Oracle Optimized Solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne A Business White Paper

Transcription

1 An Oracle White Paper October 2011 Oracle Optimized Solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne A Business White Paper Using Oracleʼs SPARC T4-1 Server

2 Introduction... 2 A Brief Overview... 3 Faster Time to Service... 4 A Tested Environment Offers Predictable Results... 4 Server Consolidation... 5 Choice of Options for Consolidation: Oracle Solaris Containers... 5 Higher RAS capabilities... 5 Storage Innovation... 6 Better Performance and Throughput by Separating the Different Data Types... 6 Performance Testing Results... 7 Conclusion... 9

3 Introduction Oracleʼs JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is a leading product in the industry and has been optimized to run best with Oracle Database. The Oracle Optimized Solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne can run in one compact and inexpensive server, providing an economical and scalable entry point to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne deployments for small and medium-sized enterprises. This optimized solution leverages an integrated Oracle hardware and software stack. The stack penetrates every layer of the IT stack from the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne application software to the flagship Oracle Database and provides the right server, storage, operating system, and middleware infrastructure. Engineering the entire stack to work together yields higher reliability and greater security, as well as stunning performance and low TCO. Oracleʼs SPARC T-Series servers and the Oracle Solaris operating system offer security, consolidation, scalability, performance, and reliability benefits to the Oracle Optimized Solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. These benefits are the result of years of experience with infrastructure designed for business applications combined with in-depth understanding of the datacenter. In addition, the Oracle Solaris operating system is the most widely used operating system for Oracle Database server deployments. The introduction of Oracleʼs latest SPARC T4 processor has enabled considerable performance gains compared to earlier generations of processors. These gains have been achieved at similar price points, in the same datacenter footprint as the previous generation of SPARC T3 platforms. The performance improvements that are now realizable can be dramatic, and paired with the benefits of equivalent acquisition and operational costs, they provide an extremely compelling platform for this and other application deployments. This paper describes the benefits of integrating Oracleʼs software and hardware technologies to achieve optimal results in the form of increased performance, low cost of operation, low energy consumption, and small footprint.

4 A Brief Overview The design of the Oracle Optimized Solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne takes advantage of technology optimizations that yield identifiable business benefits for customers. This paper covers the following key areas for optimizing the infrastructure to run Oracle s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne: Lower Cost of Deployment This complete integrated solution reduces the cost of the required hardware used to deploy a full JD Edwards EnterpriseOne infrastructure. It also effectively frees funds to provide for software licensing and allows significant overall savings for a complete hardware and software stack. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is thus reduced, allowing customers to have a fully deployed solution at a cost that is often less than the hardware cost alone for competitive solutions. Server Consolidation Taking advantage of the ability to combine multiple workloads that run independently into a single physical server while retaining isolation between environments offers the benefits of reduced server count with less management and a reduction of server sprawl. This approach is central to the solution discussed in this paper. It also presents the customer with the opportunity to consolidate additional applications on these same servers, providing further return on investment (ROI) benefits. Storage Innovation The incorporation of Oracle s Sun FlashFire technology into the technology stack offers a significant benefit for specific areas of performance in the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solution. The innovative optimization approach creates an integrated server/storage solution that provides a very compact and efficient platform with multiple benefits to customer TCO. Small size and efficient operation provide ongoing cost savings through reduced datacenter footprint. The tested and integrated offering also provides benefits in terms of reliability and manageability. The software components chosen for this solution consist of the following: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.98/9.0 application server Oracle Database11g Release 2 Standard Edition Oracle WebLogic Server Standard Edition Customers are encouraged to consider taking advantage of the licensable product called Oracle Technology Foundation for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. This product provides limited-use licensing of Oracle Database Standard Edition, Oracle WebLogic Server Standard Edition, and several additional components of Oracle Fusion Middleware for use with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne deployments. Because Oracle Technology Foundation for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is licensed per application user, not per CPU, these components can be installed on an unlimited number of processors, providing some protection of software licensing costs due to CPU sprawl. In cases where customers find value in the extended feature set offered by the Enterprise Edition of Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server, or if the broader implementation calls for use of these products by applications beyond JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, customers have the option of acquiring Enterprise Edition licenses instead.

5 Oracle innovation allows all three of these software pieces to operate in separate virtual container environments provided by no-cost Oracle Solaris virtualization features. Management of the storage within the platform is provided through the Oracle Solaris ZFS file system, which increases storage reliability and provides considerable ease of management benefits compared to other file systems. Faster Time to Service Bringing a service online successfully in a short amount of time is of prime importance to enterprises because of the productivity effects these services have in an enterprise. Once the decision to deploy a service is made, the time it takes to make the actual service available can have a direct impact on the bottom line and can affect business revenues as well. The Oracle Optimized Solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne offers a guide for implementing services using a streamlined and tested process. This documents activities such as setting up the storage hardware and configuring the individual containers in which to deploy the application servers, and summarizes the tuning used to achieve the best results. Tuning would typically have been a slow and laborious process of iterative testing and reconfiguration requiring extensive time and expertise as well as an intimate understanding of the hardware and software environments. Being able to obtain information about these configurations in a single document, with tuning information and configuration characteristics for all areas of the infrastructure, allows the deployment effort to remain ahead of the curve, and almost completely eliminates one of the most time consuming aspects of deploying a new service. In addition to system and application tunings, the optimal server platform has been chosen to host these combined workloads so that the applications take optimal advantage of the underlying hardware. Choosing the right server and adding the best components to do the job offers the fastest path to ROI and a lower TCO. A Tested Environment Offers Predictable Results Enterprises are in the business of delivering services to their customers and should not need to become experts at implementing core business applications. The experience of implementing a JD Edwards EnterpriseOne environment will be greatly enhanced with the help of the Oracle Optimized Solutions technical whitepapers because of the documented architectural design as well as system and application tuning information included. The knowledge obtained will short-circuit a long, often iterative, and sometimes painful learning process. The Oracle Optimized Solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne enables a reliable production environment with predictable results to be achieved much more rapidly than a traditional design and test approach that includes a trial-and-error process for integration and optimization. This solution includes a guide to identify the hardware resources needed to run different size workloads and it provides a starting point for sizing the implementation based on expected user loads. When deploying a new environment, these starting points will shorten the overall deployment time while providing predictable results for specific user workloads.

6 Server Consolidation By using enterprise class servers such as Oracle s SPARC T4-1 server, consolidation is included as a feature in the product at no additional cost. These servers can be partitioned using Oracle Solaris Containers, enabling a single server to run multiple, isolated application environments. In the case of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, three containers are utilized, providing isolated environments for Oracle Database, Oracle WebLogic Server, and the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne application server. This virtualization feature offers reduced server management of the infrastructure and enables other applications to utilize the resources available in these servers, allowing for the possibility of further consolidation beyond the core JD Edwards EnterpriseOne deployment. Another benefit that consolidation has to offer is flexibility in resource management, where compute, memory, and optimized I/O resources can be appropriately allocated to the different applications running in the partitioned server to benefit applications that need the additional compute power permanently or temporarily. Choice of Options for Consolidation: Oracle Solaris Containers The SPARC T4-1 server has advanced consolidation capabilities. Oracle Solaris allows extremely fine-grained control over resources allocated or available to individually configured containers, which are presented to applications as a fully self-contained virtual server. A virtually limitless number of containers can be created and applications deployed onto them, the only practical constraint being the physical capacities of the server (CPU, memory, and I/O bandwidth) and the performance requirements of deployed applications. The SPARC T4-1 server is particularly suitable for use with Oracle Solaris Containers due to its use of the SPARC T4 processor. This highly scalable server provides up to 64 virtual CPU cores to allocate among Oracle Solaris Containers, and it has the capacity for up to 256 GB of onboard memory as well as a high-capacity I/O subsystem and highcapacity local disk storage. The use of Oracle Solaris Containers technology to flexibly assign resources offers the ability to accommodate workload changes depending on the various cycles that occur throughout the day, month, or the year, yet it can also guarantee performance minimums where required. Higher RAS capabilities Reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features come standard in the SPARC T4-1 server and are complemented by the features of the Oracle Solaris operating system. Features such as extensive automatic CPU and memory error-correcting code (ECC) protection, protected data-path integrity, and redundant and hot-swappable system components provide the superior reliability and availability required by a 24x7 compute infrastructure. The Oracle Solaris ZFS file system for all disk storage also helps ensure data integrity and ease of management. All of these technical advantages allow the business to rapidly recover from or even continue running smoothly and maintain service availability through errors or hardware failures. Enhanced

7 high-availability options are available when combined with Oracle Solaris Cluster, which offers not only local failover to a backup environment, but also geographic cluster failover for disaster recovery scenarios. These availability options can keep users connected to the application during planned maintenance windows as well as in the event of a disaster. Storage Innovation Traditional storage environments have gone through a transformation in many ways improving the connectivity, reliability, and availability of the data repositories as well as capacity. Yet there is one key aspect of these systems that has not improved significantly over time. The I/O operations per second (IOPS) of hard drives have remained practically unchanged for the last decade or more. When detailed analysis is carried out on application performance, it becomes clear that disk I/O performance is often the bottleneck limiting application performance. Optimizing I/O performance has, therefore, been the major focus of this solution development. Improvements in both I/O latency and IOPS have been made by using conventional storage accessed through a Sun Storage 6Gb SAS PCIe RAID HBA. Besides offering high-performance storage, the storage capacity required for this solution is completely contained within the server chassis, eliminating further connections and component reliability issues and contributing to a very dense 2 RU form-factor solution. Competitive solutions often require large external arrays of disks that are used to improve performance by short-stroking the disks. This results in using only a small portion of the disk capacity on the highest-performance, fastest-spinning portions of the disk media and underutilizing the real capacity of the drives. This over-specifies and underutilizes the hardware infrastructure, leading to a larger, more complex, and inefficient solution. The increasing cost pressures of administering large disk arrays, and the resulting increased rack space and power requirements, makes it increasingly difficult to justify the cost/performance trade-off. Better Performance and Throughput by Separating the Different Data Types Characterizing data transactions when JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is operating under load shows that certain data is particularly read-intensive and other data is write-intensive. Separating these types of data into separately tuned storage components allows the overall platform and application performance to be optimized and the required performance to be achieved. The use of an advanced RAID HBA provides several benefits, the most useful in this solution being the inclusion of a 512 MB Battery Backed Write Cache. This cache allows write operations to the disks it controls to be committed extremely rapidly and yet still guarantees completion of write to permanent disk without concern of data loss. This reduction in write latency is a major performance benefit for database redo logs, and for the most taxing operations performed by JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, database performance is a key requirement. Database performance, when examined in detail, is often revealed to be dependant on the speed with which redo logs can be written; enhancing this enhances overall database performance. In the case of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne server, it was seen that a large portion of its data is in the form of static Web content that is subject mostly to read operations. Positioning this data in a file system contained in high-read-availability devices enables fast reads, which improves interactive user

8 response times to Web pages. In addition, the use of the ZFS file system and its large RAM cache allow very high-performance read operations. When a system is properly configured with conventional storage and Sun FlashFire technology, this can significantly accelerate applications and improve response times, thereby offering improved user productivity as well as better space utilization and power efficiency. Performance Testing Results Testing shows that introducing optimized storage technologies into an existing architecture or building an architecture from scratch with careful attention to storage requirements can increase performance to new levels, sometimes by making only simple changes to application deployments. In the data shown below, consolidation and optimized storage configurations allow the required levels of performance to be obtained from a single server, with the possibility of considerable headroom for further consolidation or the ability to cope with peaks in load. In all tests, interactive response time was maintained at under seconds while handling up to 1200 benchmark users with the maximum achievable concurrent batch workloads, and as low as 0.27 seconds in the absence of batch workloads. The batch workloads place considerable demands on the disk I/O capabilities of the server and, as a result, the achievable results are essentially governed by the amount of batch workload imposed during testing. As can be seen in Figures 1 and 2, changing the type and number of batch workloads essentially varies, in a linear fashion, the response time to interactive queries. Hence, these charts allow users to target more precisely the deployed workload on this server given their particular requirements for batch workloads or interactive response time. Even at the highest batch workload and highest concurrentuser processing capabilities of the platform, other system resources, such as memory and CPU, where never fully utilized. During testing, the maximum memory utilization seen was 74% and the maximum CPU utilization was 27%. For users or deployments utilizing lower user counts or batch processing requirements (as recommended by the provided sizing guide for the Optimized Solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne), there is potential within the platform for further application consolidation, which would further enhance opportunities to enhance ROI from the platform.

9 Response Time, Running Short UBE batchs with 1200 users Short UBE's completed/hour ,730 7,349 8, Response Time (Secs) Response Time, Running Short UBE batchs with 1200 users Figure 1. System response time versus short UBE throughput during testing Performance Impact of running long UBE batch jobs ResponseTime (Seconds) Performance Impact of running long UBE batch jobs Short UBE's completed/hr Figure 2. Systems performance when completing additional long-running UBE workloads during testing This exercise has also helped show that fewer disks can be efficiently used to store the database and fully utilize each hard drive to increase storage density in these high-performance SPARC servers, when compared to competitors platforms achieving similar performance. The JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

10 interactive portion of the testing helped verify this by confirming that service response times remained very good: less than seconds and as low as 0.27 seconds. Use of a SPARC T4-1 server from Oracle helped show how to consolidate the entire environment into a single managed server leveraging Oracle Solaris Containers technology, which offers separation of different applications or modules while providing simple maintenance and management tools. The managed environment can further be enhanced in the datacenter by using the other management tools from Oracle, including Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center and Oracle Enterprise Manager for a complete and integrated managed environment. Overall, these results point to the conclusion that Oracle s integrated stack of end-to-end products can offer great benefits given the stack s high-performance building blocks and highly integrated environment. Conclusion In today s competitive environment, where power and space are at a premium, CIOs are looking to squeeze every drop of resources from their infrastructure in order to maximize service delivery and minimize server and storage sprawl. The Oracle Optimized Solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne offers an opportunity to reach these goals in a fast and effective way through a documented and tested environment that has been integrated and optimized by Oracle.

11 Oracle Optimized Solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne A Business White Paper October 2011 Author: Peter Wilson Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA U.S.A. Worldwide Inquiries: Phone: Fax: Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Intel and Intel Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. UNIX is a registered trademark licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd oracle.com