A brief explanation of what an optimized solution is and what it is not can be found in the previous blog entry Oracle's Optimized Solution for PeopleSoft HCM 9.0. We went through a similar exercise to publish another optimized solution around Siebel CRM 8.1.1.

The Siebel solution implements Oracle Siebel CRM using a unique combination of SPARC servers, Sun storage, Solaris OS virtualization, Oracle application middleware and Oracle database products.

• Optimized Solution for Siebel CRM 8.1.1 : A Technical White Paper
• Optimized Solution for Siebel CRM 8.1.1 : A Business White Paper

White you are at it, do not forget to check the 13,000 user Siebel CRM benchmark on the latest SPARC T3 platform.

Posted by: Giri Mandalika.    # 12:25 AM 0 comments.     Tweet

According to Oracle Corporation: Oracle's optimized solutions are applications-to-disk solutions that are comprised of Oracle's Sun servers, storage, and networking components, Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications.

To be clear, an optimized/optimal solution is neither a software package nor a hardware system bundled with pre-tuned software. It is simply a set of recommendations based on some testing performed in labs. The recommendations typically provide sizing guidelines for small, medium and large configurations, best practices, tuning tips and some performance data. Customers can refer to these guidelines when deploying enterprise applications on Oracle hardware to achieve optimal configuration for better TCO and ROI.

The PeopleSoft solution implements two modules in Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management (HCM) 9.0 to demonstrate how Oracleʼs servers, disk storage and advanced flash based storage technology can be used to accelerate database transactions to achieve unprecedented application performance. Workload consolidation is achieved through server consolidation while maintaining the appropriate balance of performance, availability, cost and expected future capacity requirements.

The optimized solution technical white paper can be accessed from the following URL:

    Oracleʼs Optimized Solution for PeopleSoft Human Capital Management Consolidation using M-series servers, Flash and Enterprise Storage

A corresponding solution brief targeting less patient is available at:

    Oracle's Optimized Solution for PeopleSoft HCM - A Business White paper

Posted by: Giri Mandalika.    # 12:24 AM 0 comments.     Tweet

The hardware prefetch is ON by default on M-series servers such as M8000/M9000, M4000/M5000, M3000

The following excerpt is from a SPARC64 document:

Hardware speculatively issues the prefetch operation based on the prediction that there is high possibility to access to the following continuous address in the future, if there have been load accesses for a consecutive address.

Although this feature is designed to improve the performance of various workloads, due to the speculative nature, not all workloads may benefit with the default behavior. For example, in our experiments, we noticed 10+% improvement in CPU utilization while running some of the PeopleSoft workloads on M-series hardware with hardware prefetch turned off. Hence irrespective of the application/workload, the recommended approach is to conduct few experiments by running representative customer workloads on target M-series hardware with and without the hardware prefetch turned on.

Instructions to Turn On/Off Hardware Prefetch:

1. Connect to the system Service Processor (XSCF)

   % ssh -l <userid> <host>
   

2. Check the current prefetch mode by running the following command at XSCF> prompt

   XSCF> showprefetchmode
   

3. Find the domain id of all mounted system boards (or skip to next step)

   XSCF> showboards -a
   

4. Power-off all configured domains

   XSCF> poweroff -d <domainid> [OR]
   XSCF> poweroff -a
   

   From my experience, on larger systems with multiple domains configured, all domains must be powered off before the SP lets changing the prefetch mode. If someone has a correction to this information or better instruction that minimizes disruption, please let me know. I'd be happy to update these instructions.

5. Wait until the domain(s) are completely powered off. Check the status by running showlogs command

   XSCF> showlogs power
   

6. Change the prefetch mode to the desired value

   XSCF> setprefetchmode -s [on|off]
   

7. Verify the prefetch mode

   XSCF> showprefetchmode
   

8. Finally power-on all configured domains

   XSCF> poweron -d <domainid> [OR]
   XSCF> poweron -a
   

9. Disconnect from SP, and wait for the OS to boot up

Note to Sun-Oracle customers:

If the default value of hardware prefetch is changed, please make sure to mention this in any service requests, bug reports, etc., that you may file with Oracle Corporation. Unfortunately none of the standard commands on Solaris report the status of hardware prefetch - so, providing this additional piece of information beforehand will help the person who is analyzing/diagnosing the case.

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