Central Objects on AS/400

jeff_carey

Member
We are currently on B73.2.1 and beginning our upgrade to Xe. During this
process, we'd like to move our Central Objects from the Oracle database on
our very old (3+ years) deployment server to the AS/400 (which is our
Enterprise Server). We have been warned that performance will be slow,
but it's hard to imagine that performance on our 12 way 840 would be worse
than what we have no on our ancient Deployment Server.

Does anyone have experience moving Central Objects to the AS/400? How is
the performance? What's the size compared with that of the equivalent
Oracle database?


Jeff Carey
Technical Specialist
iSeries400 Technology
Infrastructure & Operations
 
Hi Jeff

My two cents...

We moved from SQL to AS400 when moving from B7332 to XE. We have a small AS400 and noticed a big drop in performance when building full client packages. I suspect some of our problems are probably as a result of our set up, so we probably not a good site to use for comparison on the performance side. Other AS400 sites have told me it takes about 8hrs for a full client package build on an AS400.

We found the size of Central Objects to be actually smaller on the AS400 - from 2.2gb on SQl to 1.8gb on the AS400.

Our two main reasons for moving our Central Objects to AS400 is because we have stronger AS400 skills inhouse than SQL, and the cost of additional SQL licenses.

Regards
Terry

OW XE SP14.2 ES=AS400 V4R5 (with Central Objects), DS=NT4.0 SP6. Fat Clients only
 
Terry :

AS/400 is a great platform, but its performance with JDE Central Objects
is poor. I'm still not sure if this issue is due to Client Access ODBC
drivers or to DB2/400 itself.
Wehn you build a full client package, Deployment literally pulls
millions of BLOBs (binary) Central Objects records from its location
(AS/400) to your Deployment, this makes a lot of network traffic and
exerts pressure on your DB2/400 database.
Full client packages take 3 to 4 hours on 384 Mb RAM, 700 Mhz Deployments
with Central Objects residing on NT Enterprise Servers.
In your case, I would buy an extra 18 Gb disk for your Deployment,
install SQL Server on it and put your C.O. locally there.
Your package times will drop significantly and your network traffic
during spec build will decrease too.
C.O. are quite easy to administer, and they don't require sophisticated
tuning and rocket science gurus.
In fact, 90% of my activity with SQL Central Objects is to backup them
(the rest is installing ESUs).
Feel free to write me if you need further details,

Sebastian Sajaroff
 
Re: RE: Central Objects on AS/400

Sebastian

I agree with you that it would be quicker for the package builds. Our other problem is we don't have enough SQL licenses. Every user that signs onto OW will access the Central Objects and, therefore, needs a SQL licence.

Our Full Client Package builds take about 38hrs (Our AS400 is quite small). However for one of our pathcodes it takes about 168hrs (yes 1 week!). I'm still working on this one but I'm struggling to find the bottle neck. The AS400 is not being exerted at all, and I can watch, painfully, the number of records being pulled from F98741 - about 15 records per second. Our Active->Wait figures are up to about 800 but the other stats seem to look ok (I think). Our Deployment Server is a PIII dual-processor with 512mb memory, and we have a 100mb ethernet connection between the two machines.
The issue that confuses me is that it is fine for all the other pathcodes except for one. I haven't recreated the CO indexes yet but is the next step. I've also looked at the AS400 TCP settings based on GATS documented recommendations but don't know too much about this area. Any suggestions here would be great too.


Any suggestions would be most welcome :)

Regards
Terry

OW XE SP14.2 ES=AS400 V4R5 (with Central Objects), DS=NT4.0 SP6. Fat Clients only
 
We moved Central Objects from SQL Server on the Deployment server to the AS/400. Full package builds now take 24 hours (8 locally on deployment server - 16 for the AS/400) where they used to take 8 hours total. I'm not sure how much of that is just the difference in the package build process itself (we moved from B7322) Other than full package builds, I do not notice a difference.
 
AW: Central Objects on AS/400

Hi Jeff,

I have experience with an 8 way 830. A full server package build is below 1h
on the AS/400. If we build a full client package it takes us less than 4h,
so in total its about 5h for a full server and client package build. The
bottleneck is the client package build and not the server.

Thomas

igepa IT Service
CNC consultant

Xe, V4R5M0, AS/400, SP16.1_10, W2k

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: [email protected] [mailto:eek:[email protected]]Im
Auftrag von jeff_carey
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 17. Oktober 2001 18:30
An: [email protected]
Betreff: Central Objects on AS/400


We are currently on B73.2.1 and beginning our upgrade to Xe. During this
process, we'd like to move our Central Objects from the Oracle database on
our very old (3+ years) deployment server to the AS/400 (which is our
Enterprise Server). We have been warned that performance will be slow,
but it's hard to imagine that performance on our 12 way 840 would be worse
than what we have no on our ancient Deployment Server.

Does anyone have experience moving Central Objects to the AS/400? How is
the performance? What's the size compared with that of the equivalent
Oracle database?


Jeff Carey
Technical Specialist
iSeries400 Technology
Infrastructure & Operations




--------------------------
 
Re: RE: Central Objects on AS/400

Hello Terry,
I was curious as to the environment that you are having this long package build time in? I currently have this issue in only one enviroment as well and am slightly stumped. I have the same type of issue in the development environment where full package builds take about 3 times as long.

Thanks for any info.
 
Re: RE: Central Objects on AS/400

Hi All

Thanks to Mario's suggestion (see below), we have managed to half our time to run a Client Package build (down to 19hrs from 38hrs). I don't think we will be able to make much more improvement now on this without replacing our hardware.

Reply from Mario...

Terry, we had a similar problem several years ago. The solution was to make
sure compression is on for the CO ODBC datasource.
Regards,_____________________________
Mario Amantea

Thanks all for your help!

Kind regards
Terry

OW XE SP14.2 ES=AS400 V4R5 (with Central Objects), DS=NT4.0 SP6. Fat Clients only
 
Re: RE: Central Objects on AS/400

A general rule of thumb, is the larger the i-Series (AS/400) the quicker the Package Build times. A few tips which I have used to increase Package Build times when CO's are in DB2.

RAID-5 settings on Dep Server (If it is being used to build Packages).
This should cause an improvement on the Bus Build.

Turn off any Anti Virus software on the Build machine for the duration of the Package Build.

Make sure youe Ethernet Line Description is properly defind, if the AS/400 is plugged into a hub, it will generally only give a 100Mb Halpf Duplex conncetion, if it is plugged into a switch you will benefit from 100Mb Full duplex. Also on the AS/400 and the Build Machine hardcode the network speed. Again if everything can be forced through at 100Mb Full duplex you will save time with the hardware not having to do look ups. This is useful for the Client specs and tranferring your PAK files and C files to the AS/400. Sorry if anyone is still on Token Ring.

On your Central Objects ODBC connections play around with the number of rows that get pulled back and determine if it is a help or a hinderence.

Hope this helps
 
RE: RE: Central Objects on AS/400

If you haven't already looked at this, there is also a GATS document
"Configuring Multiple Job Queues for Use By OneWorld" that recommends using
a multi-threaded queue for package builds. We have set this up, but have not
yet had the opportunity to give it a good test. Our previous experience has
been that the server build takes about the same time as the client build, so
we hope this will cut down the server build time.

We have a large ESU to apply in the next couple of weeks, so will give it a
test then.



Xe, SP 15.1, Update 2, ES=AS/400 V4R5, CO=AS/400, Deployment=AS/400 INS Card, Thick & Citrix Clients
 
RE: RE: Central Objects on AS/400

We have used a Queue with 2 threads for Months and it
works fine. The only limitation to how many threads
is making sure there is still enough processor to
continue communicating to the client doing the build.
If you open too many threads, everything comes to a
halt.
--- lessardj <[email protected]> wrote:
http://198.144.193.139/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showflat.pl?Cat=0&Board=OW&Number=23277
-+


=====
Dan Eppich
The Anschutz Corporation
B7332 Coexistant, V4R5 w/central objects
INS Card deployment server
SP16.1
Optio DCS 6.3.2
Fat and Citrix ICA Web Client

__________________________________________________
 
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