Cognos Performance Tuning Webinar

8/18/2019 Cognos Performance Tuning Webinar

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Presenters

James Salmon – Marketing Manager

[email protected]

Andy Ellis – Senior BI Consultant

[email protected]


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Want to ask a question?

We will answer as many as time permits or directly by email


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About Budgeting Solutions

• Established in 2005

• IBM Business Analytics Premier Business Partner

• Worked with over 200 Blue-Chip Clients

• Area’s we specialise in: Sales, Operations & Finance

• Extensive expertise working within Finance departments

Issues we solve:

• Planning

• Budgeting

• Forecasting

• Consolidation

• Reporting

• Analysis

Services we offer:

• Management Consulting

• Consulting

• Training

• Helpdesk Support


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Our Customers


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Agenda

Overview

A detective story…whodunnit ?

Hardware

Server configuration

Cognos Settings

Data

Infrastructure

Some tools to assist


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Where to Start ?

Network, switches, bandwidth, other applications


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Everyone is different

There are so many potential areas that can be affected by performance

Can only make general suggestions

Some may not be applicable or even possible in every installation

Every installation is different

Can originate outside Cognos – Network, Database server, host server

architecture

Fire Prevention v Fire Fighting


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Recent Poll of Users

Typical pain points in Cognos performance

1. Report Performance

2. Dashboard response

3. System stability4. Concurrent User load

5. Cube build performance

Poll by Senturus , June 2015


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Server Specifications – online kb articles, or see yourbusiness partner or IBM account manager

RAM requirements – 16GB for 2 concurrent users, the

more memory the better

Distributed Environments – load balancing; fail over;

scalable

Physical v Virtual Server considerations

Ensure that and Anti-virus software installed on the server

has the Cognos url as a trusted site, otherwise everything

will be scanned, inc report building

Server Hardware


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Server Hardware

The more users, the longer the

reports take to run

More servers share the load and

give better reporting performance

For distributed environments, create rules to

groups or users, report types or even packages to

different application servers

Interactive Reporting

Batch Reporting


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Physical v Virtual

Most organisations running on virtual platforms

Great way to achieve distributed environment, vastly improved over the

years

Performance benchmarks between physical and virtual very close

- Easily manageable

- Can allocate more resources as required

But

- 5-10% overhead- Dedicated resources


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Cognos Server Settings and Cognos Service Settings

Concurrent Users

Distpatcher Tuning – 93 categories

Affinity Requests

Quick Fixes

Logging Levels

Cognos Server Settings


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Concurrent Users

Rule of thumb to calculate

100:10:1

For every 100 named users

10 Active Users (viewing reports)

1 Concurrent (heavy interactive user)

For smaller installations there are likely to be more concurrent users

IBM Sizing Documents


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Other Server Settings

Enable IIS/Apache caching

All images, javascripts etc will only be retrieved after the content

expiration period, otherwise retrieval every time.

Scheduled Reports producing large emails

If 10MB or bigger SMTP service may reject and will sit there. Cognos will

retry every hour as it creates a temp file every time it re-tries.

Temporary Files

Cognos will create large temporary files as part of the report process and

cause the disk to fill. Monitor the temp directory and make sure there is enough

space to write to


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Peak Demand

– Most organisations have a peak period of demand, typically during normalbusiness 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 user’s 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

Managing the Working Day


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High Affinity (high response time)Report Viewer (return, run again)

HTML navigation (Top, Bottom, Up, Down)

Delivery Options (Save, Print, Email)

Low Affinity (run slower and need more time)

Report Querying

Report Authoring (query validation, metadata retrieval)

Administrative (test data source, jobs, schedules)

Peak and Non-Peak Hours

Affinity Requests


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Formula for Initial Tuning

There are 2 report processes so the number of connections is

2 x 1 High affinity requests = 2 connections

8 x 2 Low affinity requests = 16 connections

18 connections in total


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Websphere Liberty Profile

For 10.2.2 has replaced Tomcat. Defaults to 768MB , least amount of memory

for fast start-up.Should be set to 1.5 (for balance between start-up and operating speed) or 2

(for maximum operating speed) times that value if you have lots of memory on

the server


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32 bit v 64 bit

• access more memory

• faster execution• better system stability

• all future Cognos releases on 64 bit

Dynamic Query Mode

• 64 bit technology

• In memory to automatically aggregate and optimise queries

• but - packages and models changed to use DQM, DMR from

relational JDBC connections

• very large data sets

Dynamic Cubes (future webinar)

• more features added since release – performance – maintenance

• similar to Transformer aggregate aware

• time categories as Transformer…end of life ?

General

Saved Output Reports

• Run once overnight and always reference saved version


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Data Tuning

Keys and indexes on tables

Data Warehouse - Star Schema

Less joins, therefore quicker

Quick to understand

Needed for Dynamic Cubes

Summary TablesCondense large fact tables to several summary tables

Jobs to refresh summaries and DBA assistance

Power Cubes

Still valid option for drilling, aggregation but latency, build time

Framework Manager

Whilst it can do many things, keep simple

Views – joins over different views can adversely affect performance

For complex queries, views significantly improve report performance

as all data processing is performed by the database. Used for performanceoptimisation strategy

Data Issues


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Logging (eg SQL Full, Simple)

Remove keys and index before adding data; rebuild

afterwards

Full load v incremental

SQL, use NO LOCK on source data

Use profiling tools in databases to suggest best index to

build and other potential performance enhancements

ETL Issues


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Cognos Logging Settings

High logging levels will have a negative impact on

performance.

Full logging never advised in production environment and if

under instruction from IBM Support, they will always tell you

turn off afterwards.

Every service, logging level should be Basic or less – will

log errors with least impact.


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Ad hoc sorting and querying would benefit for increased Sort Buffer Size

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.

Change this value to 32.

Cognos Configuration


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Report Studio Settings

Depending upon your database, check the following options on a report:-

Processing Database Only

Rollup Processing Database

Execution Optimisation All Rows

Use Local Cache No

Disable ‘Selection Based Interactivity’

Minimise number of hotspots in chart to 0, if not requiredDrill Behaviour-


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Report Studio Settings

Report Studio validation levels can be changed. Switching to Information gives

more detailed information and may give additional areas to look at for elements

in the report that Cognos considers to be ‘less than perfect’

Tools > Validation Options


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Content Store / Log Files

Should aim to keep Content Store as lean as possible

Saved output versions – delete or archived to secondary storageRemoved users

Remove old reports

Remove old package versions

Log Files

Tidy upDelete .dmp files (but try and resolve reasons why as indicator of

serious issue), can be large

c:\Program Files\IBM\Cognos\C10_64\bin64

Delete anything ‘core’, ‘ javacore’, ‘snap’

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Cognos Audit

Cognos also includes a pre-built set of audit reports and the corresponding

framework manager model to access an Audit database

Can be added to and modified.

Can provide history of what, who, where, when etc

Also installed /bin/logviewV2.exe – better way of looking at cogserver.log file

Join us on 17th September for a full explanation of this facility – how to install,

where you can find the reports and also how to modify or create your own to give

a dashboard view.


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Cognos Administration Monitoring

You can define thresholds for various parts of the system (system, servers,

dispatchers, services) which will provide red, amber, green indicators.

Agents can be set up to monitor these metrics and could send your system

administrator an email when a threshold value has been exceeded.

See Administration and Security Guide for more details


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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

The complexity of your security infrastructure can increase response time

• Because Cognos notification service generates additional email traffic, ensure

that your mail server can scale to support the increased load

Infrastructure


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Quick Fixes

ISAPI instead of CGI, best practice for multiple users. CGI for low users, test

environments, proof of concepts.

IIS Content Expiration, mentioned before. Cognos portal (over 600 images)

being constantly loaded.

Dynamic Query Mode – if not using then switch off in Cognos Configuration,

can save up to 1 GB of memory per server.


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Summary

Many places where your performance could be improved

There are no hard and fast rules as every installation will be

different and be affected by different environmental aspects

Trial and Error on changes, don’t make too many at once

maybe a combination of data and Cognos settings

Use tools already in the systems to assist in monitoring

- Metrics thresholds and Audit reports

- Third party tools for monitoring

It is better to do Fire prevention that Fire fighting


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Technical Webinar Series

Future Webinars to include :-

Auditing the Cognos Environment – September 17thhttps://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5453359238995528962

Cognos Planning Migration to Cognos TM1 – October 7th

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8820427782081333506

External Data in Spreadsheets – October 22ndhttps://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4656575048798940674

IBM Cloud or On-Premise? – November 5th https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7425625814120272642

My Data Sets – November 19th https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8803120369677132034

Spreadsheets & Performance Management – December 3rd https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7021953313618839298

New Release Highlights – December 10th https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4435527032127656962

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5453359238995528962https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8820427782081333506https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4656575048798940674https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7425625814120272642https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8803120369677132034https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7021953313618839298https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4435527032127656962https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4435527032127656962https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7021953313618839298https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8803120369677132034https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7425625814120272642https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4656575048798940674https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8820427782081333506https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5453359238995528962


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Training Academy

Prices start from £995 per day for up to 6 people on site , or hosted at ourNottingham central office.

To view more of our training courses visit the website:

http://www.budgetingsolutions.co.uk/services/cognos-training/

Email: [email protected]

Call: 0115 853 2863

http://www.budgetingsolutions.co.uk/services/cognos-training/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.budgetingsolutions.co.uk/services/cognos-training/http://www.budgetingsolutions.co.uk/services/cognos-training/http://www.budgetingsolutions.co.uk/services/cognos-training/


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Q&A

Cognos Performance Tuning Webinar

Documents

Transcript of Cognos Performance Tuning Webinar