Cognos Analytics Performance Tuning: Tips & Tricks to Rev Performance

COGNOS ANALYTICS
PERFORMANCE TUNING
Tips & Tricks to Rev Performance

• Introduction
• Hardware and Server Specifics
• Architecture
– Distributed Environments
– Failover
– High Availability
• Tuning
– Affinity Requests
– Cognos Services
– Peak/Non Peak
– Concurrent Users
– Monitoring
• Virtual Machines
• Report Specific Tuning
– Interactive Performance Assistant (IPA)
• About Senturus
Agenda
Copyright 2017 Senturus, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Presenters
Todd Schuman
Practice Lead for Installations,
Upgrades and Optimization
Senturus, Inc.
Jim Frazier
VP of Client Services
Senturus, Inc.

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This slide deck is from the webinar:
Cognos Analytics Performance Tuning
Tips & Tricks to Rev Performance
To view the FREE video recording and download this
deck, go to:
http://www.senturus.com/resources/cognos-analytics-
performance-tuning/
Hear the Recording

Supported Software Environment Guide
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27047186

CPU
Use the following processor settings as a starting point and
adjust them based on the usage of your system.
• Content Manager – 4 CPU
• Dispatcher - 8 CPU
• Server can have multiple sockets
• Each socket can house a CPU
• CPU can have 1-48 cores
• Logical processors <> cores
• Hyper threading

RAM
Use the following memory settings as a
starting point and adjust them based
on the memory usage of your system.
• 4 GB for the base operating system and accompanying
software, such as antivirus, back up and enterprise
management software
• 4 GB for a 64-bit Content Manager JVM
• 4 GB for a 64-bit Application Tier JVM
• 1 GB for the Cognos Graphics Service JVM
• 8 GB for the Query Service (Dynamic Query Mode) JVM
• 1.5 GB for each Batch/Interactive Report Service

ARCHITECTURE – DISTRIBUTED
ENVIRONMENTS

Basic Distributed Environment
Dedicated:
• Gateway
• Dispatchers
• Content Manager

Distributed Environment with Failover
Active/Standby Content Manager
• Both pointed to same content store
• First CM to start becomes active
• Standby always checking for active up status
• Will become active when primary becomes
unresponsive

High Availability (HA)
• No single point of failure
• At least 2 of each Cognos component (gateway,
dispatcher, CM)
• Load balancer for gateways

To view the FREE video recording and download this
deck, go to:
http://www.senturus.com/resources/cognos-analytics-
performance-tuning/
The Senturus comprehensive library of recorded
webinars, demos, white papers, presentations and case
studies is available on our website:
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High Affinity Activities
Report Viewer links
• Run again
• Return
HTML Report Navigation
• Top page
• Page up
• Page down
• Bottom page
Delivery Options
• Save
• Save As
• Print
• Email
• Viewing

Low Affinity Activities
Report Querying
• Reporting
• Report processing
Report Authoring
• Metadata retrieval
• Query validation
Administrative
• Testing data source connections
• Adding objects (folders, jobs, schedules, etc.)
• Refreshing portal page

Cognos Services
Agent service Runs agents. If the conditions for an agent are met when the agent runs, the agent service asks the monitor service to run the tasks.
Annotation service Enables the addition of commentary to reports via the IBM Cognos Workspace. These comments persist across versions of the report.
Batch report service Manages background requests to run reports and provides output on behalf of the monitor service.
Content Manager cache service Enhances the overall system performance and Content Manager scalability by caching frequent query results in each dispatcher.
Content Manager service Performs object manipulation functions in the content store, such as add, query, update, delete, move, and copy
Performs content store management functions, such as import and export
Data movement service Manages the execution of data movement tasks in IBM Cognos BI. Data movement tasks, such as Builds and JobStreams, are created in Data Manager Designer and published to IBM Cognos BI.
Delivery service Sends emails to an external SMTP server on behalf of other services, such as the report service, job service, agent service, or data integration service
Event management service Creates, schedules, and manages event objects that represent reports, jobs, agents, content store maintenance, deployment imports and exports, and metrics
Graphics service Produces graphics on behalf of the Report service. Graphics can be generated in 4 different formats: Raster, Vector, Microsoft Excel XML or PDF.
Human task service Enables the creation and management of human tasks. A human task such as report approval can be assigned to individuals or groups on an ad hoc basis or by any of the other services.
Index data service Provides basic full-text functions for storage and retrieval of terms and indexed summary documents.
Index search service Provides search and drill-through functions, including lists of aliases and examples.
Index update service Provides write, update, delete, and administration functions.
Job service Runs jobs by signaling the monitor service to run job steps in the background. Steps include reports, other jobs, import, exports, and so on.
Log service
Records log messages generated by the dispatcher and other services. The log service can be configured to record log information in a file, a database, a remote log server, Windows Event Viewer, or
a UNIX system log.
Metadata service
Provides support for data lineage information displayed in Cognos Viewer, Report Studio, Query Studio, and Analysis Studio. Lineage information includes information such as data source and
calculation expressions.
Metric Studio service Provides the Metric Studio user interface for monitoring and entering performance information
Migration service Manages the migration from IBM Cognos Series 7 to IBM Cognos BI.
Monitor service Manages the monitoring and execution of tasks that are scheduled, submitted for execution at a later time, or run as a background task
Planning administration console
service Manages communication with the Contributor Administration Console.
Planning data service Manages communications for real-time reporting from Contributor plan data in IBM Cognos BI.
Planning job service Manages communications with the Planning Job Server subsystem.
Planning web service Manages communications with Contributor Web and Contributor Add-in for Excel users.
PowerPlay® service Manages requests to run PowerPlay reports.
Presentation service Transforms generic XML responses from another service into output format, such as HTML or PDF
Provides display, navigation, and administration capabilities in IBM Cognos Connection
Query service Manages Dynamic Query requests and returns the result to the requesting batch or report service.
Report data service Manages the transfer of report data between IBM Cognos BI and applications that consume the data, such as IBM Cognos BI for Microsoft Office and IBM Cognos Mobile.
Report service Manages interactive requests to run reports and provides output for a user in IBM Cognos Connection or a studio.
Statistics service
If you install IBM Cognos Statistics, the optional Statistics service is available in IBM Cognos Administration. The Statistics service computes statistical results using the integrated IBM SPSS® statistics
engine. This service generates textual statistics and statistical visualizations.
System service
Defines the Business Intelligence Bus API-compliant service used to obtain application-wide IBM Cognos BI configuration parameters. It also provides methods that normalize and validate locale strings
and map locale strings to locales supported by your application.

Cognos Services (Batch vs Report)
Running Reports
• Batch – running in the
background
⁃ Jobs
⁃ Schedules
⁃ Emails
⁃ Saved output
⁃ Triggers
• Report – interactive, user actively involved and
watching screen

Peak vs Non-Peak
• 24 hour clock
• Defaults
⁃ 7 (am) start
⁃ 18 (6 pm) end
Recommended
• Give report service priority during peak
• Give batch server priority during non peak

Concurrent Users
100:10:1 Rule
100 Named Users
10 Active Users
1 Concurrent User
4000 Named Users = 40 Concurrent Users

Putting it all Together
Affinity + Cognos Service + Peak/Non Peak
Be Aware:
• Each connection is multiplied by the number of processes
⁃ 16 low affinity (8*2)
⁃ 4 high affinity (2*2)
⁃ 20 total connections
• # of CPU * (2-4) = # of connections
• 1.5 GB RAM * # of connections

Report Status

Server Monitoring
Over-utilized Under-Utilized

Traditional vs Virtual

VM Recommendations
• Dedicated
resources
• Enterprise level
host hardware
• 5-10% overhead

Data Explosion!
Data
• Queries/SQL
• SQL execution plan
• Joins/modeling
• Star Schema/data warehouse
• Indexes
• Summary tables
• Cubes (Transformer PowerCubes/Dynamic Cubes)

Interactive Performance Assistant (IPA)
• New with R7
• HTML only
• Enable
⁃ Run option dropdown
⁃ Show run options
⁃ Include performance details
• Output
⁃ Execution time (in milliseconds)
⁃ Rendering time (hover)
⁃ Query time (hover)

BI Assessment and Health Check
FULL BI
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Application and web server configurations, notifications, performance management tools, audit,
high availability options
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Review data structures, queries and relationships, identify bottleneck issues in data staging area,
data mart, data lake, data warehouse
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Data Transformation Layer Review3
Review existing ETL jobs, optimize logic, identify issues and options to improve process; identify
opportunities for self-service
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Metadata Layer Review4
Review existing model, identify issues and possible design flaws
√
Reporting/Dashboarding Review5
Review report and dashboard design, layout, queries, and pages
√
Findings and Recommendations
Detailed documentation on issues related to assessment with proven practices to resolve issues and
improve performance
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Price $9995 $3695
1 – Limited to a total of three servers of various configurations; 2 – Limited to one subject area and five routines;
3 – Limited to one subject area; 4 – Limited to one model; 5 – Limited to three reports/dashboards (reports not to
exceed three pages)

Answers to Questions Asked by Viewers
During the Webinar
QUESTIONS LOG

Q&A: Cognos Performance Tuning
Q: Where can I get this presentation?
A: You can download this presentation deck from our website at
http://www.senturus.com/events/cognos-analytics-
performance-tuning/.
Q: How do we dedicate CPUs to certain pieces if we have our
CM and dispatcher on the same server in Cognos Analytics?
A: There is not a way to “dedicate” CPU to a specific process.
The IBM recommendations are just a starting point for sizing up
hardware. You should actively monitor the servers during peak
use to see if you have more or less than you actually need.
Q: Can you describe where the IPA in Cognos Analytics is?
A: Under run options there is a menu screen. Click the last
checkbox, which will allow you to enable this for a specific
report.

Q: My Cognos Analytics distribution system is well-over specified, but it is
still slow. Is there any documentation or guidance on checking network
traffic, content store speed and data source speed? I am trying to find the
bottlenecks.
A: We are not aware of any specific document on next steps. Check the
database first as that is typically the bottleneck in most performance
related situations.
Q: How do I determine the number of cores using Cognos Analytics since
most of my customers use the standalone installation?
A: You won’t be able to determine what cores are being used by Cognos
Analytics, but you can check on the hardware by running MSINFO32 on
a Windows server.
Q: Is there a way to let consumers see their report run activity in Cognos
Analytics?
A: This was added to 11.0.8. Unfortunately, it’s not possible without
Admin/Manage access prior.

Q: If I run “all” in single server what is the required RAM when
using Cognos Analytics? In addition, what are the RAM
specifications for dispatcher modules?
A: It depends on how many concurrent users you are expecting
as well as other factors such as CQM vs. DQM and report
complexity. We don’t recommend running with less than 16GB,
but would prefer 32GB.
Q: if I have Cognos 11.0.6 and 11.0.8 is available, can I install
over the top of 11.0.6 (like service packs in Cognos BI 10) or is
a fresh install required?
A: Yes, you can install over the top. Make sure to back up your
content store database prior to the install. If you have any
custom files, images or JS you will also want to make sure your
preserve file is setup to protect them.

Q: What are the tuning recommendations for HEAP/garbage
collection in Cognos Analytics?
A: This is an advanced configuration that would need to be
reviewed on a case by case basis. We can help you if you you’d
like a detailed review, contact us at 888 601 6010 ext. 87.
Q: Do data sets need extra memory in Cognos Analytics? We
want to be prepared in our planning for the right amount of
memory.
A: Data sets are Apache Parquet files that are stored in the
content store database. They are brought down locally on the
server when needed and should not require additional memory.
Q: Does Cognos Analytic support Performance Monitoring
Analysis PMA (zippi database)?
A: We have not attempted to try this in v11. It was a bit
experimental even in Cognos BI 10, so it would be up to you to
use in CA11.

Q: Is it possible to delete or archive content administrative
tasks under Administration in Cognos Analytics?
A: You can delete content management tasks such as imports,
exports and upgrade tasks.
Q: Do you think performances are better on cloud IBM or on-
premise servers?
A: There are many factors to take into account when answering
this question. Cloud provides different levels of sizing from
small to large with bare metal servers. You will have more
control over your own on-premise hardware and configuration
so the sky is the limit. It would be up to you to find the best fit
for price vs. performance.
Q: How do we run report activity for consumers in Cognos
Analytics Release 8?
A: You can access the “My Schedules and Activity” by clicking
on the small user icon in the top right corner of CA11.

Q: What migration method do you suggest we use with full
deployment or migration over the existing content store
database in Cognos Analytics?
A: We always recommend using a content store database
backup/restore.
Q: Is it possible to reduce scheduling capability in Cognos
Analytics by assigning reports per day/hour by employee?
A: You can grant access to specific Cognos capabilities around
scheduling. The options available are day, hour, minute, month,
trigger, week, year and priority.
Q: Is there a way to restrict the search to prevent users from
seeing content that they do have access to in Cognos Analytics?
A: We are aware of this defect in prior releases of v11. We are
not sure if it has been resolved yet, but IBM is working to
resolve this quickly.

Q: What is the magic number for total number of affity per process in
Cognos Analytics?
A: There isn’t a magic number, it’s unique for each environment. Please
contact us at 888 601 6010 ext. 87 if you would like to review your
environment.
Q: What are the hardware requirements for Cognos Analytics?
A: Please refer to the following link for IBM hardware recommendations:
https://www.ibm.com/software/reports/compatibility/clarity-
reports/report/html/hardwareReqsForProduct?deliverableId=2B4A13308
DA311E7A1A213628837956C&osPlatforms=AIX&osPlatforms=Linux&os
Platforms=Mobile%20OS&osPlatforms=Solaris&osPlatforms=Windows
Q: Can we use the search option to search by folder in Cognos
Analytics?
A: We are aware of any way to do this currently. You may want to request
this functionality from IBM by using the RFE website:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/?BRAND%20ID=301

Q: How does the hours setting work on Cognos Analytics? Most of my
batch reports run from 7am to 11am.
A: There are many ways to deal with batch reporting, but if you wanted to
have batches running in non-peak hours, you could set peak start hour to
be 11 and peak end hour to be 7. This gives priority to batch services
during non-peak and priority to report services during peak.
Q: Is there a recommended maximum number of recipients for burst
reports in Cognos Analytics? We have a burst report that emails
anywhere between 1,000-10,000 recipients. This report sometimes takes
three hours to complete.
A: That sounds like a large burst which would take some time. There may
be some options to tune this process so please contact us at 888 601
6010 ext. 87 if you would like to schedule a time to review.

Q: Is there a way to set default format for running a report in the
background on Cognos Analytics?
A: We are not aware of any way to define a default format for only
background related reports. It might be possible by editing some of the
source code, but this change would be unsupported and at risk for future
releases.
Q: To increasing performance in Cognos Analytics, do you recommend
we save upload files in Content Store, in file system or in object store?
A: We typically stay away from using an object store as there are some
risks involved with that approach. Click on the link to get additional
information on where to store your uploaded files:
https://www.ibm.com/communities/analytics/cognos-analytics-
blog/where-is-data-uploaded-into-cognos-analytics-stored/

Q: What is the total execution time available for all users with Cognos
Analytics?
A: This defaults to zero which has no limit. You can set it to something if
you see a lot of long running reports that are eating up all of your
resources.
Q: Is the total execution time (IPA) option available for all users?
A: This is for report developers. If you have the ability to edit reports, you
can access this functionality.
Q: Can we choose size limit by roles/groups per upload of data in the
configuration menu? The default is 100 MB, is that for all users?
A: Not currently, but if you would like to see it added, please request it via
the RFE website at:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/?BRAND%20ID=301

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