Portal Performance - page loads slow, client cache reset/cleared too often

[Former Member]

We are running EP6 SP2. Our portal has been quite slow to the first page after authentication. Although server-side and client-side caching are active, it still takes about 15 seconds for the page (including the masthead) to load. Some people in our team have noticed that the client cache is often automatically cleared making the stylesheets and other files to be called, transfered over the network, and cached again. Some have noticed that it takes a few seconds to load all the stylesheets that the portal needs to use.

Are there some quick ways for tweaking the portal to increase its performance without going deep down with network and database tuning?

Also, I have noticed that there are at least six stylesheets that usually get loaded by the portal. Once of those CSSs is ur_ie6.css which is 123kb in size. This is kind of big for a CSS file. Is there a way to reduce the content in the file or eliminate some unused CSS classes in that file without affecting the portal functionalities and look-n-feel?

Please share your inputs and experience. This is a high priority issue that our customer are concerned about.

Thanks

[former_member197561 · Accepted solution]

The best fine-tuning document for the SAP Portal is this: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-16036

It addresses fine-tuning topics related to network and memory, and introduces as well other advanced tuning parameters, which have impact on overall Portal performance and scalability.

[Former Member]

Thanks for all your responses.

We have no control over the server so you can't remove the NetBios protocol.

We will take the steps recommended by SAP to analyze performance issues and fine tune the servers in the near future.

Right now we are experiencing a problem where one of the sap stylesheets is too large and is being downloaded twice into cache because one has an extra parameter in the URL (i.e. ur_ie6.css?6.0.2.20.2). I will post another thread regarding this issue. thanks again

[Former Member]

Hi Mick,

The client side cache is set to 1 day by default to keep iviews and stuff in the cache. Which means what ever you have in the cache gets expired everyday. You can set it for a week as follows :

1. Open http service settings in config tool

2. Change the values of the properties as follows:

CacheControl=604800

SapCacheControl=604800

[Former Member]

Mick,

I don't know what platform you are running your EP6 SP2 portal on, but if you can provide the platform information I will try to send you the information I have

gathered. I have done lot of work related to EP6 on AIX.

As EP6 SP2 is based on JDK1.3_XX, there could be several

factors. If the platform is AIX I can share with some good information related to tuning. If solaris probably SAP has fairly good recommendations.

Also you have mentioned mentioned 4 KM iviews which could

have fairly good load. Especially I would start with KM Caching. Also what kind of iviews are these custom iViews.? Also please indicate the patch level.

You can go through some of the recommendations from

http://service.sap.com/ep60

Documentation -->Current-How-to -->EP60 performance analysis guide.

If the KM cache size is too small or not configured this

could potentially be a huge performance hit.

Also running through a sniffer should give you some first hand information. (Some sniffers HTTPWatch, HTTPAnalyser, HTTPLook etc)

Please provide me some details about the environment.

I hope I can share some good information.

you can e-mail me at malempativ@gmail.com

Regards

-Venkat Malempati

Message was edited by: Venkat Malempati

Message was edited by: Venkat Malempati

[Former Member]

Hi Mick, Prakash and Venkat,

Seems like many ppl have sometime or other experienced the pain of Portal Performance. Right now along with my other activities of Dev, i am involved in tuning Portal. Its really a pain to see that portal is sooo slow. We have got some success till now.

Prakash: I got a new info from Prakash. I will also try that out. But can you explian what is this related to and how this is causing a problem as i have to explain this to my clients also. Any doc on this.?

Mick: If you read those doc's which are available in those links (if you are having such a critical issue should should have read all the documents overnight), the KM Doc says that if you are using KM Nav iView then there are some limits to it. Also there are recommendations to the No. of iViews in a page which i think is more in your case.

What i would say is that the immediate solution is that to lessen the contents (as strictly said by SAP) on the Home page. and also do not show any personal contents on home page. Use always Shared contents.

There are many tools also given which i think Venkat has pointed out. And yes platform is an important factor.

But this is a long procedure. Without knowing that exactly what is the root cause in your case its not easy to make Portal run at a speed like Shoib Akhtar's bowl otherwise you will start chucking like him to get more speed.

Regards

Gaurav Gandhi

[Former Member]

Mick,

What kind of iViews you have on the front page? How many ? Generally SAP recommends maximum of 6 to 8 iviews.

If you have lot of KM Iviews on the front page that could potentially be a big performance hit.

Can you provide a bit more information.?

Regards

-Venkat Malempati

[Former Member]

I have 3 KM document iviews, 1 KM entrypoint navigation iview, and 2 customer jspdynpage iviews.

You have a good point but how to prove it?

do you have an article that has information regarding this issue?

thanks

> Mick,

> What kind of iViews you have on the front page? How

> many ? Generally SAP recommends maximum of 6 to 8

> iviews.

>

> If you have lot of KM Iviews on the front page that

> could potentially be a big performance hit.

>

> Can you provide a bit more information.?

> Regards

> -Venkat Malempati

[Former Member]

Gaurav - I have printed out all documents regarding fine tuning the portal from the service market place. We are looking to perform those steps soon in the future but right now we need an immediate solution to speed it up a little bit. Some think that the stylesheets take too long to load. Do you experience a similar issue?

thanks

[Former Member]

Mick,

<b>Remove the NetBios protocol from the network card configuration. We had this problem last year and we took the NetBios protocol out and there was a dramatic improvement in the response time.</b>

Prakash

[Former Member]

you mean the network card on the client machine or the server?

> Mick,

> <b>Remove the NetBios protocol from the network card

> d configuration. We had this problem last year and we

> took the NetBios protocol out and there was a

> dramatic improvement in the response time.</b>

> Prakash

>

[Former Member]

on the portal server. Go to network place and right click on your network connection ( which is your NIC) and remove netbios. Did you try it it Mick?

Message was edited by: Prakash Singh

[Former Member]

Hey Prakash,

Why removing NetBios protocol improves performance?

[Former Member]

Also please checkout the presentation below.

https://media.sdn.sap.com/public/eclasses/bwp04/PortalTuning_files/Default.htm

Regards

-Venkat Malempati

[Former Member]

Sorry i should have explained my performance issue with Netbios in detail. Portal's j2ee does a reverse look up on itself. In my situation the portal server was doing a lookup on itself via netbios first and then going to DNS server. The netbios lookup was somehow getting blocked by our firewall and then the portal server was going to DNS . DNS lookup worked fine and so after login the page/iviews eventually showed up but the netbios lookup added 7 seconds to the page load. Once we disabled netbios then it was going directly to DNS and page load was dramatically faster.

[Former Member]

Hey Venkat,

10X for sharing this link, it is a really productive presentation! One question regarding it: Where can I find the Xmx/Xms of the JVM in order to reconfigure it?

Roy

[Former Member]

Roy,

It depends on the JVM vendor. The following links are a good place to start depending on the JDK version. This would be a good starting point for SUN JVM.

http://java.sun.com/docs/hotspot/gc1.4.2/

http://java.sun.com/docs/hotspot/gc/

http://java.sun.com/docs/hotspot/VMOptions.html

For IBM JVM:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/eserver/articles/es-javaonaix_trace.html

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/diagnosis/

Hope this helps

Regards,

-Venkat Malempati

[Former Member]

Roy,

I don't know if you are really looking for this information.

EP6.0 SP2:

1. Using Configtool you can change these options by selecting either the dispatcher/server.

2. Directly on the filesystem

/usr/sap/XXX/j2ee/cluster/dispatcher/commandline.properties

/usr/sap/XXX/j2ee/cluster/serverX/commandline.properties

or

if using the unixdaemon/startup framework then

/usr/sap/XXX/j2ee/cluster/configtool/service.ini

NOTE: need to verify the path as I am just typing from

my memory.

EP6.0 >SP2

3. Configtool

Select EditMode:

goto

Configurations>cluster_data>cfg

Open the property sheet

"PropertySheetInstance.properties.IDXXXXX" and it should have all the dispatcher/server properties:

For each dispatcher/server instance there is a property "IDXXXXX.JavaParameter"

You can change the JVM parameters here.

This is pretty much equivalent to the "service.ini"

property file in EP6 SP2 but stored in database.

Hope this helps.

Regards

-Venkat Malempati

[swapan_saha]

Hi Roy,

You can use config tool to change the value of Xmx, Xms (maximum and minimum heap size). In case you are asking the values of Xmx and Xmx, please refer to SAP Note for appropriate platform (Sun JDK/HP JDK on HPUX/IBM JDK on AIX) and version. In config tool, click on the "server", it will show the JVM settings including Xmx, Xms, etc. Change them and save the setting and restart J2EEngine.

Thanks,

Swapan

[Former Member]

Hi Mick

Have a look at the following link

http://service.sap.com/netweaver -> Media Library -> How-to-Guides -> Portal, KM and Collaboration.

Here you will find guide's for Optimizing the Network Traffic and optimizing J2EE and for KM also.

This is hepful.

We also are right now doing the same task for our Portal.

Hope this solves your problem. Let me know if you need some more help.

Regards

Gaurav Gandhi

[Former Member]

Hi Mick

Is there an Anti Virus running on the server . Try switching if off or provide an exclusion path to the EP installation folder.

Regards

Pran