Re: Online Performance Tuning Question ??

John DeSilva wrote: > > We are running 40 people on an HP9000 ( HPUX 9.04 ) and Online 7.11UC1 = > with 256MB. 30 of these are running Order Entry applications (RDS) = > using approx 2MB per user. The system is fine and performace is normally = > good. > Unless...... > We launch a query / reporting tool ( GQL ). We have two users that need > to use this on a regular basis. When the first starts up GQL things slow > down. When the second starts it up the whole thing grinds to a halt. > Symptoms are as follows. > With 40 normal users, the engine is is quite happy. Buffwaits > from an onstat -p show minimal if any increase. Unix swapping is running > at around 20MB. Engine is using about 100MB of memory. > When we start up GQL ( runs local on two macs and accesses data via a > DBACCESS session ) swapping jumps to 88 MB and the buffwaits go through > the roof, increasing by several 000's per minute. PDQ allows for a max = > of 5MB and is only enable for the GQL user login. > > Q. Is it possible that the initial virtual segment of shared memory > (64MB) is being swapped out ? If so would it swap out the entire > segment or only a small part ? If this the reason for the large > jump in unix swapping that we are seeing ??? > > Q. My though here is to increase the # of buffers even though I will be > increasing op sys swapping. The HP9000 seems to handle swapping quite > well. The extra 20 MB of buffers might more than offset the decrease > in performance caused by the extra swapping. ???? > > NB. We see similar problems with performance ( not as pronounced ) when > start a large / lengthy report such as sales analysis reports > or price lists. > My though is that these reports / GQL are flooding the buffers with = > data > not related to OE, and hence the dramatic performance dip and large > increase in the buffwaits statistics. You shouldn't be swapping at all. This is a performance killer. Why are you running out of memory? If there is no way round this, then add more memory. You are mixing PDQ with OLTP access. This is always VERY difficult to balance in terms of tuning. Remember that to increase resources and hence performance for PDQ you should DECREASE the number of buffers. Of course this is the opposite for OLTP, and finding the balance is always very difficult. In your case, the situation is exacerbated by the fact that you have already run out of memory resources. Your reports are probably using PDQ as well. In your current situation, you may improve things by switching PDQ off all together. This will probably help balance resource allocation between your order entry, GQL, and reports. Hope this helps, -- Mark. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Mark D. Stock - The West Solutions Group http://www.west.co.za | | The Informix FAQ is at http://www.iiug.org | |mailto:marks@west.co.za +------------------------------------------------+ |Tel: +27 11 803 2151 |If it doesn't work... force it! | |Fax: +27 11 803 2189 |If it breaks... it needed replacing anyway! | |Cell: +27 83 250 2325 |Well, that's how I code anyway! | +------------------------+------------------------------------------------+