OpsCenter Tuning Quick Reference

Problem

There are multiple preventable issues that can occur when OpsCenter is not properly maintained or optimally tuned.

This is intended to be a quick reference guide for OpsCenter tuning based on the OpsCenter Tuning Guide.  There are additional tuning parameters outlined in the OpsCenter Tuning Guide. However, the tuning outlined here should cover a majority of environments.  Any potential discrepancies should defer to the OpsCenter Tuning Guide. 

This document assumes that the OpsCenter server is only being used for OpsCenter.  If the OpsCenter server is being used for additional purposes, then you will need to consider those requirements in addition to these.
 

Solution

• What is the size of your database?

• How much memory does your OS have?
• Check the -ch setting in the server.conf file.

The -ch setting should be AT LEAST half the size of the database.

Keep system memory in mind when tuning. System memory should be at least half the size of the OpsCenter database plus an additional 6GB of memory for the OS.  This is assuming the server is not being used for something else, if it is, you will need to factor that in to the calculations.

Example:  If the OpsCenter database is 16 GB then the -ch entry should be AT LEAST 8 GB (set to 8G) and the OS would need at least 8 GB of RAM

Why tuning the -ch value is so important to the performance of OpsCenter:
The database engine used by OpsCenter automatically adjusts the amount of memory it uses, based on how much it needs.  
The -ch value sets what the maximum amount of memory the database is allowed to use.  The default value of -ch is 1024 MB.  So no matter how much RAM the machine has, the database service will never consume more than 1GB of memory with the default setting in place.  
If more memory is required, disk caching will be used instead.  Disk caching is both slow and CPU and disk intensive.  This means that the OpsCenter performance will be degraded.  
The amount of memory required varies from environment to environment.  While Veritas recommends setting the -ch to half the size of the database, many environments benefit from having it set to an amount larger than half the size of the database.  

How to see if a specific OpsCenter environment can benefit from increasing the value of -ch:
After the OpsCenter services have been restarted, look in the following log:
      Windows:  <install_path>\OpsCenter\Server\db\log\server.log
      UNIX: /opt/SYMCOpsCenterServer/db/log/dbserver.log

The -ch value will show up in the log as "maximum cache size".  And the automatic adjustments will show up in the log as "Cache size adjusted to".
In the following example log entries, the -ch is set to 34G, and within 45 minutes most of that memory has been consumed.  This environment would most likely benefit from increasing the -ch value (assuming that the system has sufficient RAM to support further increasing this value):
      I. 04/01 16:30:14. Minimum cache size: 18923520K, maximum cache size: 35651584K
      I. 04/01 16:52:46. Cache size adjusted to 19315344K
      I. 04/01 16:53:40. Cache size adjusted to 19974892K
      I. 04/01 16:59:02. Cache size adjusted to 23824344K
      I. 04/01 16:59:40. Cache size adjusted to 25177612K
      I. 04/01 17:04:49. Cache size adjusted to 28815392K
      I. 04/01 17:05:35. Cache size adjusted to 30218324K
      I. 04/01 17:09:58. Cache size adjusted to 33812912K
      I. 04/01 17:10:58. Cache size adjusted to 34656836K
      I. 04/01 17:15:38. Cache size adjusted to 34806496K
 

 
****Additional OpsCenter Operations that can improve the performance and health of the OpsCenter database.****

**Defragmenting the OpsCenter database**
Veritas recommends that you deframent the OpsCenter database once a month.  Please note that you will need 2X the database size of disk space.  IE, if you have a 10GB database you will need 20GB of disk space.

Defragmenting the OpsCenter database

**Data Purge Settings**
The Backup Log setting of 3 days should not be changed.

In OpsCenter, why is the Settings - Configuration - Data Purge - Backup Log set to 3 days

What do the OpsCenter settings under the Settings – Configuration – Data Purge tab mean?

**Backing up the OpsCenter database**
Backups should be done on a daily basis (Regular file system backups are not sufficient for backing up the OpsCenter database)

How to backup the OpsCenter database