Understanding the effects of the CPU

The dominant factor affecting Meridian application server responsiveness, assuming that sufficient physical and virtual memory is available, is the server’s CPU. Upgrading the CPU to a faster clock speed resolves most performance problems. However, it should not be considered a panacea, and the other areas described in this guide should also be optimized for peak performance. When you are selecting a new Meridian application server computer, the fastest available CPU (or CPUs) provides the greatest value.

Tip    To determine if the server’s CPU is limiting performance, monitor the AMEDMW instance of the Process object with Performance Monitor as described in Configuring the Windows Performance Monitor.

Note    Installing the Meridian 64-bit edition components on a computer running a Windows Server 64-bit edition operating system provides the best possible performance while also providing additional memory for larger vaults and 40-50 more concurrent users.

In environments where SQL Server or Oracle is used as the Meridian DBMS or multiple large Hypertrieve vaults are frequently accessed by users, it is possible to improve overall performance by hosting Meridian on a server with two or more processors or processor cores. Although Meridian cannot directly take advantage of more than one processor, due to Windows symmetric multiprocessing ability, Windows will assign SQL Server or Oracle processes to the other processors. Windows can also assign individual Meridian vault database engines to the other processors if the Meridian CopyDLL option is enabled as described in Configuring the CopyDLL setting. With system processes divided among the available processors, overall processing throughput is increased.

Note    We do not recommend setting the Processor Affinity of the Meridian service processes on multiprocessor servers, which can decrease overall performance. Windows symmetric multiprocessing performs better processor load balancing.