) Proposed SMALL-MEDIUM RMDS Architecture with Server Consolidation When RTIC isNOT RequiredIn this configuration, three RMDS servers have been consolidated into a single server by takingadvantage of our Solaris 10 containers and multi-core Intel technology while keeping the RMDSdeployment configurations same as its running on dedicated boxes. This approach will not only help inreducing the TCO up to 75% , but it will also be providing much lower latency for RMDS since thecommunication between different RMDS components are done within the system over the backplane.

The server is from the Sun Fire X4170 family with 2 x Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5540, 2.53 GHz, 80WProcessor, 2 x 146GB 10,000RPM internal disks and 12GB memory. SF X4170 systems come asstandard with four network interfaces. For more than four interfaces an additional PCI network cardcan be added.

The hardware specification guidelines are as follows:

RMDS 6 Components Hardware Model Number of CPUs Memory DiskSource Distributor ,P2PS, DACS Server andRMS

Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5540 12GB 2 x 146GB

3. MEDIUM Configuration on Solaris 10 X64● Watchlist/Cache <100,000● Up to 256 Users

For the medium size configuration, there are two different type of deployment approaches proposedwith or without Solaris containers depending on the each site requirements. The proposed serverconsolidated approaches can help reducing the TCO for RMDS servers up to 50%.

a) RMDS MEDIUM Generic Architecture when each Component is Deployed on a DedicatedSystemAll servers are from the Sun Fire X4170 family with two socket Quad-Core Intel Xeon X5560, 2.80GHz, 95W Processor, 2 x 146GB 10,000RPM internal disks and 12GB memory.

The hardware specification guidelines are as follows:

RMDS 6 Components Hardware Model Number of CPUs Memory DiskSource Distributor Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon X5560 12GB 2 x 146GBP2PS Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon X5560 12GB 2 x 146GBRTIC Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon X5560 12GB 2 x 146GBDACS Server / RMS Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon X5560 12GB 2 x 146GB

b) Proposed MEDIUM RMDS Architecture with Server ConsolidationIn this configuration, four RMDS servers have been consolidated into only two servers by taking

advantage of our Solaris 10 containers and multi-core Intel technology while keeping the RMDSdeployment configurations same as its running on dedicated boxes. It will help in reducing the TCO upto 50%.

All servers are from the Sun Fire X4170 family with two Quad-Core Intel Xeon X5560, 2.80 GHz,95W Processor, 2 x 146GB 10,000RPM internal disks and 12GB memory. SF X4170 systems come asstandard with four network interfaces. For more than four interfaces an additional PCI network cardcan be added.

The hardware specification guidelines are as follows:

RMDS 6 Components Hardware Model Number of CPUs Memory DiskSource Distributor andDACS Server / RMS

Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon X5560 8GB 2 x 73GB

P2PS and RTIC Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon X5560 8GB 2 x 73GB

4. LARGE Configuration on Solaris 10 X64● Watchlist/Cache <500,000● More than 256 Users

For the large size configuration, there are two different type of deployment approaches proposed withor without Solaris containers depending on the each site requirements. The proposed serverconsolidated approaches can help reducing the TCO for RMDS servers up to 50%.

a) RMDS LARGE Generic Architecture when each Component is Deployed on a DedicatedSystemAll servers are from the Sun Fire X4170 family with two socket Intel Xeon X5570, 2.93 Ghz, 95WProcessors, 2 x 146GB 10,000RPM internal disks and 12GB memory.

The hardware specification guidelines are as follows:

RMDS 6 Components Hardware Model Number of CPUs Memory DiskSource Distributor Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon X5570 12GB 2 x 146GBP2PS Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon X5570 12GB 2 x 146GBRTIC Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon X5570 12GB 2 x 146GBDACS Server / RMS Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon X5570 12GB 2 x 146GB

b) Proposed LARGE RMDS Architecture with Server ConsolidationIn this configuration, four RMDS servers have been consolidated into only two servers by takingadvantage of our Solaris 10 containers and multi-core Intel technology while keeping the RMDS

deployment configurations same as its running on dedicated boxes. It will help in reducing the TCO upto 50%.

All servers are from the Sun Fire X4170 family with two Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5570, 2.93 Ghz, 95WProcessors, 2 x 146GB 10,000RPM internal disks and 12GB memory. SF X4170 systems come asstandard with four network interfaces. For more than four interfaces an additional PCI network cardcan be added.

The hardware specification guidelines are as follows:

RMDS 6 Components Hardware Model Number of CPUs Memory DiskSource Distributor andDACS Server / RMS

Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5570 12GB 2 x 146GB

P2PS and RTIC Sun Fire X4170 2 x QC Intel Xeon E5570 12GB 2 x 146GB

SummaryThe sample architectures outlined above demonstrate how` customers might deploy the newly-available features of RMDS 6 on Solaris X64. Additional RMDS components will become available onSolaris 10 both on X64 and SPARC, increasing the flexibility of deployment options available tocustomers. Sun’s Intel-based server offerings will continue to develop, offering increased performanceand deployment flexibility.

To find the latest information regarding RMDS on Sun refer to http://www.sun.com/thomsonreutersand for additional information contact your local Sun account team.