Dear aBI: BOE Sizing Solutions are Slippery
Dear BI Expert:
Can you please give me advice on the hardware sizing for BO XI R3?
I would appreciate if you can help my find a relevant document.
Thanks,
Ambika in Bangalore
Dear Ambika,
Sizing can be a difficult topic on several fronts. First of all, everyone’s hardware landscape is different and everyone’s usage of their BI system is different. Secondly, if you size your system improperly, you run the risk of degradation of service to your end users. Too small, and you’ll quickly run out of resources. Too large, and you’ll be wasting resources. But the task is far from impossible. Here are a few items that will help you out:
For documentation, there is an older BusinessObjects XI r2 Enterprise Sizing Guide available to the public on SCN. While it is a few years old, the process behind the sizing calculation will still apply for XI 3.x
In general, you need to have a good understanding of the number of users that will be on your system, what types of and percentage of usage types are likely to be present, and how often your user mix will be interacting with the system.
By following the sizing guide calculations, you can determine how many CPUs, how much memory, and the appropriate configuration for your particular load type.
By following the sizing guide calculations, you can determine how many CPUs, how much memory, and the appropriate configuration for your particular load type.
There is also a wealth of information on BI Solution Architecture on the BusinessObjects Community (BOC).
As a general rule, I have found in my own experience that its best to oversize your system from the beginning, and add resources once your consumption approaches 70% capacity.
Take heart! SAP is currently working on harmonizing this process with the rest of SAP’s product offerings by supporting a quick-sizer and “t-shirt” sizing up to a certain number of users.
To learn how to submit question(s) to one of our BI Experts, please visit the BI Advice Wiki.
There will be t-shirt sizing ready for BI 4 Ramp-Up, and the full compliment (QuickSizer, Sizing Guide, etc.) will be ready with BI 4 SP1 which is the GA release for BI 4.0
On the topic of sizing, my only comment is that it's so easy to add additional server processes and additional CMS nodes to a cluster that isn't performing up to speed, that it makes the exercise rather academic. I much prefer the technique of seeing my hardware resourced and then incrementally adding resources. Having said that, I alway double my production sizing estimates just to be safe and plan for future growth.
Virtualisation technology can come to the rescue and here you can relatively easily add RAM/CPU and in some cases whole servers with minimal fuss.
However last time I checked anyway SAP still didn't have a clear licensing policy when it came to virtual machines and when buying a CPU license it wasn't clear whether you have to pay for the CPUs on the host or CPUs used by the virutal machine. If this was clarified it would be a big step forward.
thanks
AL
the document in this blog is quite old, even if i found it interest,
As far as you know there are any other detail doc for the BO XI 3.1 with Netweaver 7.2 vesrions?
Regards SIMONE
finally, a sizing guide for BObj Enterprise 3.1 has been published!
Navigate: www.service.sap.com/sizing
„» Sizing guidelines
„» Solutions and Platforms
Document is called: Sizing SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1
Direct Link : http://service.sap.com/~form/sapnet?_SHORTKEY=00200797470000071612&_SCENARIO=01100035870000000112&_OBJECT=011000358700001326002010E
Cheers
Henry