INFOBrief. Dell - Your next SAP NetWeaver Portal-based Solution? Results

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1 INFOBrief Dell - Your next SAP NetWeaver Portal-based Solution? Results On April 7, 2006, SAP AG certified the results of a two tier SAP Employee Self Service Portal (EP ESS) Standard Application Benchmark on a Dell PowerEdge 6850 server reaching a total of 1941 SAP EP ESS Benchmark users 1. Dell demonstrates its technology leadership in delivering the highest two tier SAP EP ESS Benchmark result as of May 4, The purpose of this INFOBrief is to share Dellʹs lessons learned in setting up a stable, long lasting SAP NetWeaver Portal based solution. Main steps that may assist in increasing performance and thus help to lower TCO can be found in this document. Dell Product Group/Enterprise Page 1 April 2006

2 UThe Challenge and the Configuration As the enterprise services architecture (ESA) gains momentum, more and more customers take the chance to integrate the SAP NetWeaver Portal as a collaboration platform into their SAP NetWeaver platform based landscape. Because the Java based portal is quite different from ABAPbased SAP applications such as Sales and Distribution or Materials Management, research into optimal configuration settings was needed. The benchmark environment used is based on Novellʹs SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Many customers with longstanding UNIX backgrounds and investments are looking to Linux as a more cost effective alternative. UBenchmark details The benchmark s configuration and results are: Hardware Dell PowerEdge processors/8 cores/16 threads Intel Xeon MP 3.0 Ghz 32 GB RAM Application SAP NetWeaver Portal 6.0 Database MaxDB 7.5 Operating System Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 EM64T P3P SAP EP-ESS Benchmark users 1,941 Number of Top Level Navigation steps/hour Dell Product Group/Enterprise Page 2 April 2006

3 What does it mean for your business? The SAP EP ESS Standard Application Benchmark simulates real life users doing typical employee activities like recording their working time or looking at their bank information. The back end influence on the performance has been omitted. The goal is to reach an average response time of less than two seconds with a maximum user number. With this user number in mind, you can compare different hardware platforms for the needs of your business platform. Performance Parameters There are many configuration parameters for the SAP NetWeaver Portal that can be fine tuned for performance. The challenging task is to find those that really make a difference with regards to business needs. For example, with UNIX/Linux systems, there is often the notion that running a graphic interface could adversely affect the overall system performance, so you could gain performance by disabling it. To verify this, Dell ran the benchmark once with a fully featured KDE desktop environment running, and once without. The run with the KDE graphic interface showed no significant changes in the response time. This shows that provided the absence of resource bottlenecks the activation of a systemʹs desktop interface would not typically interfere with its portals function. The following are settings that this benchmark showed to be of significance. BIOS Settings The hardware prefetcher optimizes performance for sequential memory access. We found an increase in performance if it is disabled, while the PowerEdge 6850 s default settings have it enabled. To turn it off, do the following: When booting the server, enter the Dell system BIOS by pressing F2 In the system BIOS, chose CPU information > Sequential Memory Access Set this option to disabled We found that the prefetcher had the following performance impact on the SAP NetWeaver Portal based system: Dell Product Group/Enterprise Page 3 April 2006

4 9 Prefetcher's influence seconds response time 0 OFF state ON Figure 1 Performance impact of the Prefetcher setting (lower is better) Figure 1 shows that switching off the prefetcher decreased, in this particular example, the systemʹs answering time from 8.47 seconds to 2.16 seconds, while all other parameters remained unchanged. Dell Product Group/Enterprise Page 4 April 2006

5 Software Settings The software settings were done for the SAP J2EE engine using SAPʹs configtool. It is a graphic configuration interface: Figure 2 Screenshot of the Configtool In this example, we find the J2EE engine containing eight server nodes (server ID numbers ). The seventh node has been opened, its execution tag is enabled, and its heap consumption in this example is 2,500 MB. Dell Product Group/Enterprise Page 5 April 2006

6 UServer Nodes One of the deciding performance factors is the number of server nodes within the SAP J2EE engine. The optimal number is contingent on available memory and CPU resources. For a Dell PowerEdge 6850 with dual core processors and 32 GB RAM, we found seven server nodes deliver optimal performance while the systemʹs response times differ as described in the following diagram Server Nodes' influence seconds response time server nodes Figure 3 Performance impact of the server nodes' count (lower is better) The diagram in figure three shows the minimum response time of the example system at seven server nodes with 1.92 seconds, compared to 2.16 seconds for six and eight server nodes. For each column, the thread count for all server nodes remained unchanged. Dell Product Group/Enterprise Page 6 April 2006

7 UThread Count The application thread count turned out to influence the performance significantly. To manipulate the thread count, use the configtool to set the values for MinThreadCount, InitialThreadCount and MaxThreadCount under cluster data > Global server configuration > managers > ApplicationThreadManager 2.25 Threads' influence seconds response time threads Figure 4 Performance impact of the threads' number (lower is better) The diagram in figure four shows the minimum response time of the example system at 40 threads per server node. The response time is 1.92 seconds here, compared to 1.94 at 30 and 2.02 at 50 threads per node. All other parameters remained unchanged. UBottom Line Tuning the right parameters in an SAP NetWeaver Portal based system delivers significant performance increases. While in our tests the hardware (BIOS) settings have yielded the most important effect, the software parameters play an important role in fine tuning the system, especially when mapping the software configuration to the hardware resources available. Distinct CPU or memory resources need adapted settings in order to be optimally used. Finding the right fit helps your business platform to run in a more stable manner, delivering the highest possible performance and thus providing a more optimal return on investment. Dell Product Group/Enterprise Page 7 April 2006

8 P1PThe Dell result on the two tier SAP Employee Self Service Portal (EP ESS) Standard Application Benchmark was certified on April 7, 2006, certification number , and fully complies with the guidelines issued by the SAP Benchmark Council. More information on SAP Standard Application Benchmarks is available at P2PFor full details of the SAP EP ESS Standard Application Benchmark please refer to HThttp:// ess.epxth. P3PIn the interest of customer choice, Dell supports the Linux distributions of both Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux for all SAP implementations Dell Inc. Dell, PowerEdge, and the Dell logo are trademarks of Dell Inc. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. Dell Product Group/Enterprise Page 8 April 2006