Optimal Configuration for Applications Manager – KB803

The following document describes the optimal hardware configuration required for running the OpenLM Applications Manager on your server.

Our recommendations are as follows:

• VM network controller should be available for each network card
• For compilers that perform multiple checkout/checkin operations per second, we recommend a hardware specification that is 25%-50% higher than the ones specified in the table at the end of this document.

For example:

• VM Administrators should make sure that the hosting server is capable of accommodating the required resources.
• When seeing low performance in DB queries, please check disk queue.
• We strongly recommend placing the DB in the same Data Center as the OpenLM Server.
• See recommendations for MS SQL Server below.
• For MySQL we provide a sample configuration file for Windows (my.ini) & Linux (my.cnf) that should be revised by your DBA.

Best practices for using MySQL #

1. Use the latest 5.7/8 MySQL release.
2. In order to fully utilize the system’s resources, MySQL requires its configuration file (my.cnf/my.ini) to be set with the correct values. Otherwise MySQL will not take advantage of the hosting machine’s resources. We recommend some settings – please see our suggestions for configuration files archived in a .zip format according to your system size:
   4GB_2Cores_Windows
   8GB_4Cores_Windows
   16GB_8Cores_Linux
   16GB_8Cores_Windows
   24GB_8Cores_Windows

Best practices for using MS SQL Server #

1. Customers need to apply a maintenance plan consisting of:

1. Periodic Statistics Update
2. Periodic Rebuild or Reorganization of IndexesDBAs need to apply company maintenance policy also for OpenLM DB. In the case where one does not exist, a public package can be applied.

2. Recommended memory allocation for MSSQL Server running (almost) exclusively on a Windows machine should not exceed 80% of total machine memory.

3. OpenLM database should have is_read_committed_snapshot_on parameter set.

To check if it is set:

SELECT is_read_committed_snapshot_on FROM sys.databases WHERE name= ‘YourDatabase’ 

To set:

DECLARE @sqlCommand varchar(1000)
DECLARE @db_name varchar(50)
SET @db_name = ‘YourDatabase’
SET @sqlCommand = ‘ALTER DATABASE ‘ + @db_name + ‘ SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION ON ‘
EXEC (@sqlCommand)
SET @sqlCommand = ‘ALTER DATABASE ‘ + @db_name + ‘ SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE ‘
EXEC (@sqlCommand)
SET @sqlCommand = ‘ALTER DATABASE ‘ + @db_name + ‘ SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON ‘
EXEC (@sqlCommand)
SET @sqlCommand = ‘ALTER DATABASE ‘ + @db_name + ‘ SET MULTI_USER ‘
EXEC (@sqlCommand)

4. For better performance we recommend installing tempdb, databases and log files on separate logical (and in some cases – even physical) disks. A solid installation would have:

1. 1- disk for tempdb Data (ssd configuration is recommended)
2. 1- disk for system DBs (msdb, model, master)
3. 1- disk for all logs (including tempdb logs)
4. 1- disk for all DBs Data

5. tempdb has a critical role, having all parameters, temporary tables and executing sorts and aggregations. Number of tempdb data files is recommended to be the same as number of processors – up to 8 (more will have no effect or a negative effect on performance).

6. Autogrowth units of database files is set by default to a percentage, which is dangerous. A good practice would be to use MB units, based on a predicted growth multiplied by record size. In any case, setting alerts on disk size is recommended.

7. It is recommended to set the log size upfront.

8. A regular backup program is recommended in order to be able to resume after crashes and to control the growth of log files. Shrinking a database is bad practice and is not recommended.