Performance Tuning Guide - EMC Community Network

Maximizing Process Throughput
Figure 6. Workflow throughput
Independent factors determine a systems capacity for generating activities and completing activities.
The activities defined for all active workflow instances across all Content Servers determine the
activity generation rate. The number of workflow threads available across all Content Servers
provides a good indication of activity completion capacity.
In fully load-balanced systems, activity creation rates approximate activity completion rates. When
activity creation rates exceed activity completion rates, the database work queue swells, which affects
database performance. When the activity completion rate exceeds activity creation rate, system
resources for activity completion become under utilized. Variations in the rate of activity creation
cause peak load demands for activity completion.
Design your processes in accordance with your business requirements, then scale the Content Server
tier to keep up with the activity creation rate during peak load periods (Planning for peak or average
loads, page 15). If you are constrained in your ability to scale the system, you can also regulate the rate
of activity creation (in your process design) so that it does not exceed activity completion capacity.
Assessing activity completion rate, page 27 provides information on the activity processing rate of a
single workflow thread. Assessing activity creation rate, page 26 provides information on modeling
the activity creation rate for all your processes over time.
To improve system capacity to complete activities, use more workflow threads per Content Server
and add more Content Servers (Increasing workflow threads and adding Content Servers, page 28).
Be explicit about your response time and throughput requirements.
Assessing activity creation rate
Business requirements define the activity creation rates for the system.
26 EMC Documentum xCP 1.0 Performance Tuning Guide