Welcome to the Business Intelligence Stream

Sizing and Deploying BI4

Bill Lang, SAP Consulting

26th November, 2013

UK & I SAP User Group

© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. 3 Public

Agenda

• BI4 and 3.1 – more than just a name change

• Three (four) steps to Sizing:

• Step 1 – Research, Profiling and then Base Sizing

• Background to Sizer

• Sizing Questions

• Tools and Resources

• Step 2 – Architecture

• Deployment Requirements

• Non-Production Systems

• Step 3 – Configuration Planning

• Service Allocation and Tuning

• Putting It Together

• Deployment and Test


BI4 More Than Just a Name Change

• “XI” Backbone Architecture is still there

• Corba Service Bus

• Architecturally Different

• More of a Platform with multiple components – Analysis Suite, Mobile, Multi-Source

Universes, Monitoring

• 64 bit only – no more 1.8GB restrictions on processes or drivers (connection servers)

• BI4.1 adds UNV/MDX 64 bit connectivity

• Increased Integration with SAP Products – Information Steward, EPM Suite, BW

• LaunchPad, CMC, Web Intelligence, OLAP Analysis all in single large BOE.WAR file

(web services and mobile still separate)

• Check out What's New in BI 4.1 this afternoon by Matthew Shaw

• BI4 is “bigger” than 3.1

• Don’t try to run it on the same hardware

• More functionality and configurability: “we’re gonna need a bigger boat”


The Art and Science of Sizing

• Don’t

• Just use Existing Hardware and hope it’s OK

• Look at the minimum requirements and hope it works

• Use T-Shirt sizing for production

• Underestimate (without good reason – document it!)

• There are tools to help but they will not come up with the final answer

• Deployment Patterns come into play

• Tools used will affect sizing

• Configuration (e.g. Adaptive Processing Servers) affect sizing

• Whatever you do, document it along with all your assumptions

• Sizing is not the final answer – it is the start of a process – sizing is for life not just for

Christmas

• Sizing for virtual is the same as sizing for physical – Matthew Shaw’s

earlier session

• Without resource reservations (CPU, memory, IO), ALL sizing exercises are invalid

Questionnaire and Base

Sizing


Background – We Need to Talk About SAPS

SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS) is a hardware-independent

unit of measurement that describes the performance of a system

configuration in the SAP environment. It is derived from the Sales and

Distribution (SD) benchmark, where 100 SAPS is defined as 2,000 fully

business processed order line items per hour.

In technical terms, this throughput is achieved by processing 6,000 dialog steps

(screen changes), 2,000 postings per hour in the SD Benchmark, or 2,400 SAP

transactions. In the SD benchmark, fully business processed means the full

business process of an order line item: creating the order, creating a delivery note

for the order, displaying the order, changing the delivery, posting a goods issue,

listing orders, and creating an invoice.


Background – BI4 and SAPS

• Usage profile of a BI4 system differs from that of the SD Benchmark

• Manipulation of larger data sets

• Data synchronisation

• Some BI4 servers are disk I/O intensive (Web Intelligence Processing, Crystal Pre-

Processing, Dashboard Processing) and “bursty” in resource usage (CPU, memory)

• Do not use the SAP Quicksizer


BI4 Sizing Companion Guide and Estimator

• Based on resource usage on BI4 systems in SAP Labs

• Produces a SAPS rating to conform with SAP standards

• Is the first start to a target architecture

• Methodology in BI4 Sizing Companion Guide: https://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-33126

(currently v5 – 01/11/2012)

• Link in Guide to the Sizing Estimator Flash (.swf) file (currently v1.2)

• To use the estimator drag it onto an open window of IE

https://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-33126





Components Of Sizing – Sizing Questionnaire

• Active Concurrent Users

• Standard figures: 10% of named users = Active, 10% of these = Concurrent Active

• Could be more in a period end scenario

• User Types

• Information Consumers/ Business Users/ Expert Users

• Definitions can be found in the Sizing Companion Guide

• Estimate this based around the knowledge of the organisation

• Reporting Tools

• Percentage used of Analysis OLAP, Crystal, Dashboards, Web Intelligence

• Need to define percentage of users that use each tool – might be easier to do by project/

business area


Components Of Sizing – Sample Questionnaire

Project Name Power users / developers Power users BI Platform

interactive users

Report consumers

(Email, Sharepoint,

Network Drive)

Active

Concurrency

Project1 1 10 5 0 10%

Project2 4 10 90 0 0%

Finance Transformation reporting. 1 0 0 50 10%

Cost Centre Reporting 5 10 1000 500 15%

Procurement 2 5 200 50 10%

Group Dashboard 0 0 100 0 10%

Commercial reporting requirements. 5 20 50 0 10%


Components Of Sizing – Sizing Questionnaire

• Report “size”

• Not just about size; also complexity and number of queries

• Web Intelligence report sizes changed from v4 to v5 of the Companion:

• Need to take scheduling into account – not included in any of the

questions

• Rule of thumb: 1 schedule = 1 expert user


Sizing Estimator – Are We Nearly There Yet?

2 – Architecture


Deployment Patterns

• What makes for the best performance

• Smaller number of large servers – 1 has the lowest overheads in terms of OS/ network

• In reality

• Limits of servers available to you – organisationally and physically

• Demands for fault tolerance (multiple data centre/ server room/ network)

• Future Scale-Out (horizontal) or Scale-Up (vertical)

• Operating System Limits

• Security Limits – separation of Application Tier from Presentation Tier

• Resource contention – OK for reporting services to max out occasionally but not

management (CMS, FRS)

• Some Good deployment patterns are available on SCN:

• http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/SAP+Business+Intelligence+Platform+Pattern

+Books

http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/SAP+Business+Intelligence+Platform+Pattern+Books




Architecture Overview – Are We There Now?

Combine the output of the Sizing Estimator with the architectural demands

and come to a server view that fits your IT and organisational requirements


Non-Production Systems

• Jump into deployment a little, but single server is generally fine

• Back to that minimum spec – https://service.sap.com/pam:

8,000 SAPS (approximately 4 cores), 16GB RAM

• 8 cores, 32GB RAM recommended especially if deploying and using multiple tools

(Analysis, Explorer, Mobile)

• Pay attention to disk especially on a single server system

• All content will be here (Universes, Reports etc.)

• 14GB installation + size of binaries + temp space

• Patching requires space especially if you maintain the history to back out

• 100GB Disk

https://service.sap.com/pam

3 – Configuration Planning


Server Sizing – The Next Level

• We have our box-eye view – next level down: Service Sizing

• Need to go back to our business assumptions (what tools are we using) and distribute

the BI services to the servers (boxes)

• Much vital information in the Sizing Companion Guide – examples include:

• WebI usage – DSL Bridge: 0.25GB/ ACU, 8GB minimum, 30GB maximum

• WebI/DSL Bridge ratio – depends on WebI usage

• Crystal usage/ Dashboard cache: child processes per core

• Other requirements:


Server Sizing – The Next Level

• Sizing Companion Guide has some vital information (in v4 anyway):

• Deployment and Resource Requirements of Adaptive Processing Servers

• Specifically memory requirements: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-31711

• In BI4.1 there is a Wizard in the CMC to split the APS’s – useful but needs checking and

tuning

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-31711




Putting It All Together

• Sizing Estimator

• Business Requirements

• Minimum hardware

+

• Architectural Requirements

• Security, fault tolerance etc.

• Likely to add extra servers

+

• Service Distribution

• Likely to add memory

requirements rather than extra

servers


Don’t forget

• Include enough disk space for patching

• 50GB disk space per server

• Add in memory to account for the operating system and basic BI

infrastructure components (SIA)

• 2GB of memory and 2000 SAPS are recommended

Deployment and Test


Deploy and Validate

• Unit Test

• Test all services

• Test fault tolerance including the load balancer

• Performance Test – Iterative

• No substitute for load testing tools, e.g. Load Runner, QA Load

• Ramp up users – not big bang. Look for break points (standard testing approach

• Monitor disk and network I/O as well as CPU and memory

• Look at adjusting parameters and re-test

• Recommendation that scale-out/up needs to start at 65% utilisation

• Business as Usual

• Using CMC Monitoring and Alerting

• Regular performance reviews

• Regression pack

• Service Pack reviews: do not fall too far behind recent releases – patch test environment


Some Tuning Resources

• SCN

• Good place to start: www.sap.com/bisizing

• Sizing Companion Guide

• v4 and v5 contain lots of vital information and links to other collateral

• Section on Service Tuning – including Java garbage collection (-XX:+UseParallelOldGC)

• Deployment Pattern Books

• Well documented sample deployments:

• http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/SAP+Business+Intelligence+Platform+Pattern+

Books

• Wily Introscope integration and other useful troubleshooting techniques

• http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/BI+Platform+Root+Cause+Analysis+Wiki

• 1861180 - Customer instructions and best practice for collecting a BI Platform 4.x end to

end trace

http://www.sap.com/bisizing




http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/BI+Platform+Root+Cause+Analysis+Wiki

http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/BI+Platform+Root+Cause+Analysis+Wiki

http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1861180






BI Support Tool

http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/SAP+BI+Platform+Support+Tool

http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/SAP+BI+Platform+Support+Tool


Web Intelligence Java Admin – not an “official” tool

[Install Dir]\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\java\apps\

WebiAdminTool\GenericContainer_AdminTool.jar

Welcome to the Business Intelligence Stream - UKISUG · PDF file• Specifically memory...

Documents

Transcript of Welcome to the Business Intelligence Stream - UKISUG · PDF file• Specifically memory...