Deploying Multiple View Processing Servers

D

Don

Here are the directions and a link to Microsoft on how to Deploying
Multiple View Processing Servers. This is Load balancing View
Notification Service after the install of SP1.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011654241033.aspx

Deploying Multiple View Processing Servers
Project Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) introduces support for
multiple computers running the Project Server View Processing service.


Note You must be running Project Server 2003 SP1 on all computers in
your deployment before you can take advantage of these performance
improvements.


If your organization submits a high volume of publish requests, you can
significantly improve publishing throughput by dedicating a single
computer to the View Processing service or by using multiple dedicated
View Processing servers. You can enable support for multiple View
Processing servers in the same manner you use to support multiple
servers running the Session Manager service.

Connection information for each View Processing server must be added to
the registry on each computer running Project Server. This creates what
amounts to a simple round-robin configuration in which the system uses
the connection information to assign a View Processing server to
receive the current request.

In performance tests, 1146 projects were published to the computer
running Project Server 2003 and 550 resources were created and shared
among the 1146 projects. The average project included 40 assignments.

The following table lists the publishing times for a single server
dedicated to the View Processing service.

Number of Projects Publishing Time
10 30 seconds
100 601 seconds
500 3539 seconds

The following table lists the publishing times when using two dedicated
View Processing servers.

Number of Projects Publishing Time
10 Server 1: 25 seconds
Server 2: 25 seconds

100 Server 1: 330 seconds
Server 2: 345 seconds

500 Server 1: 1803 seconds
Server 2: 1714 seconds


The following table lists the publishing times when using three
dedicated View Processing servers.

Number of Projects Publishing Time
10 Server 1: 23 seconds
Server 2: 28 seconds
Server 3: 34 seconds

100 Server 1: 242 seconds
Server 2: 240 seconds
Server 3: 250 seconds

500 Server 1: 1384 seconds
Server 2: 1425 seconds,
Server 3: 1385 seconds


With a single View Processing server running in the test environment,
publishing 500 projects took 3539 seconds. With two servers, publishing
500 projects took 3517 seconds total, but when the load is split across
two servers, the average time to publish was 1758 seconds for an
average savings of 1830 seconds. With three services running,
publishing 500 projects took 4194 seconds total, but when the load is
split across three servers, the average time to publish was 1398
seconds for an average savings of 2141 seconds.


Note While up to 1000 servers can be configured to support a
load-balanced View Processing server, performance testing indicates a
rate of diminishing return on real performance improvement.


Configuring the Computers Running the Project Server View Processing
Service
Using multiple View Processing servers involves the following steps:

Using Project Server Setup to install the View Processing service on
the additional servers
Completing a few manual steps on the new servers (including disabling
the Project Server Scheduled Process service).
Updating the registry on the front-end application server or servers so
that it is aware of each new View Processing server. Only the front-end
application servers need to be aware of the additional View Processing
servers.
If you are running Analysis Services, you must also do the following on
any server that is dedicated to running the offloaded View Processing
service:

Create the same OLAP administrator account that is used on other
servers in your deployment.
Install Decision Support Objects (DSOs).
Apply SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3).
Disable the Project Server Scheduled Process service on all but one of
the servers running the offloaded View Processing server. If you do not
do this, OLAP cube generation might fail and resource tables will not
be updated.
To deploy additional servers running the View Processing service
Install Project Server 2003 SP1 on all computers in your Project Server
deployment.
On a new computer, using the same user accounts that are associated
with any other server running the View Processing service or Analysis
Services in your deployment, run Project Server Setup and install the
View Processing service (select the View Processing option from the
Choose the services you want to install on this server page).

Note Do not select the Project Server front-end and Session Manager
options on this page.


Follow the steps listed in Choosing the Services to Install in the
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Installation Guide to complete
these steps.

Install Project Server 2003 SP1 on the new computer.
Follow the steps listed in Install Decision Support Objects in the
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Installation Guide to install the
components required by the OLAP cube building process that is shared by
the View Processing server.
Follow the steps listed in Create an OLAP Administrator in the
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Installation Guide to create the
OLAP administrator account on the servers that will be running the View
Processing service.
Stop and then disable the Project Server Scheduled Process service on
any additional server after the first. You only need to run the Project
Server Scheduled Process service on a single server in your deployment.

Configuring the Front-End Application Server to Support Multiple View
Processing Servers
To complete the process of offloading the View Processing service, you
must edit the registry on the front-end application server or servers
in your Project Server deployment.


Note You must complete this procedure for all front-end application
servers in your Project Server deployment.


To configure the front-end application server
On the front-end application server in your Project Server deployment,
navigate to the following registry setting:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\MS Project\WebClient
Server\ProjectServer\Datasets\ViewsFileDrop

Rename the ForwardUNC registry key to ForwardUNC000.
For each server running the View Processing service, add a sequential
registry entry, for example ForwardUNC001, ForwardUNC002,
ForwardUNC003, and so on, with the value being the directory path for
the ViewDrop location on the server running the View Processing
service. If you skip a number in the sequential order, it will be
ignored and the Project Server front-end application server will return
to the ForwaredUNC000 entry. Additionally, each registry entry can only
represent a unique server running the View Processing service.
For example, in a configuration that supports four servers running the
View Processing service, the registry format is the following:

ForwardUNC000 = "\\serverName000\viewdrop"
ForwardUNC001 = "\\serverName001\viewdrop"
ForwardUNC002 = "\\serverName002\viewdrop"
ForwardUNC003 = "\\serverName003\viewdrop"

Restart the front-end application server.

_________________________________________________________________________

vwnotify.exe
project server views notification service
Views Processing
OLAP Cube
Processing large projects
 

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