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Correctly Sizing Your Landscape for Scalable, High-Performing Dashboards

Correctly Sizing Your Landscape for Scalable, High-Performing Dashboards. Dr. Bjarne Berg COMERIT. In This Session …. We’ll start by doing a step-by-step sizing effort of a dashboard project and look at five real-world sizing examples

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Correctly Sizing Your Landscape for Scalable, High-Performing Dashboards

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  1. Correctly Sizing Your Landscape for Scalable, High-Performing Dashboards Dr. Bjarne Berg COMERIT

  2. In This Session … • We’ll start by doing a step-by-step sizing effort of a dashboard project and look at five real-world sizing examples • Then, we will conduct a structured walkthrough of compatible and required software components • We’ll end by taking a quick peek at dashboard performance options with in-memory processing from SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator and SAP HANA

  3. What We’ll Cover … • Sizing environment for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards • Core components of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects BI • Compatibility requirements • In-memory performance options • Wrap-up

  4. The Sizing Tool — Getting Started SAP has provided a sizing tool for the SAP BusinessObjects BI environments. It is based on Flash and is actually a dashboard itself. Download it: www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/1055c550-ce45-2f10-22ad-a6050fff97f1 Output Area(Sizing Results) Input Areas(items and users) This tool can help you size your SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 environments with a few key assumptions and inputs

  5. The Sizing Tool — Entering Users First, you have to enter the estimated Active Concurrent Users (ACU) for the following user types: • Information Consumers • Business Users • Expert Users

  6. The Sizing Tool — Online Help User Definitions The tool provides online definitions of the user types and guidelines on how to determine Active Concurrent Users (ACU). This is defined as approximately 10% of the active users. Many dashboard users in large organizations may be classified as Information Consumers. They may not wait five minutes between clicks, but typically do little drilldown and filtering.

  7. The Sizing Tool — Assumptions • The next step is to make an assumption on size of the dashboards • The sizing tool classifies small dashboards as having 25 rows in the result set, medium having 250, and large dashboards having 2,500 rows Assumptions: The tool was based on supporting two queries per dashboard and benchmarked for accessing two relational data sources — One with 6 dimensions with 77,000 entries and 400,000 line items, and one with 6 dimensions with 7,000 rows and 40,000 line items

  8. The Sizing Tool — Output The output of the tool is measured in SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS). 100 SAPS is defined as 2,000 fully business-processed order line items per hour. It is a measure that hardware vendors can use to decide which of their configurations can meet your performance requirements. All hardware vendors are familiar with this measure, and this is what you will provide them when requesting a hardware quote.

  9. The Sizing Tool — Memory Requirements The sizing tool also provides a sizing estimate for the hardware memory required for each of the tiers; this is measured in Gigabytes

  10. The Sizing Tool — Terminology If you get stuck on the terminology used in SAP sizing and performance benchmarking, there is a link to the SAP benchmark glossary in the tool There are also performance benchmark and installation guides available on the SAP Service Marketplace for individual software components

  11. The Sizing Tool — Saving Your Sizing Example Your BI and dashboard sizing effort can be saved or printed from the tool, and you can have many scenarios

  12. The Sizing Tool — Demo

  13. The Sizing Tool — Companion Guide • With the BI sizing tool, there is also a sizing companion guide written by Jason DeMelo • This document explains how each tool was benchmarked and the assumptions made when building the sizing tool • You can download it from: • https://service.sap.com/~sapdownload/011000358700000307202011E/SBO_BI_4_0_Companion_V4.pdf • Requires login credentials to the SAP Service Marketplace Involve your basis team in the sizing effort, and also make sure that the assumptions you made are realistic from a functional standpoint (i.e., how complex and intensive are your dashboards?)

  14. PC Hardware Requirements for Client Side: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 • From a PC client perspective you need: • Memory • Minimum of 2.0GB memory (really want more in practice) • I recommend 4.0GB (or more if you can afford it) • Processor • Minimum of 2.0 GHz core (the more cores the better) • Disk Space • Min of 3.5GB free space if you only install English • Min of 7.5GB free space if you install all languages • Screen Size • Recommended resolution size is Make sure you build dashboards on a standardized screen resolution and size so that everyone sees the same images

  15. Real-World Examples These are real examples from companies that have been using SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 for at least six months

  16. What We’ll Cover … • Sizing environment for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards • Core components of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects BI • Compatibility requirements • In-memory performance options • Wrap-up

  17. The Different Tiers in SAP BusinessObjects BI • First we have the application tier. This includes theWeb Application Services, such as the CentralManagement Console (CMC) and the BI Launch Pad. • SAP recommends adding a Web application server for each 500 ACUs and that at least 5GB heap memory is assigned and 900 threads are configured • The next is the intelligence or management tier. This includes the dashboard cache service, File Repository Service (FRS), and the CMS. • Only the first File Repository input and output service pair (FRS) to register in the CMS is the active pair. If you add more FRSs, these are assumed to be passive backups for fault tolerance and failures. • Lastly, we have the processing tier. This includes the Adaptive Job Service and the Processing Services for the various BI tools. • Each BI tool has different memory and processor requirements

  18. The SAP BusinessObjects BI Scalability Tier Components for Intelligence Tier Components for Processing If you split the Web application components on multiple servers, make sure you also deploy a hardware load balancer SAP BusinessObjects BI is highly scalable If you have a high number of users, you can split the application, processing, and intelligence layers on separate hardware servers You can also horizontally partition the processing and intelligence layers on several servers

  19. Dashboard Performance — Some Recommendations • You can scale the number of instances based on the Active Concurrent Users (ACUs), and SAP has made some recommendations • The CMS can handle up to 500 ACUs per instance and you can currently scale this to eight instances (will be increased in next release). You can add more CMSs if you see over 80% utilization of the CPUs. • The dashboard cache can handle up to 400 ACUs per instance and you can add as many instances you want (no limitations), but you are unlikely to need more than one • The dashboard processing is normally one per machine with no limitations (the server automatically spawns and manages child processes). If you need more, add more instances.

  20. More Key Factors That Determine Dashboard Performance • Concurrent number of users during peak load times of system • Logical design of dashboards • Simple, complex, and incredibly complex • Number of records retrieved by the dashboards • Network capacity • Database speed of source data • Number of instances • This is used for spreading service loads on multiple nodes • Number of CPUs and available memory of each server

  21. What We’ll Cover … • Sizing environment for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards • Core components of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects BI • Compatibility requirements • In-memory performance options • Wrap-up

  22. The Components of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 We will now look at each of these components and their respective size and version requirements The complete components of the BI landscape consist of a variety of software Each of these components have their own requirements

  23. Compatibility Operating Systems: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Server Side • All server components only support 64-bit operating systems. The mobile server is currently only supported on Windows operating systems. • For others, the following versions are supported:

  24. Compatibility: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and Database Servers • Microsoft SQL Server Express 2008 is included with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0, but you may also use databases from SAP, Oracle, Sybase, IBM, and MySQL • The database is used for storing CMS and the audit repository Using the SQL Server database that comes bundled with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 may save you a lot of money

  25. Compatibility: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and Application Servers • The application server handles the logic of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x and can run on a variety of hardware • The supported Java application servers include: Sizing the application server is based on SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS), instead of CPU and Memory Note: WebSphere uses IBM Java SDK for all operating systems and v6 is not supported for Analysis, OLAP edition

  26. Hardware: Server-Side Requirements From a server sizing perspective, you need: • Minimum CPU • 4 x 2.0 GHz Core CPU • Minimum Memory of Server • Min of 8.0GB memory – 16GB recommended (but more based on number of users) • Minimum Disk Space • If you only install English: 11GB Windows, 13GB AIX/Solaris, and 14GB for Linux • If you install all languages: 14GB Windows, 15GB AIX/Solaris, and 16GB for Linux

  27. Compatibility: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and Web Portals • The Web Portal supported by SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 is extensive and covers all major portal servers and their latest versions Note: Microsoft’s SharePoint portal product only runs on the Windows operating system

  28. Compatibility: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and Clients Mac OS X is currently notsupported, except for the SAP Crystal Reports Viewer Most Windows operating systems are supported bySAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x at the client side All desktop components of SAP BusinessObjectsBI 4.x are 32-bit

  29. Compatibility: BI 4.0 and Web Browsers • There are various browser and Java requirementsfor SAP BusinessObjects BI, depending on the typeof operating system you are using PS: On server side, IIS is supported as Integration option in MS SharePoint V6 for Server 2003 V7 for Server 2008 V7.5 for Server 2008 R2 • The Safari browser 5.1 is supported only by the Mac OS X operating system • Internet Explorer 8/9 standards mode is currently not supported by BI Launch Pad • For Firefox usage, you need the Extended Support Release (ESR)

  30. Other Software Requirements • To run the system correctly, there are several components needed on the client side • While SAP BusinessObjects Explorer requires at least Flash player 10.1, there have been some issues with large Flash files in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards • For example: Flash v10.1 seems to be stuck in “initializing” phase when files are over 2MB. This seems to be less of an issue for smaller files and we have seen no significant issues in version 11.

  31. Compatibility — Connections to SAP NetWeaver BW • There are many ways to connect the BI tools to anunderlying SAP NetWeaver BW system • The following SAP NetWeaver BW versions aresupported with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0: Dashboards can also be built on SAP NetWeaver BW systems on SAP HANA through a relational universe if you have applied SAP HANA service pack 3 or 4

  32. What We’ll Cover … • Sizing environment for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards • Core components of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects BI • Compatibility requirements • In-memory performance options • Wrap-up

  33. Why In-Memory Processing? Focus Technology 1990 2012 Improvement 0.05 MIPS/$ 304.17 MIPS/$ 6083x CPU 0.02 MB/$ 79.15 MB/$ 3508x Memory 216 264 248x Addressable Memory 100 Mbps 100 Gbps 1000 x Network Speed 5 MBPS 702 MBPS 140x Disk Data Transfer Source: 1990 numbers SAP AG, 2012 numbers, Dr. Berg. Source: BI Survey of 534 BI professionals, InformationWeek. Disk speed is growing slower than all other hardware components, while the need for speed is increasing

  34. In-Memory Processing — SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator (BWA) SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator is a tool that has been available for almost six years and is being used by hundreds of companies It can load data in-memory from SAP and non-SAP sources, and you can build dashboards on the data using standard BEx queries and BICS connections (as covered earlier)

  35. An Example of an SAP HANA System We Installed Recently • The long-term idea with SAP HANA is to replace the databases under SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP ERP with in-memory processing databases, instead of traditional relational databases. This means much faster query response time and a smaller database. SAP HANA is an appliance that can be implemented fast, is cost effective, and can super-charge the data delivery and calculations in your dashboards!

  36. Looking Inside SAP HANA — In-Memory Computing Engine vs. We can also move the whole database that has the source data for your dashboards to the in-memory platform of SAP HANA. This makes the system much faster! (SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards can consume data from SAP HANA right now.) BusinessObjects Data Services

  37. What We’ll Cover … • Sizing environment for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards • Core components of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects BI • Compatibility requirements • In-memory performance options • Wrap-up

  38. High-Volume User Management and Access Control • Plan for a gradual rollout to a limited number of users • Keep the numbers comparable, if possible • This will allow you to predict system loads and performance issues by stipulations from real performance data • I.e., roll out to 50 users each week • Simplified versions of high-impact dashboards may be created for casual users • I.e., a dashboard with only one query and summarized data with limited navigation and passing of variables • Create a hardware contingency plan and budget accordingly Only in rare cases should you use a big-bang approach. Since user patterns are hard to predict, this may cause significant performance issues.

  39. Where to Find More Information • SAP Sizing tool • www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/1055c550-ce45-2f10-22ad-a6050fff97f1 • Evan Delodder and Ray Li, Creating Dashboards with Xcelsius: Practical Guide, (SAP PRESS, 1st Edition; 1st New Edition, 2010). • David Lai and Xavier Hacking, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook, (Packt Publishing, 2011). • Dashboard and Presentation Designer (Xcelsius) forum on SDN • http://forums.sdn.sap.com/forum.jspa?forumID=302 • SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.x tutorials on SDN • www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/dashboards-elearning

  40. 7 Key Points to Take Home • Use the SAP Sizing tool for initial sizing estimates • Size your system based on concurrent users and SAPS • Use realistic data volumes, users, and dashboard complexity in your assumptions • Use the SAP system guides on the SAP Service Marketplace, but plan to operate your system at maximum 70% load for “spare capacity” • Keep the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 environment on a separate stack from SAP NetWeaver BW • Make sure the PCs have enough memory • Examine the “standard” PC of the users and developers; pay attention to connectivity, screen size and resolutions, CPUs, and all software release versions to assure compatibility

  41. Your Turn! How to contact me: Dr. Bjarne Berg bberg@comerit.com Continue the conversation! Post your questions in the BI-BW Forum on Insider Learning Network* *bit.ly/BI-BWForum

  42. Disclaimer SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, SAP NetWeaver®, Duet®, PartnerEdge, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Wellesley Information Services is neither owned nor controlled by SAP.

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