topic Re: User Access Speed in Operating System - HP-UX

User Access Speed

Joe Kanakaraj — Sat, 22 Nov 2003 02:33:28 GMT

Hi Guys,

Got a problem with refernce to speed. Am running Progress 8.3 on a HP UX 10.20 K class Server with dual processor. The problem is that our database is only about 1 GB in size, our users run emulators from Windows workstations. We are getting complaints of late of very slow processing when running large reports (we usual have guys doing that).

Is this due to crunching of large amount data or maybe a config problem. We have around 16 GB of space on the server mirrored on 4 x 4 GB HDD.

Anyway to increase access and processing speed. Keep me posted.

Joe

Re: User Access Speed

Norman_21 — Sat, 22 Nov 2003 03:25:13 GMT

Check your swap space:
# swapinfo -ta

Also, if you have glance, run it and check for any bottle neck!
or
#sar -u 5
to check the CPU process.
Also, check your kernel settings for the following:
dbc_max_pct
dbc_min_pct
use the command kmtune

hope this help!

Re: User Access Speed

Colin Topliss — Sat, 22 Nov 2003 19:16:35 GMT

Hi,

This could be due to a large number of things:

1) Anti-social queries. The reports (if they are doing large scans through the data on the database) could be causing a performance degradation, especially if you have more users running reports now than you used to, or the data has grown in size.

2) Bad database design/configuration. Its possible that the database configuration is not optimal for the data contained in it.

3) Bottleneck. If you have glance, use that to look at the system (glance gives you a much more in-depth look at your system than most other tools). If not, you;ll have to reply on vmstat, top, and sar to try and work out where the bottlenect may be.

The bottlenecks could be either memory, disk, or swap (at least those are the most likely).

I'd also take a look at dbc_min_pct and dbc_max_pct - these are usually left at the default, which is pretty useless. Set dbc_min_pct to 4 and max to 5, or even look at using bufpages instead and fixing the size of the buffer cache. It may free up some memory for you.

You could also try rebooting the system and get them to try to run the reports afterwards. If the performance is great, and you find you have more memory than before the reboot, then you have an application with a memory leak.

If, after investigating all of that you can't find anything obvious, I'm afraid you could be looking at memory and/or CPU upgrades.

Regards

Col

Re: User Access Speed

Bill Hassell — Sat, 22 Nov 2003 19:33:09 GMT

The size of the database is not too important. Serially searching through 1Gb can be painfully slow. That's what databases are supposed to prevent. However, database adminstrators vary in skills so the large reports need a lot of work. The way I look at performance is: if you don't run any applications, does the system respond very fast? If so, the applications need help. Progress should have statistics and performance monitors. For any database, a query should minimize serial searches through the use of indexes. You can see if the CPU is busy by running top...if the average percentage for user activity is less than 75% then all the delays are due to disk I/O which must be minimized with more RAM (if Progress can take advantage of more RAM) or by indexing serial searches (or both).

Re: User Access Speed

Norman_21 — Sun, 23 Nov 2003 00:02:41 GMT

Messing with kernel settings can be a risk it you are not sure what is the source of the problem. I would suggest that you install the Ignite UX, create a recovery tape:
#make_tape_recovery -x inc_entire=vg00 -I -v

download it from here:
http://www.software.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=IGNITEUXB

About the kernetl settings:
dbc_max_pct 50
dbc_min_pct 5
Above are the defaults, decreasing the default settings without knowing the exact issue will kill the performance!
Read this document about tuning performance carefully before you do anything!

Good luck

Re: User Access Speed

Joe Kanakaraj — Mon, 24 Nov 2003 22:39:06 GMT

Hi,

I took XMAN's advise and downloaded IGNITE...on installing using standard swinstall procedure and folowing the instructions given at the HP site, I am unable to start ignite at /opt/ignite/bin/ignite....all the files are showing zero bytes....???????

The other ideas I am trying out so I will get back to you on it..

CHeers,

Joe

Re: User Access Speed

Michael Tully — Mon, 24 Nov 2003 22:46:18 GMT

The full command on running ignite or attempting to create a tape is and assuming your tape drive is /dev/rmt/0mn (you must use a non-rewindable device)

# /opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -x inc_entire=vg00 -I -v /dev/rmt/0mn

Also when you run the above command, does it start successfully. I have seen a problem with one of the later ignite versions where there was a file missing.

Re: User Access Speed

Norman_21 — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 00:01:28 GMT

Hello mate,

The download could be corrupted or it could as Micheal indicated a missing file.
However, let's try it from here and make sure you ftp the file in Binary format to your hp-ux box!
http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX/download.html

Hope this help!

Re: User Access Speed

Norman_21 — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 00:05:32 GMT

Oh, one more thing, you run the following command
#/opt/ignite/bin/ignite
only if you want to configure your hp-ux as the IGNITE Server. Otherwise, to create a recover tape just run the following:
#make_tape_recovery -x inc_entire=vg00 -I -v

Also, the first time you run it, it'll ask for the PAX patche, download the patch number
that is associated with your OS version, install it and then run.
for 11.0 the pax patch is as following:
PHCO_25418 pax(1) cumulative patch

Good luck