Tuesday, May 09, 2006 3:29 PM
by
mssblog
Planning for Tuning and Reporting (Part 1)
POSTED BY: PETER OKONSKI, MSS Test Lead
There are many different articles and white papers that address basic capacity planning for Microsoft Speech Server. One example is the MSS planning white paper: Estimating Capacity for Speech-enabled Interactive Voice Response Solutions. However, if you plan to use the reporting and tuning capabilities provided in MSS 2007, you need to plan for additional servers and related storage.
Call Workload Definitions
How do you plan? Start by gathering call workload definitions such as number of calls per hour, average call duration in seconds, and percentage of time the line can be busy.
Application Type
Categorize your application into one of the following MSS 2007 application types: Simple (e.g. DTMF, digits); Average (e.g. date, spelling, menu); or Complex (e.g. 50,000 name recognition, stock trade).
Language(s)
In addition, when you consider that different languages generate different log file sizes, the language(s) your application supports can affect your capacity needs, particularly if you plan to store those log files for a long period of time.
Worksheet
The following table contains the MSS customer application details that you should consider when enabling reporting and tuning in MSS 2007:
|
Description |
Example |
Customer Value |
|
Number of calls per hr – peak |
5,000 calls/hr |
|
|
Number of calls per hr – off peak |
100 calls/hr |
|
|
Time of main calls load per day |
10 hrs/day |
|
|
Average call duration (e.g. 100 sec) |
100 sec |
|
|
Percent line can be busy |
1% |
|
|
Load characteristic
- Flat distribution over a day
- Bell curve
- Peak type of daily distribution
- Weekdays main load
- Weekends load
- Every day the same
|
2
4- |
|
|
Language(s) of the application |
US-en |
|
|
Application type:
- Simple (such as DTMF, digits)
- Average (such as date, spelling, menu)
- Complex (such as a 50,000 name recognition, stock trade)
|
1 |
|
|
Other details on workload and customer behavior
- Number of grammars
- Grammar size
- Prompt database size
|
1 = 1
2 = 15,000
3 = 50,000 |
|
In addition, if you plan to use the following servers in your deployment, you should figure that into your capacity planning calculations as well.
- MSS Server
- TIS Server (optional)
- Web Server (optional)
- SQL Server for reporting and tuning (optional)
- Data Warehouse (optional)
The Microsoft Speech Server may generate files on each MSS server, Web server, and TIS server, if applicable. Because of the significant impact of the storage needed for the ETL files or any of the MSS databases, it is critical to enter time for collecting data in the file or database format.
Data collection needs can be gathered by using the following table. For definitions on these terms, refer to MSS 2007 Beta Help.
|
Type of Machine |
Description |
Default value (1) |
Customer data |
|
MSS Server |
Days to store of the ETL files for tuning |
7 |
|
|
Days to store of the ETL files for reporting |
7 |
|
|
Days to store of the ETL files for auditing |
0 |
|
|
Compression type |
Non |
|
|
Recognition audio % of calls |
10 |
|
|
Include Prompt audio |
No |
|
|
All audio for % of calls |
0 |
|
|
SQL Server Tuning |
Days to store of the ETL files |
7 |
|
|
Compression type for files drive (2) |
Windows |
|
|
Days to store of data in the tuning database |
30 |
|
|
Percent of calls to collect the recognition audio |
100 |
|
|
Include prompt audio |
Yes |
|
|
SQL Server Reporting |
Days to store of the ETL files |
7 |
|
|
Compression type for the files storage drive (2) |
Windows |
|
|
Days to store of data in the database |
180 |
|
|
SQL Server Auditing |
Days to store of the ETL files |
0 |
|
|
Days to store of data in the database |
0 |
|
|
Recognition audio % of calls |
0 |
|
|
Include Prompt audio |
No |
|
|
All audio for % of calls |
0 |
|
|
SQL Server
General |
RAID type on the file storage drive |
1 |
|
|
RAID type on the SQL Server data drive |
5 |
|
|
RAID type on the SQL Server transaction log drive |
5 |
|
|
Data Warehouse
Reporting |
Days to store of the ETL files |
0 (no intention to store files on this machine) |
|
|
Days to store of data in the database using 5X max number of calls stored in SQL Server reporting |
720 |
|
|
RAID type on the SQL Server data drive |
5 |
|
|
RAID type on the SQL Server transaction log drive |
|
|
|
Workstation |
Data to collect on the development workstation |
7 days |
|
Notes
- The default values are not the maximum supported number of days by the Microsoft Speech Server 2007.
- You can use only one type of compression (e.g. Windows compression, ZIP, or Non) for the repository of the ETL files.
In my next posting, I’ll provide examples how to use this data and how to collect the runtime to predict the growth of Microsoft Speech Server systems.
