Performance Tuning Siebel Software on the Sun Platform

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To ensure that the most demanding global enterprise customers can meet their deployment requirements, engineers from Siebel Systems and Sun are working jointly on several engineering projects. Their common goal is to further enhance Siebel server performance on Sun's highly scalable Solaris OS.

This article is an effort to document and spread knowledge of tuning and optimizing Siebel 7 eBusiness Applications Suite on the Solaris platform. All of the techniques discussed here are lessons learned from a series of performance tuning studies conducted under the auspices of the Siebel Platform Sizing and Performance Program (PSPP). The tests conducted under this program are based on real-world scenarios derived from Siebel Systems customers, which reflect some of the most frequently used and most critical components of the Siebel eBusiness Applications Suite. This article also provides tips and best practices -- based on our experience -- for field staff, benchmark engineers, system administrators, and customers who are interested in achieving optimal performance and scalability with their Siebel on Sun installations. The following areas are addressed in this paper:

• What are the unique features of the Solaris OS that reduce risk while helping to improve the performance and stability of Siebel applications?
• For maximum scalability at a low cost, what is the optimal way to configure Siebel software on the Solaris OS? How does Sun's Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology based on the UltraSPARC IV processor benefit Siebel solutions?
• How can transaction response times be improved for end users in large deployments of Siebel software on the Sun platform?
• How can an Oracle database running on Sun StorEdge products be tuned for higher performance for Siebel software?

The performance and scalability testing was conducted at Sun's Enterprise Technology Center (ETC) in Menlo Park, California, by Sun's Market Development Engineering (MDE) with assistance from Siebel Systems. The ETC is a massive, distributed testing facility packing more computer power than many Fortune 1000 corporations. A facility of this magnitude provides the resources needed to test the limits of software on a much greater scale than most enterprises will ever require.

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1. Tuning for Price/Performance: Summary
2. Siebel Application Architecture Overview
3. Optimal Sun/Siebel Architecture for Benchmark Workload
4. Workload Description
5. 10,000 Concurrent Users: Test Results Summary
6. Siebel Scalability on the Sun Platform
7. Performance Tuning
8. Performance Tweaks with No Gains
9. Scripts, Tips, and Tricks for Diagnosing Siebel on the Sun Platform
10. Appendix A: Transaction Response Times
11. Appendix B: Database Objects Growth During the Test
12. Appendix C: Oracle statspack Report
13. References