Glitches can occur in even the best run IT operations. In this session, Accelrys support experts will share tips and tricks for proactively managing the performance of your ELN and detailed strategies for troubleshooting issues when they arise. Discussions will draw from real-world experience and will provide you with detailed strategies to leverage Accelrys support and minimize the time required to diagnose an issue.

1. (ATS3-APP14) Troubleshooting
Symyx Notebook client performance
Mike Wilson
Advisory Product Manager
mike.wilson@accelrys.com

2. The information on the roadmap and future software development efforts are
intended to outline general product direction and should not be relied on in making
a purchasing decision.

3. Agenda
• Notebook application overview
• System performance – a complex set of relationships
• Assessing Notebook performance
• Leveraging Accelrys support
• Q&A

4. Notebook High-Level Architecture
Oracle Content
Data Warehouse
Direct Cartridge
Management
Accelrys Vault Server Pluggable Automation
Services Studio
Services Lab
Administration Registration
Automation
Authorization
Workflow Workflow Repository Index Query
Designer Material
Registration OpenEye
Configuration Windows Communication Foundation Material
Management Discovery
Authentication Lookup
Gate W-S
Symyx Notebook by Accelrys
Framework Platform
Notebook Platform
Accelrys Draw
Experiment Notebook Materials &
Reporting Search Renditor
Editor Browser Chemistry

5. Symyx Notebook Deployment
• Centralized Deployment
– App servers located close to
database server
– Clients installed locally or accessed
centrally via Citrix
• Scaling
– Multiple app servers behind load
balancer
– Database clustering via Oracle
tools
• Virtualization
– VMWare ESX server support
– Citrix XenApp client support

6. Response Time Breakdown
• Response time can be divided into 9 components
– Client processing
– Network transit from client to middle tier
– Middle tier processing
– Network transit from middle tier to database tier
– Database tier processing
– Network transit from database tier to middle tier
– Middle tier processing
– Network transit from middle tier to client
– Client processing
• The key to understanding a performance problem is to isolate these 9 components to
determine which contributes most to the problem. With that information it becomes
possible to define an approach to solving the problem that will yield the largest
improvement.

7. A day in the life….
• “Hello, Help Desk, Mike speaking…”
– “This is Conrad in the lab. I’m trying to save a Notebook document and it’s taking FOREVER! It never
used to do this but now it’s so slow that I can’t do anything!”
• “Hmmm… Did you try re-booting your computer?”
– “Are you serious?”
• “Okay…we’ll take a look at the server and see what’s going on.”
• A few hours later…
• “Hey Conrad, this is Mike from the Help Desk. Is Notebook working better now?”
– “Let me check. Wow, it’s fast again! What did you do?”
• “We checked the servers and everything looked fine. Must have been a temporary glitch.
I will mark your trouble ticket resolved.”
And the next day? Guess who’s calling again…

8. Getting Started
• Performance problems can be intermittent, based on
qualitative assessments (seems slower), and are
generally of unknown (at the time) origin
• Pre-requisites to a positive troubleshooting experience
– Up to date network diagram for your deployment
– Baseline performance data based on periodic measurements

9. First Questions…
• Is the problem localized or widespread?
• Can it be easily reproduced?
• Can the problem be isolated to a specific response time
component?
• Your toolkit
– Client-side logging
– Network application monitors
– Network health monitors

10. The next question…What Changed?
• Multi-tier systems have many moving parts that are typically managed by many
groups (or companies!)
– Database hardware, OS, Oracle, database instance
– Middle tier hardware, OS, IIS, firewall, AV, proxy, domain contact
– Client tier OS, patch set, pushed app configuration
– Virtualization/shared services creates another complication
– # of users, changes to system configuration
• One of the first challenges is to figure out what is different today, your toolkit
includes:
– Installation Qualification, Operation Qualification
– Health monitors
– Periodic configuration/status reports (database and app tier)
– Change history log that tracks all configuration changes made to the system

11. Tools for Troubleshooting SN
Performance

12. Periodic Performance Baselines
• Consistent, periodic
baselines aid later
troubleshooting
– Important to run across sites
• Accelrys provides a
standard set of tests via the
support team
– Use of the same tests can
allow comparison to Accelrys
performance testing

13. Client Performance Logging
• Client performance logging is
enabled in the app config file
– Login performance is tracked by
default
– Check-in, Check-out, Script
performance must be enabled
manually
• Logs can be easily analyzed in Excel
– Append multiple logs
– Date/Time in GMT
– User and source computer captured
• Tip: log periodic baselines for easy
analysis

14. Change Logs
• A complete chronology from the initial install to present detailing
what changes have been made to the system – this should include
but not be limited to the following:
– How and when users were added to the system
– Changes to workflow
– Any customizations that were introduced, and the source code, tests,
requirements
• Scripts
• Custom forms
• Custom workflow activities
• Custom Web services
• What (if any) adapters are installed

15. Leveraging Accelrys Support

16. Customer Resources
• Line up the following resources to assist the Accelrys
support team
– Database tier owner (DBA)
– Middle tier owner (OS/IIS)
– Network analyst (load balancer, DNS, etc.)

17. System Configuration Info
• Site audit
– Current deployment network diagram
– Adapters that are part of the deployment
– # of users, # of PSDs
– IQ/OQ from most recent upgrade/install
• Change log from initial install to present
– History of user expansion in system
– Customizations that have been introduced (and when)

18. Operational Data
• Middle Tier
– All Vault debug logs
– Configuration files
– Windows event logs
– Ping times to/from client and database
– CPU utilization reports
– Load balancer configuration
• Database Tier
– Strongly recommended: AWR and ADDM reports from periods with good as well as bad
performance (requires Oracle Diagnostics Pack)
– Oracle health monitor report
– Verify that statistics are up to date and are collected regularly
– CPU and disk utilization reports

19. CSI: Symyx Notebook
Common root causes taken from real support cases:
• General slowdowns gradually getting worse over time
– Oracle database statistics jobs were not running. Without up to date statistics,
Oracle queries become progressively more inefficient
• Periodic slowdowns affecting all users
– Oracle tablespace extent size set very low causing frequent extensions to
tablespaces, slowing response as disk was allocated
• Some users get fast responses while others are slow
– Load balancer distribution overloaded one server while others were lightly used
• Saving documents extremely slow while browse/open are normal
– Problem eventually isolated to a network link that was slow in one direction

20. Summary
• Effective performance troubleshooting benefits from a
consistent approach and strong collaboration between
your team and Accelrys support
• Resources
– Notebook IT/Admin forum on the Accelrys Community
• Email support@accelrys.com to join
– Troubleshooting guidance: support@accelrys.com

21. The information on the roadmap and future software development efforts are
intended to outline general product direction and should not be relied on in making
a purchasing decision.
For more information on the Accelrys Tech Summits and other IT & Developer
information, please visit:
https://community.accelrys.com/groups/it-dev