Essbase Performance Improvement: Basic tips

Recently we installed EPM 11.1.2.1 on a spanking new server having Windows 2008 R2. Although, the first question would be why 11.1.2.1 and why 2008 R2 in this age of 2.4 ? we must understand that money makes the world go round and there are clients who don't feel the need to upgrade unless it is absolutely necessary.

Things looked good initially, but soon we found that there are some serious performance issues with the new Essbase server. Following are the areas we attacked to improve its performance.

Server power mode should be set to High-Performance: 

A text data export was taking around 30 minutes on the new server (on old ones, the exact file would export in 4 minutes). Changing the power mode from balanced to High power, reduced it to 22 minutes. Still pretty slow.

Priority of ESSSVR process set to 'Below Normal'

This is still a mystery, but we are still trying to figure out why ESSSVR would spawn in 'Below Normal' priority. An SR with Oracle didn't yield expected results.
We then checked the automated script which starts Essbase upon server startup. By default, all tasks started in Windows 2008 are started on 'Below Normal' priority. We have to manually export the task's XML file, increase the priority and set it to 'Normal'.

Drive Speed

The disk write speed on which the app folder is was abysmal. We changed to folder location in Essbase to another volume, which is a SAN drive. It is pretty much faster than the drive attached to the server.

RAM increased

From 32 GB, the RAM was increased to 128 GB. There is a lot of free memory available now.

MEMSCALINGFACTOR

This is one secret weapon most of us ignore. This parameter increases the allocated RAM for Data Cache, Index Cache and Data File Cache beyond the maximum value of 4 GB that can be set through EAS console.

These things have brought the new server at par with the old one, infact, in certain cases it outshines the older one by a good margin.

Cheers !
NJ

Member selection issues with ASO cube and EPM 11.1.2.1 Patch 106

Since I have nothing great to do, I have been assigned with a task of installing 11.1.2.1 on a new set of servers. It is a typical lift-and-shift type of installation and configuration. As easy as it might seem, things do get nasty, especially when you haven't configured 11.1.2.1 before and not aware of issues associated with the release.

So coming to one of the most basic issues when installing 11.1.2.1 vanilla version. 
When using smartview ad-hoc analysis, POV selection box is either visible as a separate box or hidden. You cannot place the POV members in the first row, just like excel add-in.

After a brief search on the internet, I found this issue has been resolved in patch 102 of 11.1.2.1.
It has to be applied on Essbase server as well as Application provider services.

Everything is working like a charm now !
Then, suddenly a mail comes : Member Selection for ASO cubes is not working !
Clicking anywhere on the member selection box gives a 'Invalid argument' message.

This time, internet search is not helpful. This error has not been documented anywhere.
Arrrgh ! There is another patch 106 that I will be applying soon on the existing 102. I am hoping it will solve that.

Update : The issue was resolved after patch application !

Fingers crossed !

Using DNS CNAMES for EPM ? Heres what you need to do.

DNS CNAMES are canonical names given to the servers so that they are easily identifiable. E.g. its easier to remember Essbase.production.thexyzcompany.com than us-esb01v-trg.thexyzcompany.com.

The best thing about cnames is whenever a migration or server change happens, users dont have to worry about changing the connection details in their maxl scripts or vba macros.

Using CNAMEs during Installation: At the time of installation, using cnames is best avoided (unless you have a replicated instance). If a cname mapping is changed, we must make sure that everything works fine.

Using CNAMEs by Planners:
Although users can change the server names to cnames in their urls and scripts, you will have to modify the 'datasources.xml' file from Shared Services and rename the connections by replacing the server names with DNS CNAMES. Not that it causes any problem, but in the 'Essbase server' or 'Planning' node of SmartView shared connections, you will see the server name instead of the CName, something that might confuse the users.
 
Check out this blog to see how Datasources.xml is modified. Stalwarts have been doing this for ages !

Do note that the same setting is not available in EPM 11.1.2.4 since it is stored in Shared services registry database.

http://www.orahyplabs.com/2011/03/how-to-get-smartview-1112-shared.html



Cheers !