The Power of 64-bit

Essbase

Edward Roske

interRel Consulting

Tim Tow

Applied OLAP

Disclaimer

These slides represent the work and opinions

of the presenter and do not constitute official

positions of Hyperion or any other

organization.

This material has not been peer reviewed and is

presented here with the permission of the

presenter.

This material should not should not be

reproduced without the written permission of

interRel Consulting or Applied OLAP.

Today‟s Agenda

• Introductions

• What 64-bit Essbase really means

• What platforms are supported, and for what

versions

• Strategies for scaling

About Applied OLAP

5

interRel - Founded in 1997

• 25+ Hyperion Presentations at Collaborate

• Founding Hyperion Platinum Partner; now an

Oracle Certified Partner

• Focused on Oracle Hyperion software

• 100% of our consultants are Hyperion Certified

Professionals

• 250+ projects completed

• Optimization improvements of more than 99%

• Regular presenter at Hyperion‟s users‟ groups and solutions

conferences

• Free weekly Thursday webcasts (info@interrel.com)

Look Smarter Than You Are

with Essbase

• 3 Essbase Books Available:

– Complete Guide

– System 9 Complete Guide

– End User Guide

• Find out more at

www.interrel.com

• Search lulu.com for „Essbase‟ to

see all 3 books

Copyright © 2007, Hyperion. All rights reserved.6

Quick Polls

• Operating Environment

• Hardware Vendor

• Interest in 64-bit Essbase

16-bit vs. 32-bit vs. 64-bit

128-bit Essbase – Coming

Soon• Supports outlines of up to 21024 members

(theoretical)

• Will address up to 2 gBs (GoogolBytes) of data

• In a laboratory, they were able to build an

Essbase cube that can store the current contents

of the internet

• “The plan” is to enter beta testing “sometime after

this year”

Okay, now seriously.

HP/Hyperion Press Release

• …unmatched scalability and performance, lower total

cost of ownership (TCO) and a secure investment as

scalability requirements increase over time

• …even more users can handle increasingly large

data volumes and create even more complex and

numerous analytical applications

• …going deeper into data and across the enterprise

with no compromise to performance or end-user

functionality

• …tangible improvements in performance and

scalability

AMD/Hyperion Press

ReleaseThe new access to 64-bit versions of Essbase Analytics and

Enterprise Analytics allows Hyperion and AMD customers to

run larger analytical models in less time, extend the potential

size of their analytic applications, increase the number of

concurrent users, and boost the number of analytic

applications running at any given time. Tests show a 50%

reduction in processing time for some Enterprise Analytics

file loads when moving from current 32-bit processors to 64-

bit processors.

The real benefits, in our

opinion…

1. Build larger databases

2. Improve performance by using enterprise-

class hardware

3. Improve performance by testing various

existing settings

Larger Databases

• 32-bit Databases were limited in size

– Code limited at ~14 million members

– Practical limitation of ~8 million members

• Partitioning provides a passable solution

• 64-bit Databases are practically unlimited

– Several customers have tested >8 million

member outlines

– Hyperion Development has tested 80 million

member databases

Specific Differences in 32-bit

and 64-bit Essbase

32-bit 64-bit

Maximum Data/Data File

Cache

2/3/4 GB* Unlimited**

Parallel Calc Threads (BSO) 4 8

Parallel Load Threads (ASO) 16 32

Agent & Server Threads 500 1024

Default Retrieval Buffers 10 KB 20 KB

Maximum Outline Size 8 million Unlimited**

* Dependant on the Operating System

** For all current practical purposes

Old settings, new world

• Covered Today:

– Data Cache

– Parallel Calculation/Aggregation

– Dense/Sparse

– I/O Mode

• Revisit Others:

– Index Cache

– Dynamic Calc

– Attribute Dimensions

– More…

The 7.1.4 Admin Services

Trap

Essbase 7.1.4

EAS 7.1.4

EAS 7.1.6

EAS Console

Using

MEMSCALINGFACTOR

• This is required to increase the Data

(Buffered I/O) and Data File Cache (Direct

I/O) sizes

• Set in essbase.cfg:

MEMSCALINGFACTOR Sample Basic 1000

• Technical Reference uses an example of 32

• Reported differently in EAS vs. MaxL (7.1.4)

Platform Support

Enterprise-Class Hardware

• Amazing performance advances have been

made in all levels of servers in the past five

years

• When you want to build monstrous cubes,

buy a monstrous server

• CPU‟s are more parallel

• Memory is faster and more efficient

• Disk and network I/O is blazingly fast (and flexible!)

64-bit Support in Essbase

• As of 9.3 forward:

– Linux is still 32-bit only

– Windows sites have a choice of 32 or 64-bit

Essbase

Essbase 7 Essbase 9

HP-UX 7.1.4 9.0 +

Windows 2003 IA-64 7.1.4 9.0 +

Solaris 9, 10 9.3 +

AIX 5.2, 5.3 9.3 +

Windows 2003 x64 9.3 +

64-bit Adoption – Industry

View• HP-UX, AIX, and Solaris have been 64-bit Operating Systems for nearly

a decade

• ISV adoption has been slow, customer adoption even slower

Product First 64-bit Release Date

Microsoft SQL Server SQL Server 2000 May 2002

Microsoft SQL Server SQL Server 2005 Nov 2005

Oracle 10g Release 1 May 2004

Oracle 10g Release 2 Jul 2006

IBM DB2 8.1 Nov 2002

BEA WebLogic 8.1 Mar 2003

SAP R/3 Apr 2003

Hyperion Essbase 6.5 Aug 2004

Scalability Techniques

Scalability Goals

1. Reduce the calc/agg time for a single

database

2. Reduce the complete batch cycle

3. Server consolidation

Technique 1: Increase Block

Size • Essbase DBA Guide (which is wrong, by the way):

“A data block size of 8Kb to 100Kb provides optimal

performance in most cases.”

• With the 64-bit engine, larger blocks in the 1 MB range have

shown significant reductions in calculation times

• Performance gains are attributable to wider bandwidth disk and

memory buffer subsystems handling larger I/O chunks

Technique 2: Increase

CALCPARALLEL• Parallel Calculation has two components:

– Threads

– Task dimensions

• Set up a batch job to test each database for suitability

• Performance gains attributable mainly to advanced parallelism in modern

CPU design

Threads 1 2 3 4

Task Dims 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2

Database A 1000 1100 900 910 850 860 700 775

Database B 2000 2050 1500 1350 1400 1300 1375 1250

Technique 3: Increase

Database Parallelism• 32-bit Windows systems usually see one or two

simultaneous batch jobs

• Enterprise-class servers can handle dozens of

simultaneous jobs

• Performance gains attributable to advanced

parallelism in modern CPU design

Time to

complete

job Time to

complete

job

Technique 4: Increase Data

Cache• Increasing the data cache can significantly decrease the

amount of time to calculate a BSO cube

• Watch for diminishing returns

Performance due to I/O and system buffer improvements, but this is also

required with larger database designs

Time

Data Cache

Technique 5: Undo previous

workarounds

• There are many ways to take “shortcuts” with Essbase:

– Dynamic Calc/Dynamic Calc and Store

– Reducing the number of dimensions, or combining

– “Unnatural” Dense/Sparse settings

• Quite often these settings will have an adverse effect in the face of other 64-bit optimizations where the data throughput is much greater and more linear

Technique 6: Try Direct I/O

• Direct I/O has been explicitly NOT

recommended by Hyperion for years

• With more expensive storage subsystems

this setting can work by giving them more

control over reads and writes

• Expect +/- 20% performance impact

• Hyperion might be turning this option off for

good

Performance due to I/O improvements

Summary of Scalability

Scenarios

Single Batch Consolidation

1MB Block Size

Parallel Calc

Simultaneous Loads

Data Cache

Undo Workarounds

Direct I/O

Intended Purpose

Apply Caution

64-bit Essbase – Key Points

• Be careful when reading press releases

• There is now no known ceiling to Essbase

cube size

• Every cube is different (still)

• Understand your performance goals before

starting to test

• Spending the time to optimize can pay big

dividends

interRel is ready to assist you with 64-bit

migration and optimization

128-bit Essbase – Coming

Soon• Supports outlines of up to 21024

members (theoretical)

• Will address up to 2 GoogolBytes of

data

• In a laboratory, they were able to build

an Essbase cube that can store the

current contents of the internet

Questions and AnswersThank you!!!

Edward Roske

interRel Consulting

Tim Tow

Applied OLAP