T5440 Rocks [again] with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Workload

A while ago, I blogged about how we scaled Siebel 8.0 up to 14,000 concurrent users by consolidating the entire Siebel stack on a single Sun SPARC^® Enterprise T5440 server with 4 x 1.4 GHz eight-core UltraSPARC^® T2 Plus Processors. OLTP workload was used in that performance benchmark effort.

We repeated a similar effort by collaborating with Oracle Corporation, but with an OLAP workload this time around. Today Sun and Oracle announced the 28,000 user Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 10.1.3.4 benchmark results on a single Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server with 4 x 1.6 GHz eight-core UltraSPARC T2 Plus Processors running Solaris 10 5/09 operating system. An Oracle white paper with Sun's 28,000 user benchmark results is available on Oracle's benchmark web site.

Some of the notes and key take away's from this benchmark are as follows:

• Key specifications for the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 system under test are: 4 x UltraSPARC T2 Plus processors, 32 cores, 256 compute threads and 128 GB of memory in a 4RU space.
  
  
• The entire OBIEE solution was deployed on a single Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server using Oracle BI Cluster software.
  
  
• The BI Cluster was configured with 4 x BI nodes. Each of those BI nodes were configured to run inside a Solaris Container.
  
  
  
  1. Each Solaris Container was configured with one physical processor (that is, 8 cores or 64 virtual cpus), and 32 GB physical memory.
     
  2. Each BI node was configured to run BI Server, Presentation Server and OC4J Web Server
     
  3. Two of the BI nodes have the BI Cluster Controller running (primary & secondary)
     
  4. One out of four Containers was sharing CPU and memory resources with Oracle 11g RDBMS and the host operating system that are running in the global zone
     
  
  
• Caching was turned ON at the application server, which led to minimal database activity on the server.
  
  
  1. In other words, one can use these results only to size the hardware requirements for a complete BI EE deployment excluding the database server.
     
     
  2. All the OBIEE benchmark results published so far are with the caching turned ON. This fact was not explicitly mentioned in some of the benchmark results white papers. Check the competitive Landscape for the pointers to different benchmark results published by different vendors.
  
  
• From our experiments with the OBIEE benchmark workload, it appears that a BI deployment with a single non-cluster BI node could reasonably scale well up to 7,500 active users on a T5440 server. To scale beyond 7,500 concurrent users, you might need another instance of BI. Of course, your mileage may vary.
  
  
• BI EE exhibited excellent horizontal scalability when multiple BI nodes were clustered using BI Cluster software. Four BI nodes in the Cluster were able to handle 28,000 concurrent users with minimal impact on the overall average transaction response times.
  
  
  It appeared as though we can simply add more BI nodes to the BI Cluster to cope with the increase in user base. However due to the limited hardware resources, we could not try running beyond 4 nodes in the BI Cluster. As of today, the theoritical limit for the number of BI nodes in a Cluster is 16.
  
  
• The underlying hardware must behave well in order for the application to scale and perform well -- so, credit goes to UltraSPARC T2 Plus powered Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server as well. In other words, it is fair to say the combination of (T5440 + OBIEE) performs and scales well on Solaris.
  
  
• A summary of the results with system-wide averages of CPU and memory utilization is shown below.
  
  
  

  #Vusers	Clustered	#BI Nodes	#CPU	#Core	RAM	CPU	Memory	Avg Trx Response Time	#Trx/sec
  7,500	No	1	1	8	32 GB	72.85%	18.11 GB	0.22 sec	155
  28,000	Yes	4	4	32	128 GB	75.04%	76.16 GB	0.25 sec	580

  
  
  
• Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) with ZFS file system showed significant I/O performance improvement over traditional disk for the BI catalog activity. In addition, ZFS helped get past the UFS limitation of 32,767 sub-directories in a BI catalog directory.
  
  
• The benchmark demonstrated that 64-bit BI EE platform is immune to the 4 GB virtual memory limitation of the 32-bit BI EE platform -- hence can potentially support even more users and have larger caches as long as the hardware resources are available.
  
  
  Solaris runs in 64-bit mode by default on SPARC platform. Consider running 64-bit BI EE on Solaris.
  
  
• 2,107 watts is the average power consumption when all the 28,000 concurrent users are in the steady state of the benchmark test. That is, in the case of similarly configured workloads, T5440 supports 13.2 users per watt of the power consumed; and supports 7,000 users per rack unit.

TOPOLOGY DIAGRAM:

A picture is worth a thousand words. The following topology diagram(s) says it all about the configuration.

1. Single Node BI Non-Cluster Configuration : 7,500 Concurrent Users



Even though the Solaris Container was shown in a cloud like graphical form, it has nothing to do with the "Cloud Computing". It is just a side effect of fancy drawing.

2. Four Node BI Cluster Configuration : 28,000 Concurrent Users



COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

Here is a quick summary of all the results that are published by different vendors. Feel free to draw your own conclusions. All this is public information. Check the corresponding benchmark reports by clicking on the URLs under the "#Users" column.

Server	Processors					#Users	OS
	Chips	Cores	Threads	GHz	Type
1 x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440	4	32	256	1.6	UltraSPARC T2 Plus	28,000	Solaris 10 5/09
5 x Sun Fire T2000	1	8	32	1.2	UltraSPARC T1	10,000	Solaris 10 11/06
3 x HP DL380 G4	2	4	4	2.8	Intel Xeon	5,800	OEL
1 x IBM x3755	4	8	8	2.8	AMD Opteron	4,000	RHEL4

CAUTION

Although T5440 possesses a ton of great qualities, it might not be suitable for deploying workloads with heavy single-threaded dependencies. The T5440 is an excellent hardware platform for multi-threaded, and moderately single-threaded/multi-process workloads. When in doubt, it is a good idea to leverage Sun Microsystems' Try & Buy program to try the workloads on the T5440 server before making the final call.

---

Check the second part of this blog post for the best practices for configuring / deploying Oracle Business Intelligence on top of Solaris 10 running on Sun CMT hardware.

Related Blog Posts:

• Sun T5440 Oracle BI EE World Record Performance
  
• Oracle BI 10.1.3.x 10,000 User Benchmark on SunFire T2000
  
• World Record Performance of Sun CMT Servers
  
• Why does 1.6 beat 4.7?
  
• Siebel 8.0 on Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 - More Bang for the Buck!!
  

(Originally posted on blogs.sun.com at:
http://blogs.sun.com/mandalika/entry/t5440_rocks_again_with_1)

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Oracle Business Intelligence on Sun : Few Best Practices

The following suggested best practices are applicable to all Oracle BI EE deployments on Sun hardware (CMT and M-class) running Solaris 10 or later. These recommendations are based on our observations from the 28,000 user benchmark on Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440. It is not the complete list, and your mileage may vary.

• Ensure that the system's firmware is up-to-date.
  
  
  Check the Sun System Firmware Release Hub for the latest firmware.
  
  
• Upgrade to the latest update release of Solaris 10.
  
  
• Solaris runs in 64-bit mode by default on SPARC platform. Consider running 64-bit BI EE on Solaris.
  
  
  64-bit BI EE platform is immune to the 4 GB virtual memory limitation of the 32-bit BI EE platform -- hence can potentially support even more users and have larger caches as long as the hardware resources are available.
  
  
• Enable 256M large pages on all nodes. By default, the latest update of Solaris 10 will use a maximum of 4M pages even when 256M pages are a good fit.
  
  
  256M pages can be enabled with the following /etc/system tunables.
  
  

  
  * 256M pages for the process heap
  set max_uheap_lpsize=0x10000000
  
  * 256M pages for ISM
  set mmu_ism_pagesize=0x10000000
  
  

  
  
• On larger systems with more CPUs or CPU cores, try not to deploy Oracle BI EE in the global zone.
  
  
• If the BI catalog is hosted on a local file system, create a ZFS file system to store the catalog.
  
  
  If there are more than 25,000 authorized users in a BI deployment, the default UFS file system may run into Too many links error when the Presentation Server tries to create more than 32,767 sub-directories (refer to LINK_MAX on Solaris)
  
  
• Ensure that all the BI components in the cluster are configured in a many-to-many fashion
  
  
• For proper load balancing, configure all BI nodes to be almost identical in the BI Cluster
  
  
• When planning to add an identically configured new node to the BI Cluster, simply clone an existing well-configured BI node running in a non-global zone.
  
  
  Cloning a BI node running in a dedicated zone results in an exact copy of the BI node being cloned. This approach is simple, less error prone and eliminates the need to configure the newly added node from scratch.
  
  
• Increase the file descriptors limit. Edit SAROOTDIR/setup/systunesrv.sh to increase the value from 1024 to any other value of your choice. In addition you must increase the shell limit using the ulimit -n command
  
  
• Configure 256M large pages for the JVM heap of Chart server and OC4J web server (this recommendation is equally applicable to other web servers such as WebLogic or Sun Java system Web Server). Also use parallel GC, and restrict the number of parallel GC threads to 1/8th of the number of virtual CPUs.
  
  eg.,

  
  -XX:LargePageSizeInBytes=256M -XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:ParallelGCThreads=8
  
  

  
  
• The Oracle BI Presentation Server keeps the access information of all the users in the Web Catalog. When there are large number of unique BI users, it can take a significant amount of time to look up a user if all the users reside in one single directory. To avoid this, hash the user directories. It can be achieved by having the following entry in SADATADIR/web/config/instanceconfig.xml
  
  eg.,

  
  <Catalog>
  <HashUserHomeDirectories>2</HashUserHomeDirectories>
  </Catalog>
  

  
  HashUserHomeDirectories specifies the number of characters to use to hash user names into sub directories. When this element is turned on, for example, the default name for user Steve's home directory would become /users/st/steve.
  
  
• BI Server and BI Presentation Server processes create many temporary files while rendering reports and dashboards for a user. This can result in significant I/O activity on the system. The I/O waits can be minimized by pointing the temporary directories to a memory resident file system such as /tmp on Solaris OS. To achieve this, add the following line to the instanceconfig.xml configuration file.
  
  eg.,

  
  <TempDir>/tmp/OracleBISAW</TempDir>
  

  
  Similarly the Temporary directory (SATEMPDIR) can be pointed to a memory resident file system such as /tmp to minimize the I/O waits.

Related Blog Posts:

• T5440 Rocks [again] with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Workload
  
• Siebel on Sun CMT hardware : Best Practices

(Originally posted on blogs.sun.com at:
http://blogs.sun.com/mandalika/entry/oracle_business_intelligence_on_sun)
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Instructions to Create a Facebook Application

Here is a quick HOW-To document with step-by-step instructions to create a simple Facebook application.

1. Create an account with Facebook at facebook.com
   
2. To create an application in Facebook, go to Facebook Developers web site
   
3. Click on Set Up New Application.
   
4. Name the Appliaction and click on save changes.
   
5. Enter a brief description for the application.
   
6. On the left side of the page click on Canvas.
   
7. Fill the application name in Canvas Page URL field.
   
8. Fill the Canvas Callback URL field.
   
   Canvas Callback URL is the address of the website where the appliaction is hosted.
   For example if the appliaction is hosted on a website www.xyz.com, then the Canvas Callback URL address will be http://www.xyz.com/your_application.


9. Click on save changes.
   
10. A summary of the application is shown at this point.
    
11. Sample code is shown at the bottom of this page. Click on the sample code.
    
12. Download and unzip the tar.gz file.
    
    In the footprints folder, you will find a sample Facebook application with the file name index.php


13. Facebook appliaction can be developed in JavaScript, PHP or HTML.
    
    For more details about the langauges in which the application can be developed, check Facebook Developers web site.


14. Create your Facebook application and host it on any web site of your choice. Be aware that Facebook does not host the actual application - so you are on your own in finding a hosting site to deploy your Facebook application.


15. You can test the application from the Canvas Page URL address.
    
    The url will be in the format http://apps.facebook.com/appliaction_name/

Few Caveats:

If the application is developed in JavaScript, note that all the functions may not work as expected in Facebook. For example, to set the value of 5 to a text box, the following is the code in JavaScript:

var k = 5;
document.getElementById("someid").value = k;

The above code may not work in Facebook application. The following modified code works in Facebook:

var k = 5;
document.getElementById("someid").setValue(k);

To see all the Facebook equivalent functions for the JavaScript functions, check the FBJS wiki page.

If you encounter the error, FBML Error : illegal tag "body" under "fb:canvas", remove the <body> tag from the HTML application. When Facebook parses the appliaction, it addes the <body> tag automatically.

The code shown below is ready to be used as an example Facebook application. This a very basic calculator with limited functionality.

To test how this example code works, visit the following URL:
http://apps.facebook.com/basic_calc

Sample Facebook Application : Simple Calculator

<html>

<head>
<style type = "text/css">
input {
 width : 30px;
 height: 30px;
 font-size: 1.2em;
 color: red;
       }
</style>

<script language="JavaScript">
var num2 = 0 , num1=0;

function Assign(myvalue)  
{
 var button_value , Key = 0; 
 button_value = myvalue.getValue();

 switch(button_value)
 {
  case '+':
  case '-':
  case '*':
  case '/':
  case '%':
  {
   key = button_value;
   num1 = num2;
   num2 = 0;
   break;
  }

  case '=':
  {
   if (key == '+')
   {
    Sum(num1,num2);
   }

   if (key == '-')
   {
    Subtraction(num1,num2);
   }

   if (key == '*')
   {
    Product(num1,num2);
   }

   if (key == '/')
   {
    Reminder(num1,num2);
   }

   if (key == '%')
   {
    Modulo(num1,num2);
   }
   break;
  }

  case '+/-':
  {
   num2 = num2 * (-1);
   document.getElementById("output").setValue(num2);
   break;
  }

  default:
  {
   button_value = parseInt(button_value);
   combine(button_value);
   break;
  }
 }
}

function combine(input) 
{
 num2 = (num2 * 10) + input;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(num2);
}

function Cancel() 
{
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(num2);
}

function Sum(val1,val2) 
{
 var result;
 result = val1+val2;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(result);
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0;
}

function Subtraction(val1,val2) 
{
 var result;
 result = val1-val2;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(result);
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0;
}

function Product(val1,val2) 
{
 var result;
 result = val1*val2;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(result);
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0; 
}

function Reminder(val1,val2) 
{
 var result;
 result = val1/val2;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(result);
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0;
}

function Modulo(val1,val2) 
{
 var result;
 result = val1%val2;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(result);
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0;
}

</script>

<title>Very Basic Calculator</title>
</head>

<form>

<table border="1" bgcolor = "#CDCDCD">

<tr>
<td colspan="6"><input id ="output" type="text" name="result" value="0"  style="width: 169px; height: 30px; color:blue;" readonly = "readonly"/></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><input type="button"  name="one" value="1" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="two" value="2" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="three" value="3" onclick = "Assign(this)"/>
<td><input type="button"  name="add" value="+" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td rowspan="2"><input type="button"  name="clear" style = "height : 64px;" value="C" onclick = "Cancel()"/></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><input type="button"  name="four" value="4" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="five" value="5" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="six" value="6" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="subtract" value="-" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><input type="button"  name="seven" value="7" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="eight" value="8" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="nine" value="9" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="multiply" value="*" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td rowspan="2"><input type="button"  name="equals" style = "height : 64px;" value="=" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><input type="button"  name="zero" value="0" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="negative" value="+/-" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="modulus" value="%" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="divide" value="/" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
</tr>

</table>

</form>

</html>

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Oracle Business Intelligence : Workaround / Solution to "[46036] Internal Assertion" Error

Symptom:

When checking in changes to Oracle BI repository (RPD), Admintool fails with an error message:

    [46036] Internal Assertion: Condition FALSE, file server/Utility/Generic/NQThreads/SUGThread.cpp, line 515

Solution / Workaround:

Edit <BI_HOME>/server/Config/NQSConfig.INI configuration file to increase the value of SERVER_THREAD_STACK_SIZE parameter. Replace the line SERVER_THREAD_STACK_SIZE = 0; with SERVER_THREAD_STACK_SIZE = 512 KB; and restart the Analytics server (SAS)

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Mac OS X 10.5 Tip: Outgoing Only sendmail

By default, sendmail is disabled on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). If you just want to enable/disable sending outgoing mail, run the following highlighted commands.

% sudo postfix start
Password:
postfix/postfix-script: starting the Postfix mail system

% netstat -an | grep LIST | grep 25
tcp4       0      0  127.0.0.1.25           *.*                    LISTEN

% sudo postfix stop
postfix/postfix-script: stopping the Postfix mail system

% netstat -an | grep LIST | grep 25
%

One of several possible error messages [that might have lead you to this page] is pasted below. The above solution should fix it.

javax.mail.MessagingException: Could not connect to SMTP host: localhost, port: 25;
  nested exception is:
 java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused
 at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport.openServer(SMTPTransport.java:1391)
 at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport.protocolConnect(SMTPTransport.java:412)
 at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:288)
 at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:169)
 at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:118)
 at javax.mail.Transport.send0(Transport.java:188)
 at javax.mail.Transport.send(Transport.java:118)
        ...
        ...
Caused by: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused
 at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)
 at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.doConnect(PlainSocketImpl.java:333)
 at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(PlainSocketImpl.java:195)
 at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(PlainSocketImpl.java:182)
 at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(SocksSocketImpl.java:432)
 at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:520)
 at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:470)
 at com.sun.mail.util.SocketFetcher.createSocket(SocketFetcher.java:233)
 at com.sun.mail.util.SocketFetcher.getSocket(SocketFetcher.java:189)
 at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport.openServer(SMTPTransport.java:1359)
 ... 9 more

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Installing Siebel Web Extension (SWE) on top of Sun Java System Web Server 7.0

As of today, Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 is not a certified platform to deploy Siebel 8.0 enterprise on. We are working with Oracle Corporation to make this certification happen so our customers can take advantage of the performance optimizations that went into the web server release 7.0.

Meanwhile those who want to give it a try can do so with little effort. In release SJSWS 7.0, the start/stop/restart/.. scripts were appropriately relocated to bin directory under the virtual web server instance. The installer for Siebel 8.0 Web Server Extension looks for the start script [of the web server] under the home directory of the virtual web server instance. (because it was the default location until the release of SJSWS 7.0). The installation fails if the installer cannot find the start script in the location it is expecting it to be.

Due to the relocation mentioned above, installation of the Siebel Web Server Extension fails at the very last step where it tries to modify the start script with a bunch of LD_PRELOADs so the Siebel Web Extension loads up and runs on the Sun Java System Web Server. To get around this failure, all you have to do is to create a symbolic link in the home directory of the virtual web server instance pointing to the startserv script residing in the bin directory.

The following example shows the necessary steps.

% pwd
/export/pspp/SJWS7U5/https-siebel-pspp

% ln -s bin/startserv start

% ls -l start
lrwxrwxrwx   1 pspp     dba           13 May 17 17:01 start -> bin/startserv

Install Siebel Web Extension in the normal way. No other changes are required.

AFTER SWE INSTALLATION:

% ls -l start*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 pspp     dba         4157 May 17 17:38 start
-rwxr-xr-x   1 pspp     dba         3456 May 17 17:38 start_.bak

% mv bin/startserv bin/startserv.orig
% mv start bin/startserv

Notice that the Siebel installer actually made two copies of the startup script from the symbolic link. The original bin/startserv remained intact after the SWE installation.

Finally start the Web Server instance by running the startserv script. It should start with no issues.

% pwd
/export/pspp/SJWS7U5/https-siebel-pspp/bin

% ./startserv
Sun Java System Web Server 7.0U5 B03/10/2009 16:38
info: swe_init reports: SWE plug-in log file
info: CORE5076: Using [Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM, Version 1.5.0_15] from [Sun Microsystems Inc.]
info: HTTP3072: http-listener-1: http://siebel-pspp:8000 ready to accept requests
info: CORE3274: successful server startup

Before we conclude, do not forget the fact that Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 is not yet certified with Siebel 8.0 release. Use the instructions mentioned in this blog post at your own risk. However if you do like to take that risk, consider installing the latest release of Sun Java System Web Server, which is SJSWS 7.0 Update 5 as of this writing.

Stay tuned for the certification news though.

(Originally posted on:
http://blogs.sun.com/mandalika/entry/installing_siebel_web_extension_swe)
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Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Database Tier on Solaris 10 x64

The long wait for this certification is over. Oracle Corporation finally announced support for Solaris 10 x64 as the certified E-Business Suite platform for the database tier. Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.0.4) is now certified with Oracle Database Server 10g R2 version 10.2.0.4 on the 'database tier only' (previously known as 'split configuration' in 11i) platform Sun Solaris x86/64.

The following Metalink documents might be of interest to Sun-Oracle customers who are waiting for this certification to happen.

• Frequently Asked Questions: Oracle E-Business Suite Support on x86-64
  
• Using Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with a Database Tier Only Platform on Oracle 10g Release 2
  
• Interoperability Notes Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0)

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