iod performance 101

PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION 101CHANGES TO YOUR IBM COGNOS SERVERS FOR OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE

Introduction

System Performance Tuning

Changing dispatcher settings

Improving sorted report performance

Scalability horizontal vs. vertical scaling

Infrastructure issues

Next steps advanced topics

TODAYS AGENDA

2Copyright 2014 Senturus, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Tune the system settings and services to optimize speed and efficiency

Areas to review:

tuning for peak usage times

hardware scaling

logging level

optimized FM models

optimized OS


Common terms:

Connection = a thread

Report Server = IBM Cognos Dispatcher

Report Service Process = report process (i.e. BIBusTKServerMain)

A dispatcher will use all available threads on one report service before using another

Primary focus for tuning should be on number of batch report service and report service processes

Spread requests across multiple processes

More processes with fewer connections performs better

Tuning Overview

Group Dispatchers

Group dispatchers into folders to apply settings across all servers in a group

Specify the Number of Processes

Specify the number of process for the report and batch report services

Specify the number of low and high affinity connections

System performance tuning

Peak Demand

Most organizations have a peak period of demand, typically during normal business hours

Determine the start and end time to control the number of concurrent jobs

System Performance Tuning Request Wait Times

You can specify how long a users request will stay in the queue before timing out

You can also limit the maximum execution the report service to prevent users from executing long report jobs

System performance tuning

Affinity refers to whether a request is assigned to a specific server or if load balancing can assign it to another server

Requests are defined as having high, low, or absolute affinity

Request affinity is not configurable

To optimize performance specify the number of connections a dispatcher can open based on the affinity of requests

Maximum threshold for affinity connections is 5

High and Low affinity connections should not collectively exceed 5 per process

Examine request affinity

High affinity connections per batch report process = 1

unchangeable/not applicable to batch execution

Low affinity connections per batch report process = 2

Maximum batch report service processes = 1 * # of CPUs

High affinity connections per interactive process = 1

Low affinity connections per interactive process = 2

Maximum affinity connections per interactive process = 2 * # of CPUs

Summary Formulas for Initial Tuning

IMPROVING PERFORMANCE OF SORTED REPORTS

DEMO

Copyright 2014 Senturus, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Issues with large reports containing sorting

Removing the sort improves performance

Requires a change in Cognos Configuration

Can dramatically improve the performance of sorted reports

Challenges & Goals

Demo

Improving Sorted Report Performance

1. To connect to the Training server, go to the Windows Start menu, select Run, type MSTSC, and press Enter.

2. Paste the Public DNS address that you are given by the instructor into the Computer name field. Click Connect. Log in as modeler, Admin1234.

3. Once the Remote Desktop starts, click the Start button in the remote session.

4. Select All Programs, and navigate to the IBM Cognos 10 - 64 folder and click on IBM Cognos Configuration. Click Yes to any messages.

5. Under the Environment section is the Sort buffer size in MB. The default value is 4 MB. Typically this can be safely increased 4 to 8 times. Increased sort buffer capacity will improve ad-hoc query performance.

6. Change this value to 32.

7. On the toolbar, click Save. Click Close.

8. From the Actions menu, click Restart. Click OK and then Continue to any warning messages and then click Close.

Purpose: In order to allow sorted reports to access more memory we must make a

change in Cognos Configuration and restart our server.

Demo

Improving Sorted Report Performance

CONFIGURING A DISPATCHER

DEMO

Demo 8-1 System Tuning

IBM Cognos System Administration

1. In the Remote Desktop session, right-click the Taskbar, and select Start Task Manager.

2. Click the Performance tab. Notice that there are 2 CPUs and about 7.5 MB of RAM. We want to configure our processes to maximize the capacity of our dedicated server.

Purpose: Lets look at how our system is currently performing



1. Return to IBM Cognos Connection.

2. From the Launch menu select IBM Cognos Administration.

3. Click the Configuration tab.

4. In the left side pane, click Dispatchers and Services.

5. Next to the :9300 dispatcher name, click Set Properties and then click the Settings tab.

6. Under Category select Tuning. Set the Entries range to 1 104. (yes, there are 104 Tuning settings across all services)

7. Because this system has multiple fast processors, change the Processing Capacity to 2.0.In a two dispatcher environment, this dispatcher would handle 2/3 the processing whilethe other would handle 1/3. This setting is relative to the total available Processing capacity of the environment.

8. Under Maximum number of processes for the batch report service during non-peak periodand Maximum number processes for the report service during non-peak period set the value on both of these to 4. The best practice for these values is 2 per CPU.

Purpose: Based on system utilization we can adjust some of our settings on the main

dispatcher to improve performance.



9. Under Number of high affinity connections for the batch report service during non-peak period set the value to 4. Under Number of low affinity connections for the batch report service during non-peak period set the value to 8.

10. Under Maximum number of processes for the batch report service during peak period and Maximum number processes for the report service during peak period set the value on both of these to 4.

11. Under Number of high affinity connections for the batch report service during peak period set the value to 4. Under Number of low affinity connections for the batch report service during peak period set the value to 8.

12. Under Number of high affinity connections for the report service during non-peak period set the value to 4. Under Number of low affinity connections for the report service during non-peak period set the value to 8.

13. Under Number of high affinity connections for the report service during peak period set the value to 4. Under Number of low affinity connections for the report service during peak period set the value to 8.

14. Click OK

Demo 8-2 System Tuning - Results


Scalability Horizontal vs Vertical

Scalability is the ability of a system to adapt to increased processing demands in a predictable way

IBM Cognos was designed for scalability

It scales vertically using more powerful computers, and horizontally using a greater number of computers

By default a weighted Round-robin load balancing strategy is used when multiple dispatchers are available

Scalability Planning

Use multiple instances of the components to balance the load of requests

At the level of the dispatcher, weighted round-robin load balancing is automatic in a distributed environment

Scalability planning Load Balancing

Web Server

Gateway

Server with

Dispatcher

Server with

Dispatcher

Server with

Dispatcher

By default, each dispatcher has a relatively equal weight, or Processing capacity, of 1

By assigning heavier weighting to a dispatcher, we expect that dispatcher to process a larger volume of requests in relation to its relative weight to the others

Weighted Round -Robin Load Balancing

Web Server

Gateway

Dispatcher

Weight = 1

Dispatcher

Weight = 1

Dispatcher

Weight = 2

This Dispatcher will

receive twice as many

requests as the others.

Installing multiple dispatchers on a single server can leverage available capacity

You must install into a separate directory from the first install

Remember to configure unique ports for each component

Vertical Scaling

Infrastructure Issues

Performance depends on the characteristics of your infrastructure

Ideally, the IBM Cognos server components should be connected by a network with 100 Mb of available capacity

Network bandwidth between a Web browser and a Web server does not affect system scalability, but does affect user performance

Use true server computers, rather than fast workstations

Planning Infrastructure Components

Install only gateway components on server computers that are dedicated to Web server processing

Use the gateway type most appropriate for your environment

The complexity of your security infrastructure can increase response time

Because notification service generates additional email traffic, ensure that your mail server can scale to support the increased load

Planning Infrastructure Components

iod performance 101

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