Developer Workstation Performance Issues

[Former Member]

As the subject indicates, my developer workstation performance has not been that great (read: terrible).

Here's what I have for hardware and software:

1. Intel 2.5Ghz CPU

2. 2 GB memory

3. Sufficient disk

4. NW04 SP 14, with EP and KM installed. The J2EE engine has about 750M virtual memory, with about 380M to 600M physically allocated.

Performance is really poor - it can take 20-30 seconds to log in, navigating within the portal can be very slow as well.

I've checked the database (Max), and it reports a 99% cache hit rate, so I don't think that's the issue.

CPU can pin at 100% while navigating within the portal. Deploying WebDynpro applications can take upwards of a minute. Once the WD application has been deployed, it seems to perform ok.

I don't think my workstation is swapping, since at any one time I have about 500-900MB of available memory.

Have other people experienced developer performance issues? If so, what you have you done? I'm not sure I can allocate more memory to the J2EE engine, due to Windows DLL address space issue (yes, I know about the address space viewer/remapper - I've run it). Adding more physical memory probably won't fix the issue either. I suppose I could move the app server to Linux, but I'd rather now, since I would need another workstation to host it...

What other tuning things can I look at?

I saw a portal running on a laptop at a recent SAP course, and it was flying - naturally, it was on a SAP configured laptop, and the SAP person knew nothing about how how it was configured.

Suggestions are more than welcome!

[Former Member]

Hi Ken

2.5 Ghz ?? Is this a celeron processor or a Pentium 3 . If then consider a Pentium 4 processor or Laptop with centrino 1.4 Ghz plus. I think its to do with the processor more than anything else.

Regards

Pran

[detlev_beutner]

Hi Ken, hi Pran,

just for additional information: I've got a 1.6 MHz Pentium M.

Best regards

Detlev

[Former Member]

The CPU in my work system is a P4. I think the issue is the boatload of 'other' stuff running on our PC's, namely constant virus scanning - these other things are sucking cpu away from the J2EE engine.

I was able to 'temporarily' disable the virus scanning, and found that while performance did improve, it wasn't as much as I expected. What's really strange is that the CPU isn't even close to 100%, yet performance still lags. For example, when traversing the portal catalog, it takes upwards of 10-20 seconds to open a folder. While waiting for the folder to open, the CPU never went over 40%. Very strange.

Detlev, I've given you points for your useful answer regarding JVM config. Thanks.

Just for kicks, I installed SP14 on my home system, which is a dual-core Athon64 (running standard XP). I also have two GB of mems on this system. Unlike my work system, SP14 just flew - traversing the PCD was almost as quick as traversing a file system folder via Explorer. It was very useable, and very fast.

I'm thinking I need to install NW on a completely unencumbered system to make it really useable for development.

[detlev_beutner]

Hi Ken,

> Intel 2.5Ghz CPU

That's fast! My CPU is much slower, but I can work quite good on my laptop (also 2 GB); it's not that fast, but it works.

> NW04 SP 14, with EP and KM installed

How did you install them? I have used RI 2.5, without changing memory settings; which in fact are:

-Xms812m

-XX:NewSize=160m

-XX:MaxNewSize=160m

-XX:PermSize=412m

-XX:MaxPermSize=412m

> 20-30 seconds to log in

That's slow indeed. But: Is it the same time for the second login? When I login the first time, it may take the same amount of time. If I close the window afterwards and immediately open a new browser instance, it take about 1-2 seconds to login.

> CPU can pin at 100% while navigating within the portal

That's absolutely normal and also happens on real servers.

> Deploying WebDynpro applications can take

> upwards of a minute

Quite normal, depends on the app, but deployment time for WD isn't funny in general.

Hope it helps

Detlev

[Former Member]

Hmm, I'm going to tweak my memory settings - they're much lower than yours. Can you tell me what the Max heap size of the server is? For me, that's set to 600m - I'm assuming that you've set yours to 812m...

Regarding logins, yes, the second attempt if usually much quicker. However, after a bit of use, logins take a long time to proceed, sometimes effectively timing out (although they never do). It's almost as if the JVM is swapping, something that I don't think it does...

I'll try out the new memory parameters, and see how it works out.

[detlev_beutner]

Hi Ken,

> Can you tell me what the Max heap size of the server

> is? For me, that's set to 600m - I'm assuming that

> you've set yours to 812m...

Correct, 812.

Hope it helps

Detlev