Performance Tuning for Oracle EBS
Oracle Enterprise Business Suite (EBS) is a powerful, robust suite of applications that helps thousands of enterprise customers improve their business processes. But no matter how well you think you set up EBS at the outset, it needs to undergo performance tuning on a regular basis to make sure that it’s still operating at peak efficiency.
Just like brushing your teeth helps stave off long-term issues like cavities, doing performance tuning for Oracle EBS is a best practice for your enterprise IT that decreases the likelihood of crashes and instability.
Oracle EBS performance tuning should be both proactive and reactive:
- Proactive performance tuning is done in advance (e.g. during the planning and implementation phases of a new project) to establish a baseline for performance.
- Reactive performance tuning is done in response to a perceived acute problem in order to efficiently resolve the issue.
For best results, Oracle EBS performance tuning should be an iterative, ongoing process that helps resolve performance issues as they crop up, identifying and fixing root causes more quickly. Below, we’ll discuss some concerns of performance tuning as it pertains to your Oracle EBS deployment.
4 Essential Components of Performance Tuning
Underneath the umbrella of “performance tuning” are a number of separate but related activities.
The different components of performance tuning include:
- Performance analysis, collecting data about server and client speeds and response times, which can then be used to identify bottlenecks and targets for optimization.
- Code optimization, rewriting and refactoring an application’s code base in order to improve its speed, scalability and availability.
- Load balancing, distributing requests across multiple servers and systems during times of peak usage to avoid crashes and performance issues.
- Parameter tuning, making changes to application settings and configurations as necessary to adjust to your evolving IT environment.
Performance Tuning for Your Oracle EBS Deployment
Once you get started with performance tuning in Oracle EBS, the difference can be drastic. In many cases, just a few adjustments can make a major difference for your Oracle EBS performance. When doing reactive performance tuning in response to an existing problem, time is of the essence.
Below are the steps to follow to isolate and resolve an Oracle EBS performance issue:
- Clearly define the problem: What is the application or service that is experiencing an issue? Who experienced the issue and at what time(s)? Can you repeat the issue? How does the issue impact the organization as a whole?
- Gather data: Collect as much performance data, statistics, and logs as possible, which may contain hints or explicit statements of the underlying problem. This may include SQL queries, database statistics, operating system logs, etc.
- Identify the root cause: Work to identify the most fundamental issue, following the chain of causes and effects to its source. If a process is slow, for example, which parts of the process are the bottleneck? Can you use a profiler to break this down further?
- Alleviate the issue: Once the root cause is identified, alert the IT support and/or development teams to the issue’s existence. If possible, find a temporary workaround to the issue while you work on a more permanent resolution.
Datavail has developed a patented, time-tested “5S” methodology to help our clients proactively optimize their Oracle EBS deployments. This approach includes:
- Applying best practices for SQL programming.
- Using data table statistics to make SQL engines more efficient and performant.
- Giving your EBS ecosystem enough space through data lifecycle management, including archiving, purging, and deleting data when appropriate.
- Monitoring user sessions to avoid contention and locking issues.
- Scheduling processes to avoid competition for resources and performance issues.
Want more information about how we help clients fine-tune their Oracle EBS deployments? We wrote the book on it—literally. Check out our white paper “The 5S Approach to Improving Database Performance.”
Conclusion
Performance tuning is an essential best practice for your Oracle EBS deployment, ensuring that your IT infrastructure continues to operate smoothly and reliably. Yet performance tuning is just one of the many interlocking concerns that Oracle EBS users need to consider when managing their environment.
As an Oracle Platinum Partner with 17 different specializations, including Oracle EBS, Datavail has helped countless clients tweak and optimize their EBS deployments through careful, smart performance tuning. To learn more about the complexities of using Oracle EBS, and how you can take steps to resolve them, check out our white paper “The Top 6 Challenges of Managing Oracle EBS Environments.”
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Moving Large Datasets to Oracle EPM Cloud: How to Do It Right
From greater accessibility and flexibility to cheaper storage costs, migrating your financial data to Oracle EPM Cloud has many benefits—but the project needs careful handling. The challenges involved with moving large datasets to the cloud include:
- Selecting the right storage methodology; files, objects, and databases need different handling methods.
- Preparing and cleansing the data (e.g. removing scratch files and backups, or archiving and compressing large amounts of relatively small files).
- Optimizing network transfer speeds and replicating data to multiple regions or cloud providers.
- Scaling the data migration process and avoiding bottlenecks.
- Validating data integrity by checking for corruption and usability after the migration.
- Preparing the data for use once it’s in the cloud.
The good news is that moving large datasets to the cloud is eminently doable as long as you’re able to put in the time and effort—and if you work with the right cloud migration partner. Datavail recently helped one of our clients, a large operator of hundreds of gas stations and retail locations across North America, upgrade their aged Oracle Hyperion HFM deployment and migrate their enterprise performance management (EPM) data to the cloud.
The steps for managing migrations with datasets of this size can include (plan for adjustments based on organizational variety):
- Gathering requirements and performing in-depth analyses of the client’s IT systems.
- Identifying points of improvement while maintaining on-premises functionality. For example, Datavail decreased the number of custom dimensions from 4 down to 2, so that the client could use the standard-size Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close (FCCS) application.
- Building and converting the client’s metadata, including their alternate hierarchies. This included using the Oracle Smart View metadata feature, which is only available in the cloud, to build hierarchies much more quickly than on-premises.
- Discovering errors and inefficiencies within the client’s datasets and reporting functionality.
Datavail has helped more than 150 clients move their enterprise data to the cloud—whether it’s Oracle EPM Cloud like the client in this post, or Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, OCI, or much more. To learn more about how our client saved hours of time during their financial consolidation processes, check out our case study Major Retailer Improves Productivity by Moving to Oracle EPM Cloud.”
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Stakeholder Management: The Key to Application Development Project Success
Stakeholder management is critical to the success of any application development project. Your team can produce an outstanding application, but if the people who have a vested interest in the application aren’t supportive, it’s just wasted effort.
Why You Need to Manage Stakeholders
A stakeholder is anyone who is affected by or can have an effect on an AppDev project. But, it’s important to note that the term stakeholder management is just an easy way to talk about working with stakeholders. In practice, stakeholder management has less to do with managing, and more to do with promoting involvement, communicating, identifying requirements, uncovering and addressing concerns, and coaching.
You need to pay attention to stakeholder management because you’ll receive a number of benefits:
- You’ll reduce risk:You may have been involved in or heard about an AppDev project that was scuttled at the last minute because of the actions of one of the stakeholders. Correctly identifying all the stakeholders and making sure that they and the project team are on the same page will reduce conflict and increase the chances of success.
- Your stakeholders will understand their role:You’ll be able to define the role for each type of stakeholder and they will be able to focus on how they can participate most effectively.
- Your stakeholders will be more involved:Stakeholders can find it difficult to carve time out of their schedules to participate in an AppDev project. With effective stakeholder management, your stakeholders will understand the benefits they’ll receive from participating. This will help them stay engaged and focused on ensuring the project’s success.
How to Design a Stakeholder Management Plan
The process used to manage stakeholders isn’t complicated, but getting it right is essential. There are four steps to follow.
- Identify
Start by identifying a project’s stakeholders. If you’re using the Agile methodology, start by talking to the Product Owner to explore all the people who may be affected by the project.
Internal stakeholders can reside in departments outside of the one you’re working with. Explore how the application you’re developing for one department may affect others. For example, find out if another department provides input that may need to change. Or, if the output from your application will go to another department, you’ll need a stakeholder from that department on your team to ensure a smooth flow of data.
External stakeholders are those people who don’t work for your company, but who still need to be considered. That group can include customers or people in your supply chain, for example.
- Assign Roles
Review the list of stakeholders you’ve identified and determine what role they will play in the project. Use the information you gathered during the Identification step, and wherever possible, interview each stakeholder to confirm their level of influence and interest.
- Prioritize
Not all stakeholders will have the same level of involvement with the finished application, or influence on your project. It’s important to prioritize your list of stakeholders to assign logical roles that give you the participation that you need while meeting the needs of the individuals. These categories will help with the prioritization.
- Group 1 – High influence and high interest: These are the key stakeholders such as Product Owners, project sponsors, or business leaders.
- Group 2 – High influence and low interest: These stakeholders may not be directly affected by the project, but they can influence its result.
- Group 3 – Low influence and high interest: This group can consist of lower-level employees who will be directly affected by the project, but don’t have direct influence. These individuals can make the difference between an enthusiastic work group or an unsupportive one.
- Group 4 – Low influence and low interest: These stakeholders may work in other departments not affected by the project, but they have an interest in how the project is progressing.
- Define Participation/Communication
The last step is to define how each group you’ve prioritized will participate in the project. Some stakeholders will only participate by reviewing project communications, while others will have highly active roles in the project itself.
For example, all stakeholders should receive regular communications from the project team. For those in Group 4, that may be all they’ll need to help them monitor progress. People in Group 2 may need a more active role in terms of providing input into planning sessions and attending sprint demos. People in Groups 1 and 3 will be extremely involved in the project and should participate as much as possible.
Best Practices for Engaging Stakeholders
It’s one thing to define roles for stakeholders and to get their agreement to participate in those roles. It’s another thing for them to follow through. Each stakeholder in an AppDev project has a busy schedule, and it’s easy for them to prioritize the project below their regular activities. These tips can help to provide the motivation stakeholders need to focus on an AppDev project.
- Reinforce the benefits
It’s human nature for people to pay attention to something that benefits them. Stakeholders in an AppDev project need to be reminded of the benefit the final product will offer, as well as the benefit to them of participating in the project.
You can use both formal and informal communication to reinforce those two types of benefits. For some stakeholders, the project may offer business growth opportunities and their participation may help them steer the project to meet business goals. For other stakeholders, the product may benefit them by making their work easier and their participation will ensure that the system addresses their needs.
Work to understand the stakeholders’ motivations and help them to see how the product and their participation offers them personal and professional benefits.
- Get them involved early and often
For those stakeholders where direct involvement is important, make sure they get involved in the early stages of the project. For example, if you’re using Agile methods, invite the right stakeholders to story mapping sessions to get them involved with the development team. You can also invite stakeholders to sprint demos so that they can see the results of their efforts and you can get their feedback.
- Establish trust
Stakeholders will need to go the extra mile to participate in the project. You’ll need to establish a culture of trust within the entire team to motivate stakeholders to put in the effort that’s required. You can build trust with stakeholders by being transparent and telling the truth, even when it’s not popular.
Don’t underestimate the trust issue. It can have the power to make your project a failure or increase the cost and difficulty of completing it.
Final Thoughts
Paying close attention to managing stakeholders will have a significant positive effect on the success of any project, including an AppDev project. If the project team gets too involved in the technical aspects of a project, they will lose sight of the fact that they’re building the application for the stakeholders. Without the support and participation of the stakeholders, the project becomes just a coding exercise.
This situation is only one of the things that can cause an application development project to fail. Our recent whitepaper entitled “4 Reasons Why Application Development Projects Fail” is designed to help you understand the most common reasons why projects fail, and it describes solutions that will help you ensure your project’s success.
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Support Data Management with Datavail’s New MongoDB Backup Tool
Even small and medium businesses generate a LOT of data, much or all of which must be appropriately backed up to facilitate a successful recovery if needed. Unfortunately, the expansion of data types and the drive for digital transformation have made managing those backup and recovery functions especially difficult. There are just too many data types, formats, systems, etc., to accomplish a “simple” backup function, let alone one that allows a swift return to work using a recovered option.
For SMBs relying on MongoDB for their data management needs, one option to resolve this challenge creates another challenge: how to back up the MongoDB files fully without also having to purchase the MongoDB backup and recovery services embedded in MongoDB Ops Manager or MongoDB Cloud Manager.
Fortunately, Datavail has developed a new and supported data backup and recovery option for MongoDB that is fast, reliable, and very well priced. SMBs that need reliable, swift, comprehensive backups but don’t want to pay enterprise-sized fees will appreciate accessing the new opportunity.
Data Backup Is Critical to Corporate Health
Every organization now relies on its data and corporate information to push forward in its market lane. Systems information, supply chains, customers, etc., all contribute critical insights to corporate health and inform decisions for a brighter corporate future.
However, gathering and utilizing all that data also generates the requirement of managing it, storing it, and keeping it safe. Successful backup capacities are also necessities, as these assure leaders they’ll have a reasonably functioning database if something bad should happen to their main engine. Access to supported recovery services also assures them that a recovery is possible even when something bad does happen. Further, with new data breach threats emerging every day, ensuring that comprehensive backup and recovery systems are in place is as much an element of corporate risk management as it is data security.
Despite these realities, many IT departments are increasingly challenged to accomplish these backup and recovery tasks given the depth, breadth, and scope of today’s data pools. Traditional methods aren’t designed to provide all the security and functionality requirements demanded by today’s challenging data types, formats, and sources:
- The task of backing up the vast quantities of information that live in existing data pools is already daunting. Adding the constant flow of incoming information that arrives in unstructured forms and from newly engaged devices creates another level of chaos. Without dedicated thought and attention, insufficient backup systems may corrupt or lose critical corporate details, and those gaps won’t be discovered until after an issue compels a recovery attempt.
- In other cases, backed up and recovered files, etc., might not line up with existing application architecture requirements. Here, older versions of backups may not mesh well or at all with newer iterations of critical corporate programming.
- Failing to engage a high-quality backup capacity also opens the risk of cyber intrusions and crimes. Having a reliable, comprehensive second database available eliminates the possibility of suffering damages caused by cybercriminal threats like ransomware.
While the “big box” cloud providers offer impressive backup and recovery services, for most SMBs, the costs involved in accessing those are prohibitive. MongoDB, for example, offers excellent database backup and recovery options, but companies must purchase the Enterprise level of services to access it, and that may be beyond both their needs and their budget.
Introducing Datavail’s MongoDB Backup Tool
The data backup and recovery professionals at Datavail recognized the challenges posed to SMBs by both the heavy demand for reliable backups and the potentially burdensome cost of the same charged by bigger services providers. They developed the MongoDB Backup Tool to respond economically and comprehensively to those concerns and now offer a fully capable MongoDB backup option that doesn’t require access to either enterprise-grade MongoDB Operations Manager or MongoDB Cloud Manager.
Features of the Datavail Tool
- Because it’s designed to mimic the GPL Percona Backup for MongoDB (pbm), Datavail’s version provides the same functions and capabilities.
- Suited for MongoDB versions 3.0 through 4.4, the programming:
- Offers a hot backup.
- Is able to read from secondary servers.
- Allows for point-in-time recovery.
- Compresses the backup as it runs.
Datavail’s backup servicing process ensures that the backup function accomplishes precisely what’s expected: a high-quality, reliable, and supported version of every file, folder, data bit, and object:
- Connect to MongoDB through the pbm agent.
- Run “pbm config” command to configure the backup location.
- Trigger the pbm backup command to launch the process.
- Create pbm collections in the admin database.
- Gather relevant MongoDB data, including the version number, the replica set name, the primary nodes, etc.
- Run the backup:
- Create necessary backup metadata.
- Confirm the backup location.
- Shift the “start backup” function to “running backup.”
- Identify the “oplog” start position.
- Launch “mongodump.”
- Complete “mongodump.”
- Start “oplogdump.”
- Mark the backup as complete.
The Recovery and Restore service included in the MongoDB Backup Tool adds the establishment of the restoration process to the program. The software follows the backup process paths in reverse, including decompressing the backed-up files and oplogs to recover data when needed.
We’ve launched this new tool as a service in part of a recent project we completed for an online gaming company that saved costs and improved processes. If you’ve got challenges with MongoDB backups, come speak with our experts about this solution.
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The Five Elements of Your On-Premises MongoDB to AWS Migration Strategy
A MongoDB application migration requires coordination between multiple teams, stakeholders, and systems. You need a comprehensive plan to reduce the risk of project failure, allocate resources to support the migration, and remain on-schedule and on-budget.
When migrating from on-premises MongoDB to Amazon Web Services (AWS), you need to consider five key elements when putting together a successful strategy.
AWS Instance Type
The first decision to make is which AWS instance type works best for your MongoDB application. While Amazon EC2 has a variety of options, we recommend M4 or I3 for MongoDB. You also need to determine the amount of memory and storage for the instance.
M4
M4 instance types are well-balanced between compute, memory, and network resources. This general-purpose instance is a good starting point as it can support a wide range of use cases. You can choose between a 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2686 v4 processor or a 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2676 v3 processor on M4.
I3
I3 instance types are bare metal and optimized for high-transaction, low-latency databases, helping you achieve better performance with this type of MongoDB application. You get 15.2 TB of NVMe SSD instance storage, which delivers up to 25 Gbps of bandwidth and high IOPS while remaining affordable for many businesses.
You can directly access physical resources on these bare metal instances to gain greater control and optimization opportunities. These servers are powered by Intel Xeon E5-2686 v4 processors with 36 hyper-threaded cores.
High Availability Strategy
MongoDB uses a replica set to achieve high availability, protecting the database from natural disasters, power and network outages, and hardware failures. When you migrate your application to AWS, you need to select regions and availability zones that are best suited to maintaining high availability. AWS regions are self-explanatory — they are geographic regions for the data centers. Availability zones are specific locations within that region.
MongoDB developers recommend configuring your infrastructure to distribute your replica set across an odd number of data centers. This approach helps you eliminate a single point of failure by spreading replica members throughout many locations.
We recommend at least a five-member replica set for your production environments, with the following configuration:
- One primary: Your primary member in a MongoDB replica set is the only one that receives write operations.
- Four secondary: Your secondary members maintain copies of the primary member’s data set and are read-only.
The total for the replica set always needs to be an odd number. Arbiters are included in old version, but are now being deprecated by MongoDB, however, the total still needs to be odd.
Security Design on AWS
You can expand on MongoDB’s built-in security features through AWS solutions, making your application a challenging target for any malicious actors. The security features to consider in your AWS design include encryption, SSL, networking, firewalls, virtual private networks, and security groups.
MongoDB Migration Plan
Your MongoDB migration plan should cover each step of the process. What teams will assist in the migration, when do systems need to cut over to the cloud-based deployment, and how much will it disrupt your daily operations?
You have a dozen of these details to consider when you create a migration plan that best suits your company’s requirements. What happens if essential technical personnel go on vacation or become ill during the migration process? How do you effectively get buy-in from stakeholders and ensure that you have the budget to complete the migration? What do you hope to gain from moving this application to the cloud?
The more questions you address before your MongoDB migration, the better prepared you will be when the process is underway.
Backup and Recovery Strategy
Your on-premises backup and recovery strategy may not translate to a cloud-based environment, so it’s time to revisit your existing plan. Make sure that your preferred solutions work with AWS and then work properly following the migration.
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