Design and configuration for a performant system

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Introduction

This document is a guide only for assisting with identifying possible performance improvements that can be applied to Service Desk. Additional tips and checks that are unrelated to the application itself but which have been identified from experience of previous customer installations have also been included. There are many variables related to performance that are out of our visibility and beyond our control (for example network performance, resource and disk usage, infrastructure, etc). Usage is one of the most important variables affecting performance, and as such we can only provide advice in these areas which are not all-encompassing and are subject to change.

It is the customer’s responsibility to validate these suggestions and to ensure that any changes made are tested before applying them to a live system.

We recommend that the customer defines what an acceptable performance level is as part of the implementation plan, and then within the test and acceptance plan validates that it is fit for purpose. Include and monitor an on-going maintenance plan to ensure that this is kept at an acceptable level with fine tuning as required.

Service Desk is highly configurable and some designs may have a negative effect on performance. The purpose of this document is to help you to develop a system that balances the design requirements for the system with the performance requirements for the system.

This document assumes that you are familiar with the installation and basic architecture of the product – for more information, see Setting up Ivanti Service Desk and Asset Manager.

We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Service Desk as a pre requisite to troubleshooting performance issues.

Some observations made require knowledge of the underlying operating system and IIS (suitable for Windows administrators), database platform (suitable for a DBA) plus how the design of queries and windows are achieved within Service Desk (suitable for your Service Desk administrator).

There are three main sections to this document:

  • Configuration – advice on how to set up and configure the system to maximize performance. This includes advice on database, IIS, and Console settings.
  • Design – advice on how to use the Ivanti Console designers to design a system that maximizes performance. The designers enable you to set up business objects, windows, processes, and queries in a wide variety of ways to maximize the possibilities for the final system. However, some design decisions can have a negative effect on performance – this document will highlight the design decisions that need to be used with care.
  • Identifying issues – the final section offers advice on troubleshooting a poorly performing system, so that you can identify where to make changes to improve performance.

There are, of course, overlaps in each of these sections, so we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the entire document.