Tuning AIX for Oracle Hyperion and

Essbase Products

Support documentation for Oracle Service.

Jubal Kohlmeier
IBM STG Oracle Applications Enablement
November 2013

Copyright IBM Corporation, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

All trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective holders

Table of contents
Abstract..................................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1
Prerequisites............................................................................................................................. 1
Tuning AIX with Oracle Essbase products ............................................................................. 1
AIX Libraries ............................................................................................................................................ 1
Recommended Environment Variables. .................................................................................................. 1
AIX Virtual Memory Manager Settings..................................................................................................... 2
LDR_CNTRL settings .............................................................................................................................. 3
64K Page Size Support............................................................................................................................ 3
Ulimit values............................................................................................................................................. 4
NOLOG on JFS2 file systems.................................................................................................................. 4

Statistic and Configuration Tools ........................................................................................... 5

Specialized AIX Tools .............................................................................................................................. 5
Larger tools .............................................................................................................................................. 5
nmon.................................................................................................................................. 6
topas .................................................................................................................................. 6
perfpmr .............................................................................................................................. 6
obimon............................................................................................................................... 6
obidoc ................................................................................................................................ 6

Other Known Issues................................................................................................................. 7

Localhost host name degrades performance .......................................................................................... 7
Technote on DNS Lookups...................................................................................................................... 7
Synopsis: ........................................................................................................................... 7

Summary................................................................................................................................... 8
About the author....................................................................................................................... 8
Trademarks and special notices ............................................................................................. 9

IBM White paper title here

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Abstract
This document is comprised of tuning recommendations and helpful tips, tool suggestions for
aid in improving the performance of Oracle Essbase products, and for helping Oracle and IBM
customers.

Introduction
Oracle and IBM customers sometime require help in tuning and identifying potential problems with
products that execute on Power7 AIX systems. This document was based on a previous suggestion
document provided by Oracle. This document has been updated to include AIX 6.1 and AIX 7.1 version.
There are three different sections to the paper. They are as follows:

AIX and Oracle Hyperion and Essbase tuning recommendations.

Recommendations on performance and configuration gathering tools.

Issues that have been seen with Oracle Essbase customers that are OS issues that are not
directly related to Oracle Essbase.

Prerequisites
It is assumed that standard AIX installation procedures and recommendations are applied prior to the
additional tuning in this document. It is not the intent of this document to bypass either IBM or Oracle
standard installation processes. AIX documentation provides you with information regarding tools and
manuals.

Tuning AIX with Oracle Essbase products

This section provides examples of the correct use of subheadings, bullets, figures, code examples, and
other elements used in creating white papers.

AIX Libraries

It is recommended that the version of xlC runtime library be at least version 11.1.0.4 or later. To find the
current version type:

lslpp l xlC.aix61.rte
The version of xlc compiler can be found by the command:

xlC -qversion
Recommended Environment Variables.
It is recommended to set the following variables for Oracle Essbase version 11.x or greater products.
Check the values within the current environment using the AIX env command.

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# within format of ksh environment variables.

AIXTHREAD_COND_DEBUG=OFF
AIXTHREAD_MUTEX_DEBUG=OFF
AIXTHREAD_MNRATIO=1:1
AIXTHREAD_SCOPE=S
AIXTHREAD_MUTEX_FAST=ON
SPINLOOPTIME=1000
# CC is replaced with the maximum number of physical Cores within the LPAR.
MALLOCOPTIONS=multiheap:CC,considersize
YIELDLOOPTIME=CC #Where CC is set to the number of physical cores (not logical)
export
export
export
export
export
export
export
export

AIXTHREAD_COND_DEBUG
AIXTHREAD_MUTEX_DEBUG
AIXTHREAD_MNRATIO
AIXTHREAD_SCOPE
AIXTHREAD_MUTEX_FAST
SPINLOOPTIME
YIELDLOOPTIME
MALLOCOPTIONS

Listing 1: Environment Variables required within the Essbase products.

AIX Virtual Memory Manager Settings

The table below provides the recommended values for virtual memory management. If upgrading the
operating system from AIX 5.3 to either AIX 6 or AIX 7, the recommendations do not carry forward during
the upgrade and must be modified manually.

You can implement these settings with the AIX vmo command, which is dynamic and takes effect
immediately. For example:

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vmo -p -o maxperm%=90 -o maxclient%=90 -o minperm%=3 -o lru_file_repage=0

LDR_CNTRL settings
Ensure AIX shared libraries have "read-other" permissions so that AIX will load them in global memory.
Otherwise concurrent use by multiple processes will require their own CPU cache blocks. Substantial
performance gains are possible when libraries are shared globally.
export LDR_CNTRL=LOADPUBLIC@IGNOREUNLOAD

The environment variable, LDR_CNTRL, provides a means of modifying memory and libraries behavior
for applications. It is recommended that LOADPUBLIC and IGNOREUNLOAD bet set. This will improve
the performance and use of memory. See the following for description of LOADPUBLIC and
IGNOREUNLOAD.
The LDR_CNTRL environment variable can be used to control one or more aspects of
the system loader behavior. You can specify multiple options with the LDR_CNTRL
variable. When specifying the option, separate the options with the '@' sign.
An example of specifying multiple options is: LDR_CNTRL=PREREAD_SHLIB@LOADPUBLIC.
Specifying the PREREAD_SHLIB option causes entire libraries to be read as soon as
they are accessed. With VMM readahead is tuned, a library can be read from the
disk and be cached in memory by the time the program starts to access its pages.
While this method might use more memory, it might also enhance the performance of
programs that use many shared library pages if the access pattern is nonsequential (for example, Catia).
Specifying the LOADPUBLIC option directs the system loader to load all modules
requested by an application into the global shared library segment. If a module
cannot be loaded publicly into the global shared library segment then it is
loaded privately for the application.

Specifying the IGNOREUNLOAD option prevents the application from unloading libraries. This
specification might prevent memory fragmentation and eliminate the overhead incurred when libraries are
repeatedly loaded and unloaded. If you do not specify the IGNOREUNLOAD option, you might end up
with two data instances of a module if the module was loaded at application load time and the module
was then requested to be dynamically loaded and unloaded multiple times.

64K Page Size Support

On POWER5+ systems, AIX 5L Version 5.3 with the 5300-04 Recommended Maintenance Package
supports a new 64KB page size when running the 64-bit kernel. AIX 5L has rich support around 64KB
pages, and 64KB pages are intended to be general purpose. 64KB pages are very easy to use, and it is
expected that many applications will see performance benefits when using 64KB pages rather than 4KB
pages. No system configuration changes are necessary to enable a system to use 64KB pages.

On systems that support 64KB pages, the AIX 5L kernel will automatically configure 64KB pages for the
system. 64KB pages are fully pageable, and the size of the pool of 64KB page frames on a system is

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dynamic and fully managed by AIX 5L. AIX 5L will vary the number of 4KB and 64KB page frames on a
system to meet demand on the different page sizes. Both the svmon and vmstat AIX commands can be
used to monitor the number of 4KB and 64KB page frames on a system.

For forcing the use of 64K pages, the LDR_CNTRL environment variable can be modified with memory
settings.
export LDR_CNTRL=DATAPSIZE=64K@TEXTPSIZE=64K@STACKSIZE=64K

Note: the @ operator separates options within LDR_CNTRL, previous options within the current
environment should be preserved when adding additional arguments to LDR_CNTRL.
INFORMATIONAL: there is a tradeoff of CPU performance gain versus additional memory usage when
applying 64K page sizes. Ensure the customer is willing to account for the additional memory use with
64K pages.

Ulimit values
It is recommended that the following values for ulimit be in affect for the Essbase application environment.
To check the current values type:
ulimit a

The recommended values for ulimit are:

time(seconds)
file(blocks)
data(kbytes)
stack(kbytes)
memory(kbytes)
coredump(blocks)
nofiles(descriptors)
threads(per process)
processes(per user)

unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
131072 (128MB)
unlimited
unlimited
4096
unlimited
unlimited

NOLOG on JFS2 file systems

There is the ability to improve performance during data loading by usage of a RAMDISK, or AIX JFS file
system with the NOLOG option.
You can use NOLOG JFS2 file systems which skip the Journal logging for file allocation/deallocation
intensive access. JFS logging and RAID 5 is a deadly combination if you want speed.
Usage of NOLOG on non temporary file system is not recommended, as file system recovery will be
much longer.
The AIX mkramdisk command provides the tool to create a RAMDISK.

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Statistic and Configuration Tools

This section provides support the information on what tools are useful for testing, configuration and
statistic gathering. Each section describes the purpose of the tools in question.

Specialized AIX Tools

The AIX operating system has many tools to help the developer and administrator diagnose and test the
performance of the system. This document does not attempt to go in any detail regarding the specific
tools, see the AIX documentation for further information.
The table below provides a means of specifying what tools are useful depending on the type of object
under investigation. Most of the AIX tools listed are character based tools. The exception to the tools
below is the AIX topas command, which is curses-based.

Larger tools
Two major tools come standard with most versions of AIX. These are nmon and topas. The AIX nmon
tool became standard with AIX 6.1 and AIX 7.1.

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nmon
nmon it is fast becoming a popular tool supported on AIX. It is also possible to collect nmon
performance data daily. Nmon is a free tool and can be found on the internet.

topas
The other standard tool supported on AIX is the AIX topas command. The AIX topas command reports
selected local and remote system statistics. Example of a daily report with topas is:
usr/bin/topasrec -L -s 300 -R 1 -r 6 -o /etc/perf/daily/ -ypersistent=1 -O
type=bin -ystart_time=17:25:45,Feb27,2013

perfpmr
IBM provides a data collection utility called "perfpmr". Used by IBM diagnostics teams when asking a
customer for data for a customer problem, but it is a very good way to collect a snapshot of a system. It
does a great job of archiving the configurations of the machine. This is useful for when reviewing the
configuration of a customers machine.

obimon
If it appears that an Essbase process is using a lot of CPU resources, run thee Essbase obimon tool.
Collecting information about system behavior will enable support to focus on the changes that need to
be made.
obimon ESSSVR &

The Essbase obimon command will start the information collection process. Let it run to completion.
Tail the output file if you wish to see information "now".

obidoc
Run the Essbase obidoc tool with the Essbase user id each time you have a configuration change. It
is also helpful to run it before/after a major test. Running the tool helps to generate AIX statistics that
may help us determine the root cause.

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Other Known Issues

This section contains issues that have been seen by Essbase customers, but not directly related to the
Essbase product.

Localhost host name degrades performance

Check the customers host name. If the machine thinks its name is "localhost", the cost of reverse DNS
authentication among machines might be disrupted, leading to large network delays. It is recommended
that the hostname not be set to localhost.

Technote on DNS Lookups

The technote url is: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21212940, with title, Client on AIX
generates excessive IPV6 DNS lookups for new connections.

Synopsis:
Very slow network traffic on IBM Tivoli Directory Server 5.x or 6.x on an AIX system might occur
because the client generates excessive IPV6 DNS lookups for every new connection it makes even if
IPV6 is not enabled. Some AIX systems have very slow DNS requests. Solution is to disable the IP6
DNS lookups.

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Summary
The tools and tips recommended help to provide for a performing and robust Oracle Hyperion Essbase
environment. It is recommended that customers of Oracle and IBM follow these tips and suggestions
when implementing Oracle Hyperion Essbase on IBM AIX operating system.

About the author

Jubal Kohlmeier is an advisory software engineer in the IBM Systems & Technology Group (STG),
Business Systems Division. Jubal has more than 30 years of industry experience in the computing
industry and more than 15 years with Oracle products. Jubal has worked with customers with Oracle
applications and Oracle databases in achieving high volume mission critical solutions on IBM POWER
and System x.

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Trademarks and special notices

Copyright. IBM Corporation 2013. All rights reserved.
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upon considerations such as the amount of multiprogramming in the user's job stream, the I/O
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