PeopleSoft Performance Tuning

It is a widely known fact that 80% of performance problems are a direct result of the poor performance, such as server configuration, resource contention.

Assuming you have tuned your servers and followed the guidelines for your database server, application server, and web server, most of your performance problems can be addressed by tuning the PeopleSoft Application.

This article presents methodologies and techniques for optimizing the performance of PeopleSoft applications. The methodologies that are discussed are intended to provide useful tips that will help to better tune your PeopleSoft applications.

These tips focus on tuning several different aspects within a PeopleSoft environment ranging from servers to indexes. You will find some of these tips provide you with a significant improvement in performance while others may not apply to your environment.

Server Performance:

In general, the approach to application tuning starts by examining the consumption of resources. The entire system needs to be monitored to analyze resource consumption on an individual component basis and as a whole.
The key to tuning servers in a PeopleSoft environment is to implement a methodology to accurately capture as much information as possible without utilizing critical resources needed to serve the end-users.

Traditional tools used to measure utilizations impact the system being measured and ultimately the end-user experience. Commands like the following provide snapshot data but not without an associated cost. These tools can consume a significant amount of resources so care should be taken when executing them.

  1. df size
  2. iostat swapinfo
  3. ipcs timex
  4. netstat top
  5. ps uptime
  6. sar vmstat
  7. swapinfo also glance & gpm

The goal of using these native commands is to identify, if and where, a bottleneck is in the server. Is the problem in the CPU, I/O or memory? These native tools provide indicators, but at the same time could skew the results because of the overhead associated with them. Typically, additional third party tools are needed to complete the analysis.

The last hurdle being faced in tuning the server is making timing decisions on when to upgrade the hardware itself. To do this, much more information needs to be collected and stored in order to understand if an historical spike in resource utilization was a one-time aberration or a regular occurrence building over time. The recommendation is to look at third party vendors for solutions that can collect key performance indicators while minimizing overhead on the system. The collected data can then be put in a repository for detailed historical analysis.

Web Server Performance:

The release of PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture(TM) introduces new components to PeopleSoft architecture–the web server and application server. The application server is where most shops struggle with appropriate sizing. Web servers are used for handling the end-user requests from a web browser to eliminate the administrative costs associated with loading software (fat clients) on individual desktops.

The benefit is a significant savings on software deployment costs, maintenance, and upgrades. While the shift from fat clients to thin lessens the administrative burden, it increases the need to ensure the web servers are finely tuned since they will service a large number of clients.

The requirement for these web servers to achieve optimal performance is vital due to the mission critical-nature PeopleSoft plays in today’s enterprise.

Recommendations for ensuring good performance for web servers:

  • Ensure load balancing strategy is sound
  • Implement a solution to verify and highlight changes in traffic volumes
  • Closely monitor the response times to verify that the strategy is optimizing the web servers
  • Measure and review historical patterns on server resource utilization (see server section above).
  • Increase the HEAP size to 200, 250, 300, or 380 MB for the web logic startup script.

Tuxedo Performance Management:

Tuxedo is additional middleware PeopleSoft utilizes to manage the following Internet application server services:

  • Component Processor–Responsible for executing PeopleSoft Components–the core PeopleSoft application business logic
  • Business Interlink Processor– Responsible for managing the interactions with third-party systems
  • Application Messaging Processor–Manages messages in a PeopleSoft system
  • User Interface Generator–Generates the user interface based on the Component or Query definition and generates the appropriate markup language (HTML, WML, or XML) and scripting language (JavaScript, WMLScript) based on the client accessing the application
  • Security Manager–Authenticates end-users and manages their system access privileges
  • Query Processor–Executes queries using the PeopleSoft Query tool
  • Application Engine–Executes PeopleSoft Application Engine processes
  • Process Scheduler–Executes reports and batch processes and registers the reports in the Portal’s Content Registry

More…

Write your comment