COM.volano.Mark

COM.volano.Mark runs VolanoMark™, the Volano benchmark.

SYNOPSIS

java COM.volano.Mark [ options ]

DESCRIPTION

Overview

The VolanoMark Java application is a benchmark tool for judging the performance and stability of a particular Java virtual machine for running the VolanoChat server. The VolanoChat server is a 100% Pure Java™ application which creates a multiuser environment for the VolanoChat client applets connecting to it.

Java virtual machines that are used to run server applications for multiuser environments require a different benchmark than say, the CaffeineMark™ applet by Pendragon Software, because the applications tend to be:

highly multithreaded, with at least one thread per connection, and
highly networked, with tens of thousands of socket connections daily lasting on average over 30 minutes each.

In addition, such multiuser servers on the Internet have a goal of being:

highly stable, able to run months without stopping or having to be restarted, and
highly scalable, allowing hundreds or thousands of concurrent client connections without a loss in response time.

An environment with such a high number of long lasting connections is very different from other transaction oriented applications, such as Web servers, which have a high number of very brief connections.

Of course, attaining these requirements depends on the quality of the server application itself as well as its Java virtual machine. The VolanoMark tool was created to assist Java vendors in making sure their virtual machine implementations are not the limiting factor.

Detail

VolanoMark simulates people chatting in the VolanoChat server. It creates a number of rooms in which a group of simulated test users take turns chatting as quickly as possible. After each test users has sent the number of chat messages requested, the test ends. Upon completion, it reports:

the number of messages sent by the test users,
the number of messages received by the test users,
the total number of messages sent and received,
the elapsed time for the test, and
the average throughput, expressed as the average messages per second handled by the server.

The VolanoChat server must be up and running before starting VolanoMark. To start the VolanoChat server, change to your vmark2.1.x installation directory and enter the command:

java COM.volano.Main

where java is the name of your Java interpreter. It might have a different name on your system, such as jview, guava, kaffe, or sc10java.

Note that to find the class COM/volano/Main.class, you'll need either to have no CLASSPATH defined or to have the current working directory (".") included in the definition of your CLASSPATH environment variable.

To run the VolanoMark application with its default values, change to the vmark2.1.x directory and enter the command:

java COM.volano.Mark -run

Type java COM.volano.Mark by itself for a brief description of its options.

You should use the same Java virtual machine to run VolanoMark as you do for the VolanoChat server. To obtain the highest possible VolanoMark score, you should minimize the number of other applications running on your system during the test.

The values used by default are shown below, creating 10 rooms with 20 test users in each room for a total of 200 chat connections. Each user sends 10 chat messages into the room before quitting.

file  = mark2_1_x.log
host  = localhost
port  = 8000
start = 1
rooms = 10
users = 20
count = 10
pause = 0

When running with these default values, the test can take anywhere from less than a minute to over an hour to complete, depending on your Java virtual machine, operating system, and hardware platform. When it completes, you should see the results printed like the following:

Running the test ...
Test complete.

VolanoMark version = 2.1.x
Messages sent      = 2000
Messages received  = 38000
Total messages     = 40000
Elapsed time       = 32.297 seconds
Average throughput = 1239 messages per second

The average throughput in messages per second is the VolanoMark score for your Java virtual machine. The results shown above were obtained using the Microsoft SDK for Java Version 3.1 (jview version 5.00.2925) on a 200-MHz Intel Pentium Pro processor with 128 MB of memory running Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Service Pack 3.

OPTIONS

-run

Runs the benchmark.

-help

Prints a usage message.

-version

Prints the version information.

-jvm

Prints the Java virtual machine environment, as shown by the following example:

java.vendor        = Sun Microsystems Inc.
java.vendor.url    = http://java.sun.com/
java.version       = 1.2fcs
java.class.version = 46.0
java.compiler      = symcjit
os.name            = Windows NT
os.version         = 4.0
os.arch            = x86

where:

java.vendor: is the vendor-specific identifier string
java.vendor.url: is the vendor's Web site address
java.version: is the version of the Java interpreter
java.class.version: is the version of the Java API
java.compiler: is the name of the just-in-time compiler
os.name: is the name of the host operating system
os.version: is the version of the host operating system
os.arch: is the host hardware architecture

-file string

Specifies the name of the output file, with a default value of mark2_1_x.log. The output file contains the Java virtual machine environment and the VolanoMark test results.

-host string

Specifies the name of the host running the VolanoChat server, with a default value of localhost.

-port integer

Specifies the port number at which the VolanoChat server accepts chat connections, with a default value of 8000.

-start integer

Specifies a starting room number for the test users to enter, with a default value of 1. This option allows you to run multiple VolanoMark applications against the same VolanoChat server without interference between them. For example, you could instruct the first VolanoMark application to create 10 rooms starting with room number 1 and the second VolanoMark application to create 10 rooms starting with room number 11. The first would create test users in rooms 1 through 10, and the second would create test users in rooms 11 through 20.

-rooms integer

Specifies the number of rooms to create in the VolanoChat server, with a default value of 10.

-users integer

Specifies the number of test users to create in each room, with a default value of 20. The number of users must be 2 or more per room.

-count integer

Specifies the number of chat messages for each user to send into the VolanoChat server before quitting, with a default value of 10. Specify 0 if you want the test to keep running without any limit on the number of messages sent. When run with a count of 0, you can stop the VolanoMark application by killing it with Ctrl-C or by running the COM.volano.Shutdown application for a graceful termination. Note that the value of the count option takes effect only when the value of the pause option is 0 (its default).

-pause integer

Specifies the delay in seconds between each message sent into the VolanoChat server by a client user. The default value is 0, meaning each client takes turns in each room sending messages into the server as quickly as possible. A non-zero value causes the VolanoMark server to keep running without any limit on the number of messages sent. In this case, you can stop the VolanoMark application by killing it with Ctrl-C or by running the COM.volano.Shutdown application for a graceful termination.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

CLASSPATH

Used to provide the system a path to user-defined classes. Directories are separated by semicolons on Windows and colons on UNIX. For example, on UNIX you might have:

.:/usr/java1.1/lib/classes.zip

while on Windows, you might specify:

.;C:\jdk1.1.7\lib\classes.zip