SLM 7.1 : Technical/BI monitoring causing huge CPU issues

[Farid]

Hello,

We are running SAP Solution Manager 7.1 SPS6 on a HP-UX 11.31 ia64 Superdome Server, on the same hardware platform,

several other Production systems are running.

We have recently configured and activated the Technical Monitoring and BI Monitoring on SLM, and since then

we are experiencing some serious CPU bottlenecks ...

Some jobs running on Solution Manager are CPU expensive : for example  SAP_ALERT_HOUSEKEEPING (running every hour)

But not only SLM is consuming a lot of CPU (top CPU user most of the time), but it turns out that even in the satelitte system

like BWP, the CPU  processes are actually... triggered by SLM (BI Monitoring is activated and some expensive EFWK extractors are

running)

The CPU expensive processes running on BWP are actually not huge BW Data Loads or heavy BW  querying ,

but some BI Monitoring reports( /SSA/DBW,/SDF/SAPLEFWK_EXTENSION, etc ...).

The monitoring processes are having some performance impacts on application processes ... which is not exactly

what my managers had in mind when I proposed to "use" Solution Manager, they are now urging me to switch if off.

Is there any way to limit the CPU impact of Technical Monitoring solutions ( especially BI monitoring) ?

Thank you very much

Best regards

[Private_Member_19084]

Hi guys,

we are now facing the same problem.

I also can see while job  SAP_ALERT_CALCULATION_ENGINE is running the CPU is increasing dramatically.

Is there already a solution for this?

Kind regards

[Former Member]

Hi Chris,

check the below note

1712812 - Performance of job SAP_ALERT_CALCULATION_ENGINE

Rg,

Karthik

[Private_Member_19084]

Hello Karthik,

thx for help.

However I already found this note and it is not valid for us.

Maybe another idea?

Kind regards

[Farid]

Hello,

I managed to reduce significantly CPU usage induced by Technical BI Monitoring ... by completely deactivating Technical BI Monitoring.

Sorry, probably not the answer you were looking for , but I could not make any progress despite opening endless customer messages... and it was quite difficult to explain to the BI Team that the BI Monitoring was causing BI performance issues ...

I will try to resume the configuration in a few months when the application will be a bit more "mature"

[Private_Member_19084]

Hello Raoul,

I don't know what is the problem, but I definitly know that it is caused with report SAP_ALERT_CALCULATION_ENGINE

Because allways when this job is running the CPU is increasing dramatically.

But I also know, that it did work pretty fine a few weeks ago.

Maybe the problem is really in the host agent, which we did upgrade to newest version.

Kind regards

[roland_hennessy]

Hi Christian,

After further investigation on this issue maybe you could check the size of table BALHDR? A large BALHDR table can cause issues in BI performance hence which would lead to the issue.

Table BALHDR is application log, for transaction SLG1. if you have a high number of entries, do you know if a job is scheduled to clean up this table?

Transaction to clean up application log is SLG2.

Hopefully this might help in troubleshooting why the issue is occuring.

Kind regards,

Roland

[Former Member]

hi,

before you implemented the functionality, have you checked your sizing guides,  normally this BI performance based on sizing,

may i ask you to check in this context.

Other case, check at os level, any exe consuming more cpu, normally smd agent causes this issue, in that case we need to patch smd agent to the latest.

Also make sure, you implemented all the major performance optimisation notes from solution manager according to your sp level.

Please update.

Thanks

Jansi

[Farid]

Hello,

before you implemented the functionality, have you checked your sizing guides,  normally this BI performance based on sizing

A Sizing guide specific to BI Technical Monitoring ? Are you sure ? I have searched for this guide and I don't think such document exists.

Again, the CPU workload is not only on SAP Solution Manager where the data is being retrieved, but on the BW satellite system, where the reports /SSA/DBW and /SDF/SAPLEFWK_EXTENSION are really CPU expensive.

Other case, check at os level, any exe consuming more cpu, normally smd agent causes this issue, in that case we need to patch smd agent to the latest.

As I mentioned it and as you can see in the screenshot of ST06 (Top CPU processes), the problem does not come from the diagnostic agents themselves, thoses agents use a limited amount of CPU (5% as far as I can remember), the CPU over-consumption are caused by some ABAP reports

on SOL

SAP_ALERT_HOUSEKEEPING

E2E BI HOUSEKEEPING

SAP_ALERT_CALCULATION_ENGINE

AND on the on Satellite system BWP :

/SSA/DBW

/SDF/SAPLEFWK_EXTENSION

Thanks and Regards

[Former Member]

Hi Raoul,

I'm experiencing the same issues (haven't activated BI Monitoring yet, but will do within a month together with SAP).

What I've noticed so far is that activating MAI has a pretty big impact on your (solman) landscape performance. It is something we have to deal with I guess.

You can change your housekeeping settings, but I reckon that won't help too much.

Funny thing, when you go through the SolMan sizing tool, no resources are being reserved for Technical Monitoring

But I guess if the impact on your perfomance is that big, you might want to consider upgrading your resources, since you might already have been close to the edge....

Regards,

David

[Farid]

Thanks for your reply,

I'm experiencing the same issues (haven't activated BI Monitoring yet, but will do within a month together with SAP).

We have indeed observed an increase of CPU resources after deploying the MAI, then a significant CPU increase when activating the Technical Monitoring, then a drastic CPU increase when activating the BI Technical Monitoring.

Also I wanted to switch-off, the BI Technical Monitoring  ... but it is not possible, all the queries , process chains, can not be removed from the Wizard in solution manager configuration ... I have opened a SAP customer call.

You can change your housekeeping settings, but I reckon that won't help too much.

Yes I was thinking about changing SAP default settings but before doing that, I have opened a SAP customer call about CPU expensive job SAP_ALERT_HOUSEKEEPING job which is now almost constantly running.

That job is most of the time, the top CPU process running on the whole HP Super-dome,

and we have not yet activated the technical monitoring for all our production systems ....

But I guess if the impact on your perfomance is that big, you might want to consider upgrading your resources, since you might already have been close to the edge....

We have several production systems running on the same hardware superplatform:  ECC,EP,SCM,PI, etc ... and never had any CPU bottleneck before, SOL is by far our most CPU expensive system since we activated the Technical Monitoring features.

So my managers are now considering switching off all the Monitoring features provided by Solution Manager, and using an external third party tool instead

[Former Member]

Switching to a third party tool......

I wouldn't recommend that.

As you have BI Mon in place, that will be hard to replace.

Also, the effort already spent would be wasted.

And, third party tools will also impact your system and cost additional fees (plus maybe consultancy) which is money that could be spent on additional hardware resources.

Remember, just because solman is free, doesn't mean it's really free!

Just my two cents....

But then again, I'm a SolMan-man

[roland_hennessy]

Hi Raoul,

Can you review the recommedations in SAP note1835721 - Troubleshooting performance problems in Solution Manager and for BW monitoring see SAP note 1770827 - Monitoring data consumes too many resources in BW.

Kind regards,

Roland