BCC Mail Manager FS Speed Issues

[gregbatch]

Has anyone else been having speed issues with MM since the database engine switch? We have optimized everything and it just hits brick walls on data transfer. It's not the network. The network achieves 850+ Mbps with no problem. MM seems to hit a wall at about 53 Mbps on many read situations, like the list of lists to open. I do see it spike for a moment during some operations, but it might make it to 140 Mbps. We moved it to a new server with a processor that is 12x faster than the old one. The M.2 SSD is at least 15X faster than the old hard drive. Doubled the memory to 32 GB. Ran table repair and optimization. Prior to that the brick wall was at 34 Mbps.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Did you try asking them?

Maybe your router whitelists certain ports to allow maximum performance (web browsers) and other ports to be throttled-ish for your VOIP phones?

 

[gregbatch]

Already thought of that, but no voip either. We have a wireless pbx. Performance on other tasks and software is usually 850 Mbps or better from that server. BCC isn't that helpful. From what I can tell, they picked a replacement engine that was never designed to handle data of that scale. It has known issues. For their price tag, an aging open source engine was a bad move. Perhaps an immediate measure while they engineer something better.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Already thought of that, but no voip either. We have a wireless pbx. Performance on other tasks and software is usually 850 Mbps or better from that server. BCC isn't that helpful. From what I can tell, they picked a replacement engine that was never designed to handle data of that scale. It has known issues. For their price tag, an aging open source engine was a bad move. Perhaps an immediate measure while they engineer something better.

I figured as much but decided it was worth throwing the suggestion at you. I'm out of ideas, sorry. Poor routing for specific BCC traffic? That'd be "call your ISP" level stuff. Are other people getting performance substantially better than your own (while running BCC)?

 

[gregbatch]

I figured as much but decided it was worth throwing the suggestion at you. I'm out of ideas, sorry. Poor routing for specific BCC traffic? That'd be "call your ISP" level stuff. Are other people getting performance substantially better than your own (while running BCC)?

Everyone had very poor performance after the switch. It has greatly improved over several updates, but nowhere near the performance before the switch. I'm going to talk to some other local shops to see if they have any tricks.

 

[pcmodem]

According to the email BCC sent out. The CASS/DPV Engine switch is being updated at the end of May AND for now is only on their servers when you send a job for Data Services.

Here is a snippet from the email.

Mail Manager FS will not be changing engines for CASS (ZIP+4 matching), DPV, RDI, LACSLink, SuiteLink at this time. But, encoding associated with Mail Manager FS Data Services wizard including NCOALink and DSF2 will be changing to use the BCC Architect server once our BCC Hosted servers are updated by the end of May.

That being said. About one year ago, I did extensive testing on improving BCC Mail Manager FS speed. I had a gaming computer with an M.2 SSD, installed MM FS directly on this computer, with everything stored locally. I used Dell Live Optics Live Optics - Real-world data for IT decisions : Live Optics to monitor the system while I encoded a list of 40 million records, which took over 4 hours. The results within Live Optics showed that during the encoding process, MM was reading and writing in 6 KB chunks. If you look at the read/write stats for most disks, when you read or write in low KB sizes, your performance will be slower. If BCC were to increase the read/write size to a minimum of 256 KB or have it dynamic. Then we could see MM performance increase by a magnitude of 800%.

Here is a link to show the benchmarks for a Samsung M.2 SSD 980 Pro.

https://mezha.media/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Samsung-SSD-980-Pro-atto-disk-benchmark.png

 

[gregbatch]

A year ago I had no issues with MM speed. When they switched from BDE to TDBF in June, the bottom fell out. We are using a WD 570 which is slower, but less likely to hit thermal throttling.

 

[pcmodem]

June hasn't come yet this year. Are you referring to 11 months ago?

 

[gregbatch]

Correct.

 

[Shawnd]

I have had my fair share of issues with MM (not fs) since the database switch, I use the network version so speed was always slower than desktop and I have just dealt with it. I use taskmgr to script everything so I just let it run and do other stuff and come back to check what was done and finish up the job on larger mailings.

I have issues with my templates corrupting and my fields being renamed and my .csv exports dropping fields, the speed has been the least of my issues with this new database.

 

[gregbatch]

I have had my fair share of issues with MM (not fs) since the database switch, I use the network version so speed was always slower than desktop and I have just dealt with it. I use taskmgr to script everything so I just let it run and do other stuff and come back to check what was done and finish up the job on larger mailings.

I have issues with my templates corrupting and my fields being renamed and my .csv exports dropping fields, the speed has been the least of my issues with this new database.

I have had many of those issues as well, including selectivities being corrupted. The constant waiting is much more frustrating for me.

 

[gregbatch]

What about alternatives to Mail Manager FS?

 

[Shawnd]

Accuzip does not have a network version like MM has, that has stopped me from switching. No matter what Accuzip says what they have is not the same and you have to jump through hoops to make it work, ie it does not share permit info. And they have an old database software that they use.

Bluecrest has gobbled up the others and as you know they are working to consolidate them.

 

[gregbatch]

I wish someone would build one around linux. Tired of all the Windoze issues as well.

 

[Shawnd]

You can run BCC Presort on Red hat.

https://docs.satorisoftware.com/us/sys_req/BCCPresortSystemRequirements.pdf

 

[Shawnd]

@gregbatch Curious if you ever investigated BCC Presort?

With the issues here lately with MM the need to look at other products has increased.

 

[gregbatch]

Accuzip does not have a network version like MM has, that has stopped me from switching. No matter what Accuzip says what they have is not the same and you have to jump through hoops to make it work, ie it does not share permit info. And they have an old database software that they use.

Bluecrest has gobbled up the others and as you know they are working to consolidate them.

Has mailer profiles now. Still no network version that I can tell.

 

[dmetech]

I use the Linux version of Presort. It has never had any major issues in my experience.