Final VERITAS i3 for Oracleeval.veritas.com/downloads/pro/precise_wp/Oracle_WP.pdf14. Benefits of...

1

T U T O R I A L : W H I T E P A P E R

VERITAS i3 for Oracle

APPLICATION PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT USING VERITAS i3 FOR ORACLE

Copyright 2002 VERITAS Software Corporation. All rights reserved. VERITAS, VERITAS Software, the VERITAS logo, and all other VERITAS product names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of VERITAS Software Corporation in the US and/or other countries. Other product names and/or slogans mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Specifications and product offerings subject to change without notice. June 2002.

2

1. Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................................... 3 2. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................... 3 3.The Typical Environment ................................................................................................................................... 4 4. Challenges Managing the Environment ............................................................................................................. 4

4.1 Traditional Performance Tools Have Failed.................................................................................................. 5 4.2 “Blamestorming”......................................................................................................................................... 5

5. The VERITAS i3 Methodology ........................................................................................................................... 6 6. VERITAS i3 for Oracle ...................................................................................................................................... 6 7. VERITAS i3 Components .................................................................................................................................. 6 8. VERITAS i3 Features ........................................................................................................................................ 7

8.1 Role-based Administration.......................................................................................................................... 7 8.2 View Performance Management End-to-End................................................................................................ 8 8.3 Detect Problems Using Real-Time Alerts ..................................................................................................... 8 8.4 Detect Problems Proactively ....................................................................................................................... 9

9. Find the Source ............................................................................................................................................... 9 9.1 Isolate Performance Problems By Tier......................................................................................................... 9 9.2 SmarTune Isolates Performance Problems to One Tier ............................................................................10 9.3 Drill Into The Oracle Database Tier.............................................................................................................10

10. Focus on the Reason ....................................................................................................................................11 10.1 Focus on the Oracle SQL Statement ........................................................................................................11 10.2 Understand The SQL Statement...............................................................................................................11

11. Improve the Situation.....................................................................................................................................12 11.1 SmarTune Recommends Indexes to Improve Performance........................................................................12 11.2 Automatically Analyze and Display Impact ................................................................................................12 11.3 Simulate Your Changes ...........................................................................................................................13

12. Verify your solution........................................................................................................................................13 12.1 Verify Performance from a Database Perspective......................................................................................13

13. Verify Performance from an End-to-End Perspective .......................................................................................14 14. Benefits of VERITAS i3 for Oracle Solution......................................................................................................14 15. Summary ......................................................................................................................................................15


3

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY When end-user response time slows down productivity suffers and, ultimately, so does the business. Slow response times drive a wedge between the business and its customers and partners. The longer and more frequent the slowdowns, the more risk of damaging relations and losing future business. The complexity and scope of mission-critical Oracle-based applications lend themselves to some interesting and difficult challenges. In the past you could just buy more hardware or hire more technical staff. Today, with tighter budget constraints and priority on maximizing your return on existing investments, it is imperative that you consider performance solutions that can optimize end-user response times for your production applications.

2. INTRODUCTION Mission-critical applications are a major source of competitiveness and productivity for virtually all companies today, yet these applications typically do not perform adequately or scale efficiently in a production environment. The effect can be hundreds or even thousands of concurrent users waiting unproductively due to slow application response times. These applications exploit existing investments and leverage new technologies such as J2EE and application servers (e.g. BEA WebLogic, Oracle 9iAS) to meet time to market requirements. However, the combination of multiple tiers, distributed processing, new technologies and the reliance on a public network have significantly stressed the existing portfolio of performance management tools. For example, the new Oracle 9i database is loaded with advanced new features, some of which will relieve DBA staff of tedious or administratively complex tasks. But with new features and simplicity of use comes architectural complexity. Consider that when Oracle first released version five of its database it was distributed on several floppy diskettes. The newly released 9i version is distributed on three CD’s for the software alone with an additional 123 manuals available on line. Similarly, Oracle 9i is accompanied by Oracle9iAS application server and various enterprise-scale application suites with thousands of modules and even more SQL statements. To avoid slow application response times and the resulting loss in end-user productivity, lost revenue, and unrealized return on IT investments, adequate measurements must be made on a continuous basis. To be meaningful, those measurements must be associated with application end-user response times and made to facilitate identification of individual contributors. Only then, can appropriate and timely decisions be made regarding application performance tuning, design, or architectural changes. Unfortunately, the complexity of today’s business applications has provided some very difficult challenges to accurate, end-to-end performance measurements. In fact, one of the biggest single challenges facing IT is finding a repeatable and understandable way to measure the service levels of each application and to employ that information in the delivery of outstanding application end-user response times to customer, partners, and internal users.


4

3.THE TYPICAL ENVIRONMENT

Figure 1. Transactions May Cross Multiple Technology Tiers

Today’s typical transaction in an Oracle-based application environment may cross three to four tiers depending on the breadth and scope of the application. As you can see in Figure 1, the management of this “simple” application spread across a multi-tier environment demands a comprehensive way to detect early signs of application latency, but also identify and help to correct the root cause of performance degradation before the end-user or business is adversely affected. Even in the simple cases (two tier cases) Application Performance Management has become much more difficult. DBA’s are finding that distributed application technology is rapidly outpacing their skill sets. In addition, as applications span more than two tiers, the DBA finds that he or she can no longer tune the whole environment. Performance problems that were isolated and correctable at the database level by DBA’s have now become the subject of multiple department meetings and decisions by company management at multiple levels. Of course, with higher visibility applications and multiple departmental decisions come cultural and political issues that work to delay application performance corrections.

4. CHALLENGES MANAGING THE ENVIRONMENT One of the top challenges that IT management face today with application performance is the distributed multi-tier aspect of those applications. As alluded to above, in a typical IT environment, a different department or group manages each technology tier. These departments don’t speak the same language. Within each tier, performance management is done using their specific technology measurement techniques. This information is communicated within the group using the same semantics and most of the information uses ratios that do not translate well into another management group with a different set of technology measurements. For example, the network group may talk about network utilization, the Oracle DBAs may talk about buffer cache hit ratios, the storage people may talk about the number of I/Os, etc. This brings to mind an ancient story that many of you may recognize. Specifically, one quote comes to mind.

"Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." – Book of Genesis


5

Managing the challenge in today’s complicated application environments requires a common language that can unite the various departments involved in application performance. This common language would allow all the groups to communicate with the same semantics and make it significantly easier for a CIO or IT Director to make the correct decisions. The semantics of the common language is application end-user response time and some of the barriers that stand in the way are: • Collecting, aggregating and correlating data from multiple heterogeneous sources along a transaction path through

the IT infrastructure. • Capturing enough data to enable the problem resolution. Enough data means a wealth of data entities and for each

entity relevant data metrics like service-times, number of invocations, throughput, wait time, etc. • Building one integrated performance view that aligns performance information from individual tiers to the same

business view using the same metrics and terminology. • Monitoring of production environments 7x24 without adding additional overhead. • Coping with unpredictable load periods and handling massive transaction/data volumes. • Using low overhead techniques, which have minimal impact on the monitored system.

4.1 TRADITIONAL PERFORMANCE TOOLS HAVE FAILED Traditional Oracle performance tools attempted, with limited success, to meet the performance management challenges of business. Since these tools adopted a “stove pipe” approach they were limited in their ability to correlate performance between the different infrastructure components. “Stove piped” solutions force technical experts to spend an excessive amount of time correlating multiple metrics to pinpoint the cause of performance degradation versus utilizing a correlated solution that allows the root cause to escalate to the top. Compounding this issue, many of the data collection technologies deployed do not sample frequently enough (e.g. once every 5-10 minutes). Nor do they gather enough information to perform meaningful analysis for the specific problematic time interval. As data from each tier of the application is gathered, a subject matter expert must be added to the team, further delaying an appropriate solution due to indecision and communication issues among the team. 4.2 “BLAMESTORMING” Even as traditional tools link various GUI’s to create loosely integrated “suites”, it is still not enough to solve the problem. It only leads to more “blamestorming”—a nonproductive, cyclical fray of finger pointing in which each department absolves itself of blame for performance degradation, then points to another as the culprit. This is because the metrics are not “truly” correlated due to the nature of the various collectors required to monitor each component individually. When IT fails to pinpoint the sources of degradation, they remand themselves to “firefighting” mode and to a shortsighted vision in which loss avoidance becomes the goal when revenue generation should be the goal. To eliminate “blamestorming” and focus directly on the problems impacting the business, the following performance questions must be answered: • Which business transactions are being affected? • What is the end-to-end transaction response time? • How much of the total response time is attributed to the

network? • How much time was spent in the Client, Web, Application, and Database server?

Brainstorming or “Blamestorming”?

A recent TV commercial shows people sitting around a conference table on a Sunday afternoon.

A systems failure has just shut down the company’s online business. But rather than get to

the root cause, people point fingers — at the IT manager, the network provider, the server

manufacturer, the software supplier, and so on — each of whom is responsible for a different

technology “stovepipe.” What’s missing here is an end-to-end view of the business across

“stovepipes” to see how each component’s performance affects everything else. Such a view might have exposed issues before they became

failures, and allowed for preemptive action — and a much more pleasant Sunday.


6

• Where is the root cause of the problem and how do I correct it? • How much time was spent between the presentation and application layer? • How much time was spent between the application layer and the database layer? A solution that answers these types of questions enables IT Management to leverage their most valuable resource—their people—to solve performance problems and minimize the impact performance problems have on business performance. Performance management solutions should enable IT to immediately recognize the location of a performance problem in order to deploy the appropriate subject matter expert fast. The right solution would then provide the means for the expert to quickly focus on the problem, isolate the root cause and correct the situation. Instead, they focus on specific infrastructure components — none of which matter either to end-users or management. All that matters to end-users is application response time. Likewise, with management — they simply want to know if end-users can do their jobs, if customers are happy with the online experience, if the right parts are being ordered and delivered on time, and so on. To align with end-users and management, the IT organization must adopt a similar view.

5. THE VERITAS i3 METHODOLOGY VERITAS i3 for Oracle leverages the VERITAS i³ Methodology. This enables IT staff to eliminate performance degradation before service is impacted. Once in place, the methodology delivers a more consistent and higher quality experience to users. The VERITAS i³ Methodology simplifies the complex task of finding and fixing performance degradation by tracking key performance indicators specific to the Oracle-based application environment. These unique, high-quality metrics are then used to fine-tune the application resulting in faster transactions and response times. The impact is an infrastructure that runs at peak efficiency and an IT Staff who focus on escalating application functionality rather than sustaining an inadequately configured infrastructure. The VERITAS performance management methodology comprises five stages: • Detect – Identify the symptoms that could indicate a performance problem • Find – Identify the source of the problem • Focus – Discover the root cause of the problem • Improve – Take the steps required to improve performance • Verify – Make sure the steps taken have achieved the desired goal These stages combine to form a process that provides a systematic approach to finding and resolving all kinds of performance issues, both predictable and unforeseen.

6. VERITAS i3 FOR ORACLE VERITAS i3 for Oracle focuses on providing your organization with the ability to measure and monitor end-to-end application performance from the browser through the database and into the physical storage media. VERITAS i3 for Oracle provides an integrated Application Performance Management solution that is focused on identifying the service level experienced by the user and identifying the major contributors along the path. Conceptually, VERITAS i3 for Oracle is composed of Insight, Indepth and Inform functionality. Unlike frameworks, the solution components can be purchased as separate products and run independently to meet specific environmental and application needs. 7. VERITAS i3 COMPONENTS VERITAS Insight is the breadth-wise view of application performance across multiple technology tiers. The collection and diagnosis technology included in this layer provides a common semantic view of the application that allows different departments and decision makers to communicate using a common language—end-user response times. This end-to-end view of performance from a single perspective effectively eliminates the delays in application slowdown correction by removing the barriers attributed to competing organizational agendas and to compartmentalized representation of the collected performance data.


7

VERITAS Indepth is the depth-wise view of application performance within each of the technology tiers that an application crosses. Once the VERITAS Insight layer pinpoints a specific tier, VERITAS Indepth technology is used to “drill-down” into the problematic tier. Specialized knowledge of the technology used in each type of tier (e.g. database, web-client, web-server, Oracle Applications, PeopleSoft, SAP R/3) is designed into the software of the VERITAS Indepth component. The VERITAS Indepth layer allows the appropriate technology expert to quickly identify and diagnose the root cause of the performance slowdown. Advanced tuning and best practices information contained within the software provide everything the expert needs to correct and verify that the right change is made—before the change is put into the production environment. VERITAS Inform is the ever-present watchdog that serves as both an early warning system to potential application performance issues and as an automated alerting system for performance slowdowns that are in progress. The VERITAS Inform layer contains software that automatically provides alerts wherever the performance team is located. Alerts can take a plethora of forms from the more traditional thresholds alerts on a specific performance metric to advanced alerting on performance trends that may be approaching the upper or lower limits of a standard deviation. Within this layer is also included reporting functionality that allows common communication of performance trends, capacity planning based on multiple factors like resource consumption, load and service levels. Service level Agreements are easily tracked and monitored using the VERITAS Inform component of VERITAS i3. Shared among all the components of VERITAS i3 is the VERITAS Performance Warehouse (VPW). The VPW is a common performance metric repository that allows all components of VERITAS i3 to share information. The VPW makes it possible for VERITAS i3 to provide specific reports over time to various performance experts for the purpose of analyzing trends and understanding what is “normal” performance for an application.

8. VERITAS i3 FEATURES

8.1 ROLE-BASED ADMINISTRATION VERITAS i3 for Oracle includes a role controlled common interface that enables the appropriate people to see the information they are entitled to view. This interface, when fully exploited, allows authorized users to have full access to all VERITAS i3 features. For example, a user from the operational support group may need to drill into a specific component tier to isolate a problem, while a user from the production group only needs to identify that a problem has occurred.


8

8.2 VIEW PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT END-TO-END VERITAS i3 for Oracle makes it very easy to look across your entire application to quickly identify performance bottlenecks. The initial “Start Point” screen provides a visual representation of the performance of each of your application tiers. This empowers organizations, such as operations, to quickly identify performance hot spots by tier. In this example, the application is composed of Web Client, Web Server, J2EE Server and Oracle Database Server tiers. Hot spots are being reported in multiple tiers. Performance indicators on the Web Server tier indicate that application users may be experiencing slow response times because of a resource consumption problem located somewhere in the application.

8.3 DETECT PROBLEMS USING REAL-TIME ALERTS VERITAS i3 users have the flexiblity to establish performance management thresholds on key metrics in each application tier. When thresholds are exceeded, an alert is generated to ensure that production and operations groups react quickly. Alerts are categorized into Performance (resource consumption), Load (Scalability and load issues), Service (service times), Maintenance (general component parameters and system settings), Load Trending (exceptions to normal trend curves and excess capacity warnings) and Customized alerts. VERITAS i3 for Oracle can automatically establish performance baselines, thereby, eliminating the need to set performance threshold metrics for all of the different application tiers and their components. Drilling into Alert information for the Web Server Tier indicates that there is currently one critical performance alert relating to client IP users. Further drill-down into the alert shows which clients are experiencing response time problems.


9

8.4 DETECT PROBLEMS PROACTIVELY Some application performance problems can be detected and corrected before they become a problem. VERITAS i3 for Oracle makes it easy to find potential problems before they become real problems. Extensive reporting features make it easy to proactively tune the perfomance of your applications. IT organizations can run a set of standard or custom reports to isolate potential problems on any application tier. It is also a great way to keep management and customers informed of how application performance may affect the business model now or in the future, through trend, exception, and scalability reports. In this example we can take a detailed look at how the web server tier under investigation has been performing relative to URL download requests from clients.

9. FIND THE SOURCE

9.1 ISOLATE PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS BY TIER Once an application performance problem is detected, VERITAS i3 for Oracle allows the performance team to drill into a view of performance across all tiers. This holistic, specialized view of the application allows staff to begin investigation of the problem by viewing key components and indicators to help eliminate tiers and components that are not part of the problem. Various views, such as key activities on each tier, can be seen on one screen correlated by the time frame under review. In this screen we can see the top five activities for each tier. In the Web Server tier, we see URL file requests. In the application (J2EE) tier we see top five method invocations. In the Database tier, we see the top five SQL statements. We can now get a better idea of the source of the slowdown. In the overview tab to the left, we see that the majority of service time for the application is being spent in the Database tier.


10

9.2 SMARTUNE ISOLATES PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS TO ONE TIER We know that our performance problem is probably related to a database issue. Studying the Over Time graph quickly eliminates the network as a source of the problem. By using VERITAS i3’s revolutionary SmarTune feature, we are able to further isolate a performance problem from what appears to be multiple tiers to a single tier. One click on the most resource intensive URL file instantly aligns the activities on all tiers to only those associated with the selected URL file. We now understand that our two web clients are experiencing the same slowdown when downloading the same URL file. It is apparent from the screen shot that the performance issue is related to a specific SQL statement being executed from an application (J2EE) method, and we know which one it is. SQL statements are identified with a unique hash value throughout the VERITAS i3 for Oracle solution. Of course, the text of the statement is always available.

9.3 DRILL INTO THE ORACLE DATABASE TIER In a matter of 4-5 mouse clicks, we have already isolated the performance problem to a poorly performing SQL statement in the database tier. Drilling into the Oracle Database tier shows us that this same statement is also the top resource consuming statement of all application statements executing against this database.


11

10. FOCUS ON THE REASON 10.1 FOCUS ON THE ORACLE SQL STATEMENT We have discovered the root cause of the slow response time for the application, a poorly performing SQL statement. Now its time to tighten our focus to discover the reason for its poor performance. Further drill-down into the SQL statement reveals that the statement beginning with 00811 is spending a large amount of time waiting on I/O.

10.2 UNDERSTAND THE SQL STATEMENT VERITAS i3 keeps the last three unique explain plans for every statement executed in the database in the VPW. By taking a look at the last explain plan for the statement, as well as previous explain plans, we are able to quickly determine that the root cause of the slowdown is due to full table scans. In fact, because of the historical archive, we could also determine if this statement ever used an index and, if so, what happened to it.


12

11. IMPROVE THE SITUATION

11.1 SMARTUNE RECOMMENDS INDEXES TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE Once the root cause has been identified, it is time to improve performance. VERITAS i3 utilizes special SmarTune algorithms to recommend indexes for a specific SQL statement regardless of the source of the statement (e.g., custom code). In this example, we see that VERITAS i3 for Oracle has recommended three possible indexes to improve performance.

11.2 AUTOMATICALLY ANALYZE AND DISPLAY IMPACT Once you create your own indexes, or let VERITAS i3 suggest them for you, it then provides an automated impact analyis to ensure that whatever changes you make, you will know the full impact of those changes on all other SQL statements, before you put it into production. VERITAS i3 displays the impacted statements in an easy to read list that also shows the statement text. Impact statistics can also be shown per statement by selecting the Impacts tab.


13

11.3 SIMULATE YOUR CHANGES The criticality of your Oracle-based applications demands that you take every precaution prior to rolling out your changes into production. One of the most important things you can do is to ensure the change you made will actually improve performance. VERITAS i3 is able to simulate the execution times for each impacted statement showing you detailed statistics including the duration of the execution. Because of the detailed performance statistics kept on each statement, both in recent history and the Performance Warehouse, you can rely on the accuracy of this information to make critical decisions about which alternative you will apply.

12. VERIFY YOUR SOLUTION Only one final step is left. Making sure that all is going according to plan once you have put the performance correction into production.

12.1 VERIFY PERFORMANCE FROM A DATABASE PERSPECTIVE Using the built in graphical analysis of the Indepth component of VERITAS i3 and the statistics collected in the VPW you can verify your performance improvements from the database tier perspective.


14

13. VERIFY PERFORMANCE FROM AN END-TO-END PERSPECTIVE Using the built in graphical analysis of the Inform component of VERITAS i3 and the statistics collected in the VPW, you can verify your performance improvements from the end-user perspective.

14. BENEFITS OF VERITAS i3 FOR ORACLE SOLUTION The need to adopt a proven Application Performance Management solution has evolved from "nice to have" to an "organizational imperative". IT organizations are sold on the need for network management and system management solutions. Today, given the complexity of Oracle-based applications, organizations must adopt a sustainable and supportable approach to Application Performance Management. To be effective, Application Performance Management must be viewed from an end-to-end perspective. The combination of VERITAS i3 for Oracle coupled with the VERITAS methodology of managing application performance provides a complete solution. VERITAS makes it easy for IT organizations to effectively manage and monitor the performance of their applications as a natural extension to their standard operational practices. VERITAS i3 readily provides you with: • A view of the actual service levels as seen by all of the users at their desktop • Holistic, correlated application performance metrics eliminating “blamestorming” sessions • Production safe performance solution that does not become part of the problem • An understanding of how application performance is affecting business revenue • Recommended corrective actions with supporting data • Improvements in total cost of ownership of your Oracle-based applications and hardware investments


15

15. SUMMARY Today’s multi-tier, multi-organizational Oracle-based applications represent a more challenging environment in which to conduct business. On one hand, business is more dependent than ever on enterprise applications for meeting customer expectations, achieving innovation, and creating competitive advantage. On the other hand, the IT infrastructure is inherently fractured with transactions taking place over multiple tiers, and each tier being managed by a different department or group using different metrics and performance models. To allow IT to meet the application performance demands of the business, a common language and methodology needs to be adopted. The basis for this common language is end-user response time. VERITAS i3 for Oracle addresses the challenge and actually simplifies the development and deployment of high performance Oracle-based applications. Using VERITAS i3 for Oracle helps companies manage performance levels, contain costs, maximize the efficiency of the operational investment and improve the service levels experienced by the end users. VERITAS i3 for Oracle is the industry’s first software solution that provides a way to quickly, efficiently and unobtrusively capture the hard to get browser-to-SQL application metrics and present these in a manner that enables crisp communication, rapid proactive or reactive detection, correction and verification throughout the application life cycle. VERITAS i3 for Oracle sets a new milestone in Oracle-based Application Performance Management by delivering a comprehensive integrated software solution that addresses the major service level challenges of your organization. This solution: • Focuses on the application user response time • Provides a view of the actual service levels as seen by all of the users at their desktops • Identifies the application end-to-end path • Presents end-to-end response time contributions • Isolates the hotspots from the browser to the SQL and the database • Provides corrective recommendations with supporting data • Identifies the application service impacts of the service level • Has a design point to operate in a production environment with minimal overhead • Fits all phases of the application lifecycle (Development, QA, Stress Testing, Staging and Production) • Meets the detection, reporting, isolation and diagnostic needs of all organizations involved • Has a consistent way of presenting the service level information • Interfaces with, and complements, the existing infrastructure frameworks • Provides baselines and reports trends • Provides real-time deviation and trend-based alerts


16

VERITAS Software Corporation Corporate Headquarters 350 Ellis Street Mountain View, CA 94043 650-527-8000 or 866-837-4827

For additional information about VERITAS Software, its products, or the location of an office near you, please call our corporate headquarters or visit our Web site at www.veritas.com.

Date post:	06-Mar-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	doanxuyen
View:	234 times
Download:	3 times

Final VERITAS i3 for Oracleeval.veritas.com/downloads/pro/precise_wp/Oracle_WP.pdf14. Benefits of...

Documents