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Copyright IBM Corporation, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

All trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective holders

Tuning AIX for Oracle Hyperion andEssbase Products

Support documentation for Oracle Service.

Jubal Kohlmeier

IBM STGOracle Applications EnablementNovember 2013


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IBM White paper title herehttp://www.ibm.com/support/techdocs Copyright 2013, IBM Corporation

Table of contents

Abstract.....................................................................................................................................1

Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1

Prerequisites.............................................................................................................................1

Tuning AIX with Oracle Essbase products ............................................................................. 1AIX Libraries ............................................................................................................................................1

Recommended Environment Variables. .................................................................................................. 1

AIX Virtual Memory Manager Settings..................................................................................................... 2

LDR_CNTRL settings ..............................................................................................................................3

64K Page Size Support............................................................................................................................ 3

Ulimit values............................................................................................................................................. 4

NOLOG on JFS2 file systems.................................................................................................................. 4

Statistic and Configuration Tools ...........................................................................................5

Specialized AIX Tools .............................................................................................................................. 5

Larger tools .............................................................................................................................................. 5

nmon.................................................................................................................................. 6

topas.................................................................................................................................. 6

perfpmr ..............................................................................................................................6

obimon............................................................................................................................... 6

obidoc ................................................................................................................................ 6

Other Known Issues................................................................................................................. 7

Localhost host name degrades performance .......................................................................................... 7

Technote on DNS Lookups...................................................................................................................... 7

Synopsis: ........................................................................................................................... 7

Summary................................................................................................................................... 8

About the author.......................................................................................................................8

Trademarks and special notices ............................................................................................. 9


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Tuning AIX for Oracle Hyperion and Essbase Productshttp://www.ibm.com/support/techdocs Copyright 2013, IBM Corporation 1

Abstract

This document is comprised of tuning recommendations and helpful tips, tool suggestions foraid in improving the performance of Oracle Essbase products, and for helping Oracle and IBMcustomers.

Introduction

Oracle and IBM customers sometime require help in tuning and identifying potential problems with

products that execute on Power7 AIX systems. This document was based on a previous suggestion

document provided by Oracle. This document has been updated to include AIX 6.1 and AIX 7.1 version.

There are three different sections to the paper. They are as follows:

AIX and Oracle Hyperion and Essbase tuning recommendations.

Recommendations on performance and configuration gathering tools.

Issues that have been seen with Oracle Essbase customers that are OS issues that are not

directly related to Oracle Essbase.

Prerequisites

It is assumed that standard AIX installation procedures and recommendations are applied prior to the

additional tuning in this document. It is not the intent of this document to bypass either IBM or Oracle

standard installation processes. AIX documentationprovides you with information regarding tools and

manuals.

Tuning AIX with Oracle Essbase products

This section provides examples of the correct use of subheadings, bullets, figures, code examples, and

other elements used in creating white papers.

AIX Libraries

It is recommended that the version of xlC runtime library be at least version 11.1.0.4 or later. To find the

current version type:

lslpp l xlC.aix61.rte

The version of xlc compiler can be found by the command:

xlC -qversion

Recommended Environment Variables.

It is recommended to set the following variables for Oracle Essbase version products.

Check the values within the current environment using the AIX envcommand.


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# within format of ksh environment variables.

AIXTHREAD_COND_DEBUG=OFF

AIXTHREAD_MUTEX_DEBUG=OFF

AIXTHREAD_MNRATIO=1:1

AIXTHREAD_SCOPE=S

AIXTHREAD_MUTEX_FAST=ON

SPINLOOPTIME=1000# CC is replaced with the maximum number of physical Cores within the LPAR.

MALLOCOPTIONS=multiheap:CC,considersize

YIELDLOOPTIME=CC #Where CC is set to the number of physical cores (not logical)

export AIXTHREAD_COND_DEBUG

export AIXTHREAD_MUTEX_DEBUG

export AIXTHREAD_MNRATIO

export AIXTHREAD_SCOPE

export AIXTHREAD_MUTEX_FAST

export SPINLOOPTIME

export YIELDLOOPTIME

export MALLOCOPTIONS

Listing 1: Environment Variables required within the Essbase products.

AIX Virtual Memory Manager Settings

The table below provides the recommended values for virtual memory management. If upgrading the

operating system from AIX 5.3 to either AIX 6 or AIX 7, the recommendations do not carry forward during

the upgrade and must be modified manually.

You can implement these settings with the AIX vmocommand, which is dynamic and takes effect

immediately. For example:


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vmo -p -o maxperm%=90 -o maxclient%=90 -o minperm%=3 -o lru_file_repage=0

LDR_CNTRL settings

Ensure AIX shared libraries have "read-other" permissions so that AIX will load them in global memory.Otherwise concurrent use by multiple processes will require their own CPU cache blocks. Substantial

performance gains are possible when libraries are shared globally.

export LDR_CNTRL=LOADPUBLIC@IGNOREUNLOAD

The environment variable, LDR_CNTRL, provides a means of modifying memory and libraries behavior

for applications. It is recommended that LOADPUBLIC and IGNOREUNLOAD bet set. This will improve

the performance and use of memory. See the following for description of LOADPUBLIC and

IGNOREUNLOAD.

The LDR_CNTRLenvironment variable can be used to control one or more aspects of

the system loader behavior. You can specify multiple options with the LDR_CNTRL

variable. When specifying the option, separate the options with the '@' sign.

An example of specifying multiple options is: LDR_CNTRL=PREREAD_SHLIB@LOADPUBLIC.

Specifying the PREREAD_SHLIB option causes entire libraries to be read as soon as

they are accessed. With VMM readahead is tuned, a library can be read from the

disk and be cached in memory by the time the program starts to access its pages.

While this method might use more memory, it might also enhance the performance of

programs that use many shared library pages if the access pattern is non-

sequential (for example, Catia).

Specifying the LOADPUBLIC option directs the system loader to load all modules

requested by an application into the global shared library segment. If a module

cannot be loaded publicly into the global shared library segment then it is

loaded privately for the application.

Specifying the IGNOREUNLOAD option prevents the application from unloading libraries. This

specification might prevent memory fragmentation and eliminate the overhead incurred when libraries are

repeatedly loaded and unloaded. If you do not specify the IGNOREUNLOAD option, you might end up

with two data instances of a module if the module was loaded at application load time and the module

was then requested to be dynamically loaded and unloaded multiple times.

64K Page Size Support

On POWER5+ systems, AIX 5L Version 5.3 with the 5300-04 Recommended Maintenance Package

supports a new 64KB page size when running the 64-bit kernel. AIX 5L has rich support around 64KB

pages, and 64KB pages are intended to be general purpose. 64KB pages are very easy to use, and it is

expected that many applications will see performance benefits when using 64KB pages rather than 4KB

pages. No system configuration changes are necessary to enable a system to use 64KB pages.

On systems that support 64KB pages, the AIX 5L kernel will automatically configure 64KB pages for the

system. 64KB pages are fully pageable, and the size of the pool of 64KB page frames on a system is


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dynamic and fully managed by AIX 5L. AIX 5L will vary the number of 4KB and 64KB page frames on a

system to meet demand on the different page sizes. Both the svmonand vmstat AIX commands can be

used to monitor the number of 4KB and 64KB page frames on a system.

For forcing the use of 64K pages, the LDR_CNTRL environment variable can be modified with memorysettings.

export LDR_CNTRL=DATAPSIZE=64K@TEXTPSIZE=64K@STACKSIZE=64K

Note: the @ operator separates options within LDR_CNTRL, previous options within the current

environment should be preserved when adding additional arguments to LDR_CNTRL.

INFORMATIONAL: there is a tradeoff of CPU performance gain versus additional memory usage whenapplying 64K page sizes. Ensure the customer is willing to account for the additional memory use with64K pages.

Ulimit values

It is recommended that the following values for ulimit be in affect for the Essbase application environment.

To check the current values type:

ulimit a

The recommended values for ulimit are:

time(seconds) unlimited

file(blocks) unlimited

data(kbytes) unlimited

stack(kbytes) 131072 (128MB)

memory(kbytes) unlimited

coredump(blocks) unlimited

nofiles(descriptors) 4096

threads(per process) unlimited

processes(per user) unlimited

NOLOG on JFS2 file systems

There is the ability to improve performance during data loading by usage of a RAMDISK, or AIX JFS file

system with the NOLOG option.

You can use NOLOG JFS2 file systemswhich skip the Journal logging for file allocation/deallocationintensive access. JFS logging and RAID 5 is a deadly combination if you want speed.

Usage of NOLOG on non temporary file system is not recommended, as file system recovery will be

much longer.

The AIX mkramdisk command provides the tool to create a RAMDISK.


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Statistic and Configuration Tools

This section provides support the information on what tools are useful for testing, configuration and

statistic gathering. Each section describes the purpose of the tools in question.

Specialized AIX Tools

The AIX operating system has many tools to help the developer and administrator diagnose and test the

performance of the system. This document does not attempt to go in any detail regarding the specific

tools, see the AIX documentation for further information.

The table below provides a means of specifying what tools are useful depending on the type of object

under investigation. Most of the AIX tools listed are character based tools. The exception to the tools

below is the AIX topascommand, which is curses-based.

Larger tools

Two major tools come standard with most versions of AIX. These are nmon and topas. The AIX nmon

tool became standard with AIX 6.1 and AIX 7.1.


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nmon

nmon it is fast becoming a popular tool supported on AIX. It is also possible to collect nmon

performance data daily. Nmonis a free tool and can be found on the internet.

topas

The other standard tool supported on AIX is the AIX topascommand. The AIX topascommand reports

selected local and remote system statistics. Example of a daily report with topas is:

usr/bin/topasrec -L -s 300 -R 1 -r 6 -o /etc/perf/daily/ -ypersistent=1 -O

type=bin -ystart_time=17:25:45,Feb27,2013

perfpmr

IBM provides a data collection utility called "perfpmr". Used by IBM diagnostics teams when asking a

customer for data for a customer problem, but it is a very good way to collect a snapshot of a system. It

does a great job of archiving the configurations of the machine. This is useful for when reviewing the

configuration of a customers machine.

obimon

If it appears that an Essbase process is using a lot of CPU resources, run thee Essbase obimontool.

Collecting information about system behavior will enable support to focus on the changes that need to

be made.

obimon ESSSVR &

The Essbase obimoncommand will start the information collection process. Let it run to completion.

Tail the output file if you wish to see information "now".

obidoc

Run the Essbase obidoctool with the Essbase user id each time you have a configuration change. It

is also helpful to run it before/after a major test. Running the tool helps to generate AIX statistics that

may help us determine the root cause.


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Other Known Issues

This section contains issues that have been seen by Essbase customers, but not directly related to the

Essbase product.

Localhost host name degrades performance

Check the customers host name. If the machine thinks its name is "localhost", the cost of reverse DNS

authentication among machines might be disrupted, leading to large network delays. It is recommended

that the hostname not be set to localhost.

Technote on DNS Lookups

The technote url is: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21212940, with title, Client on AIX

generates excessive IPV6 DNS lookups for new connections.

Synopsis:

Very slow network traffic on IBM Tivoli Directory Server 5.x or 6.x on an AIX system might occur

because the client generates excessive IPV6 DNS lookups for every new connection it makes even if

IPV6 is not enabled. Some AIX systems have very slow DNS requests. Solution is to disable the IP6

DNS lookups.


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Summary

The tools and tips recommended help to provide for a performing and robust Oracle Hyperion Essbase

environment. It is recommended that customers of Oracle and IBM follow these tips and suggestions

when implementing Oracle Hyperion Essbase on IBM AIX operating system.

About the author

Jubal Kohlmeier is an advisory software engineer in the IBM Systems & Technology Group (STG),

Business Systems Division. Jubal has more than 30 years of industry experience in the computing

industry and more than 15 years with Oracle products. Jubal has worked with customers with Oracle

applications and Oracle databases in achieving high volume mission critical solutions on IBM POWER

and System x.


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Trademarks and special notices

Copyright. IBM Corporation 2013. All rights reserved.

References in this document to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them

available in every country.

Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other

countries, or both.

Microsoft, Windows, Windows Server, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in

the United States, other countries, or both.

Intel and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the

United States and other countries.

AMD and AMD Opteron are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.

Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both.

Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

The information provided in this document is distributed AS IS without any warranty, either express or

implied.

The information in this document may include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors.

All customer examples described are presented as illustrations of how those customers have used IBM

products and the results they may have achieved. Actual environmental costs and performance

characteristics may vary by customer.

Information concerning non-IBM products was obtained from a supplier of these products, published

announcement material, or other publicly available sources and does not constitute an endorsement of

such products by IBM. Sources for non-IBM list prices and performance numbers are taken from publicly

available information, including vendor announcements and vendor worldwide homepages. IBM has not

tested these products and cannot confirm the accuracy of performance, capability, or any other claims

related to non-IBM products. Questions on the capability of non-IBM products should be addressed to the

supplier of those products.

All statements regarding IBM future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without

notice, and represent goals and objectives only. Contact your local IBM office or IBM authorized reseller

for the full text of the specific Statement of Direction.

Some information addresses anticipated future capabilities. Such information is not intended as a

definitive statement of a commitment to specific levels of performance, function or delivery schedules with

respect to any future products. Such commitments are only made in IBM product announcements. The

information is presented here to communicate IBM's current investment and development activities as a

good faith effort to help with our customers' future planning.

Performance is based on measurements and projections using standard IBM benchmarks in a controlled

environment. The actual throughput or performance that any user will experience will vary depending


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upon considerations such as the amount of multiprogramming in the user's job stream, the I/O

configuration, the storage configuration, and the workload processed. Therefore, no assurance can be

given that an individual user will achieve throughput or performance improvements equivalent to the

ratios stated here.

Photographs shown are of engineering prototypes. Changes may be incorporated in production models.

Any references in this information to non-IBM Web sites are provided for convenience only and do not in

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of the materials for this IBM product and use of those Web sites is at your own risk.

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