Managing main memory when running multiple BW 7 on single HP blade server

[Former Member]

Hi,

We are currently upgrading our BW landscape from 3.1c to 7.01 and have the following concern. We will be running multiple BW 7.01 instances on a single HP Itanium blade server and need to understand how the blade's main memory will be managed across the multiple BW 7 servers. In other words, the HP blade server has a total of 48 GB main memory and I would like to know how I can restrict memory utilization by individual BW clients so the BW production server performamce is not impacted by memory intensive processes running on other BW servers.

If it is possible to restrict the HP blade overall main memory allocation using SAP profile parameters, please provide a list of these profile parameters for each BW 7 server hosted on that single blade server. Otherwise if other resource/workload management software tool would be required please provide your recommendations. Any other options/recommendations would also be welcomed.

[Former Member]

Orkun,

I really don't know enough about WLM to tell if it can even be used but basically I need to know if it could effectively manage the blade's resource (CPU, RAM) and/or application work processes across multiple BW systems. Since I only have a single HP blade server to hosts 3 separate BW 7.0 instances without virtualization available is it even feasible to use WLM in this configuration. I suspect the best approach would be to understand what would be needed to create the 3 VMs as you suggested. Any more thoughts?

Thanks again

Frank

[Former Member]

Hi Frank,

In order to go in to the detailed technical architecture, I need more information about the system workloads and key figures. The most important point is you should consider two underlying parts while configuring SAP BI system. First one is data extracting and second one is reporting. So, I need statistical values in order to talk about exact configurations.

At this stage, if you choose virtualization strategy, I recommend that you should consider HP Workload Manager SAP Toolkit and create an action plan for your specific needs.

Best regards,

Orkun Gedik

[Former Member]

Thank you. You were very helpful.

[Former Member]

Hi Frank,

If you installed more than one BI system on a phsical server, you planned that all systems will share all the resources in a pool. In my point of view, if you restrict dialog process memory utilization by configuring "ztta/roll_extension_dia" parameter, it'll help to share resources efficiently. This idea can be evaluted for nondia work processes. Please notice that its default value is 2Gb and you can increase or reduce this value regarding your expectations. Memory utilization is not limited by SAP processes, but also database cache allocation and so on. Therefore you should take into account all of these components, while configuring memory parameters. You should set PHYS_MEMSIZE carefully, but please notice that SAP can exceed this memory value, if required. You can check parameters, below;

em/max_size_MB

EM/TOTAL_SIZE_MB

em/initial_size_MB

em/address_space_MB

Another recommendation is virtualization solutions. We are running many SAP systems on virtualized systems. So it can be another choice.

I hope that I clarified your question. If you have further questions, please feel free to ask me.

Best regards,

Orkun Gedik

[Former Member]

Thank you Orkun. Your reply was very helpful.

It does seem a little tricky to configure and maintain memory parameters across multiple SAP servers and obtain optimum performance. Virtualization seems like a better choice. We are assessing the HP Workload Manager (WLM) product as resource management tool for the HP Itanium blade server. Any experience with this software?

Frank

[Former Member]

Hi Frank,

I used HP Workload Manager product but not much experienced on it. If you send your questions, I would like to answer them, as much as I can, about this product.

Best regards,

Orkun Gedik