Proven Practice

IBM Cognos 8 Performance

Tuning Cheat Sheet
Product(s): IBM Cognos 8
Area of Interest: Performance

IBM Cognos 8 Performance Tuning Cheat Sheet

Copyright
Copyright 2008 Cognos ULC (formerly Cognos Incorporated). Cognos ULC
is an IBM Company. While every attempt has been made to ensure that the
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IBM Cognos 8 Performance Tuning Cheat Sheet

Contents
1.

IBM COGNOS 8 PERFORMANCE TUNING CHEAT SHEET ............................... 4

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IBM Cognos 8 Performance Tuning Cheat Sheet

1. IBM Cognos 8 Performance Tuning Cheat Sheet

Component/
Service

Setting

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Default
Value

Recommended
Starting Value

Reason/Comments

IBM Cognos 8 Performance Tuning Cheat Sheet

IBM Cognos 8
Dispatcher

Processing Capacity

1.0

5
For each server:
Appropriate value
is a function of
the number of
CPUs, CPU clock
rate, memory, etc
in relation to
other servers in
the topology.

This setting dictates the

number of BI requests that will
be handled by a particular a
server in the IBM Cognos 8
topology.
By default, requests will be
distributed so that each server
is expected to handle an
equivalent number of requests.
While it may be difficult to
estimate a precisely correct set
of values for heterogeneous
server environments, there are
several methods that can
improve the relative accuracy
of this task.
1) Use the relative
performance ratings of
a server (provided by
hardware vendors).
2) Estimate the process
capacity for a server
using one variable at a
time in the order of (#
of CPUs, clock rate of
CPUs)
It is important to monitor the
request rate through the Server
Administration tool of IBM
Cognos Connection. Isolate
the Report services to monitor
interactive usage. This will
indicate whether the applied
process capacity settings lead
to expected behavior. Key
metrics to observe include
Latency and Requests per
second.
If latency is building up on one
report service while others are
functioning freely, reduce the
process capacity on the high
latency server.
In general, monitor the
requests per second metric so
that the number is proportional
to the capacity of each server
in the topology.

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IBM Cognos 8 Performance Tuning Cheat Sheet

Component/
Service
ReportService

Setting
Maximum number
processes for the
Interactive report service

Number of high affinity

connections for the
Interactive report service

Number of low affinity

connections for the
Interactive report service

Default
Value
2

6
Recommended
Starting Value
For each server:
2 * # of CPUs

For each BIBus

process: 1

For each BIBus

process: 2

Reason/Comments
This setting dictates the
number of BIBus processes
that will be spawned to handle
interactive processing activity.
Must be considered in
combination with Batch Report
service settings. Overlap in
interactive and scheduled
activity may warrant a lowering
of this threshold to
accommodate both processing
activities.
This setting indicates the
number of threads available
per interactive report server
(BIBus process) to handle high
affinity requests.
This setting must be
considered along with the low
affinity connections setting.
This setting indicates the
number of threads available
per interactive report server
(BIBus process) to handle low
affinity requests.
This setting must be
considered along with the high
affinity connections setting.

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IBM Cognos 8 Performance Tuning Cheat Sheet

Queue timeout limit for
the report service
(seconds)

240
seconds

7
300 seconds

This setting is used to

determine the length of time in
seconds in which a request will
be queued in a ReportNet
dispatcher before being
terminated. If the queue
timeout limit is exceeded, an
error will be returned indicating
that a process was not
available within the configured
time limit
A request will reside with the
dispatcher until an appropriate
high/low affinity connection
becomes available.
This setting can be used to
troubleshoot an environment
that is perceived to be queuing
requests even though system
resources appear underutilized.
To help determine this, change
the setting to a small value
(e.g. 5 seconds) and monitor
the system for an error page
indication.

Component/
Service
BatchReportService

Setting
Maximum number of
processes for the batch
report service

The number of high

affinity connections for
the batch report service

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Default
Value
2

Recommended
Starting Value
For each server:
1 * # of CPUs

For each BIBus

process: 1 (just
leave the default)

Reason/Comments
This setting dictates the
number of BIBus processes
that will be spawned to handle
scheduled processing activity.
Must be considered in
conjunction with Report service
settings. Overlap in interactive
and scheduled activity may
warrant a lowering of this
threshold to accommodate
both processing activities.
This setting is not applicable to
scheduled activity processing.
Current scheduling functionality
does not possess any high
affinity requests

IBM Cognos 8 Performance Tuning Cheat Sheet

The number of low affinity
connections for the batch
report service

8
For each BIBus
process: 2

This setting indicates the

number of threads available
per batch report server (BIBus
process) to handle low affinity
requests.
This setting must be
considered along with the high
affinity connections setting.

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