1. Performance Tuning HFM in the Field
HUGmn 2010
Jim Heflin
Chris Barbieri
Chris and me intro – presentation is a combo of 3 others. 4 hours of content. Available for you explanation
Who is not hfm?
Take a look at their application and see what actually have. Better understand their system

2. Application Design: the Foundation of Performance
Hyperion Financial Management
Metadata design as it impacts performance
Data volume and content measurement
Rules performance measurement
Reading the HFM logs
So this is what we around going to talk about

3. Metadata
What is a metadata?

4. Designing HFM’s 12 Dimensions
Application Profile
Year
Period
View
System
Value dimension, includes currencies
User controlled
Entity
Account
ICP
Scenario
User defined
Custom 1
Custom 2
Custom 3
Custom 4
This is what we have to work with – and how they are controlled

5. Application Profile Year Period View No inherent impact on performance
Cannot be changed after the application is built
Impacts the number of tables that can be created in the database
Period
The base periods comprise the column structure of every table, whether you use them or not.
For this reason, avoid weekly or yearly profiles unless it is key to your entire application’s design
View
No impact, but only YTD is stored and Periodic, QTD are on-the-fly derivations
Every table – the data and calc status tables
The wider the columns the records are bigger which means you get fewer of them for a given amount of RAM

6. What’s a Subcube? HFM data structure – Year, Scenario, Value, Entity
Database tables stored by year_scenario
Each record contains all periods for the [Year]
All records for a subcube are loaded into memory together
Parent subcube, stored in DCN tables
Currency subcubes, stored in DCE tables
Data unit is more granular in that it is one period – excel column reference - Kind of like an Enterprise category
Pulling one member you load the whole cube - There is a third table with the calc status - CSE
Loading metadata depends on what you add – entity you have to update the tables X currency X EC and ECA
Account are very fast

7. Metadata Volumes (Americas)
Dimension
Average Volume
Recorded High
Comments
Accounts
2,132
14,409
Entities
1,165
22,882
Currencies 16
233
use only 1 currency 30%
Custom1
388
19,410
use Custom 1 96%
Custom2
153
15,188
use Custom 2 86%
Custom3 61
26,816
use Custom 3 86%
Custom4 39
11,389
use Custom 4 62%
Scenarios 11 78
Entity hierarchies 3 24
the equivalent of Organizations in Hyperion Enterprise
ICP Accounts with Plug 41
1,223
use automated intercompany matching 56%
Accounts with Line Item Detail 36
1,667
16% use this, but only 10% have more than 1 account flagged
Consolidation Rules -
use consolidation rules 28%
Consolidation methods 5 10
use methods 14%
OrgByPeriod
use organization by period 9%
ICP Members 86
1,407
track intercompany activity 81%
Entities flagged for Parent Adjs
143
7,698
Allow [Parent Adj] or [Contribution Adj] journals30%
Scenarios using Process Mgmt 53
use process management46%
More important for 32 bit

8. Data

9. Data Design
“Metadata volume is interesting, but it’s how you populate it that matters most”
Density
Content
Specifically: zeros
Tiny numbers
Invalid Records
Metadata is the number of unique elements in each dimension

10. Loaded Data What percent of the loaded data is a zero value?
No hard rule, but <5% may be reasonable
No zeros are best, watch ZeroView settings on the scenarios
Watch out for tiny values, resulting from allocations
How much does the data expand from Sub Calculate?
Am I generating zeros, or tiny numbers?
Input Base Records
Input Plus Calculated Base Records
% Increase From Rules
Total
2,031,976
4,387,520
116 %
Input zeros
18,024
Calculated zeros
413,837
2,196 %
% zero loaded
0.9%
% zeros calculated at base
9.4%
Values > -1 and < 1
373,226
Values > -1 and < 1 calculated
593,981
59 %
% values > -1 and < 1
18.4%
% values > -1 and < 1 calculated
13.5%
Zero view references loading zeros because are loading say YTD into periodic or vice versa

11. Data Density Using FreeLRU
Survey of data density using FreeLRU method
Number of applications reviewed: 32
Average
Min
Max
Median
ABC Customer
NumCubesInRAM
2,672 72
10,206
1,345
577
NumDataRecordsInRAM
1,502,788
247,900
5,627,748
1,170,908
1,107,614
NumRecordsInLargestCube
86,415
2,508
593,924
53,089
31,446
Average records per cube
6,309 24
91,418
1,352
2,288
Average metadata efficiency: average cube/densest cube
7.3%
0.3%
39.7%
3.4%
The Key is what fits in RAM - LRU – Least Recently Used - Remember the more periods the larger the records
The people who have been in the bar the longest without buying a drink are the first to get booted out.
HsvEventLog.log has this data on the HFM app server

12. HFM 11.1.1: the magic of 64 bit! 32 bit provides 2 GB of RAM for HFM
Possibility of using 3 GB switch
All versions, including bit edition
Can manage about 1-3 million records in RAM
64 bit provides 128 GB RAM for HFM
Starting with release
Out of the box support for 12 million records in RAM
Ranzal lab and field testing shows 30-50% faster than 32 bit!
HFM 64 bit white paper available from Chris Barbieri
The bar is much bigger. We can tolerate a lot more bar flies even if they drink slow.
Most are recommending 8-16 gig on a server – around 8 gig
12 m records was hard to get into RAM
Big apps this is critical

13. Rules

14. Measure and Analyze Rules
How much time do I spend in each rule?
Do some months take longer than others?
Rewrite the rule for optimal performance
Is it because they have more data?
Let’s focus on the “top 10”

15. Establish a Baseline
“Performance begins with perception. Establish this and a baseline before applying science.”
Chris Barbieri
Sr. Product Issues Manager
Hyperion Solutions
March 5, 2006
Effect of caching
Data cache on database server AND on HFM application server
Caches may be empty during first run
Performance is significantly better when data reads comes from memory cache rather than disk
This is why cache management is so important
Run the same process 3 times in a row and use the average
Look at everything we have already discussed and see if there are measures are in line with averages.
Reference back to RAM – Database and HFM app server
Does this make sense relative to what the client is seeing?

16. “Rules” of Thumb
Most application between 0.25 and 2.0 seconds per entity, per period
Consolidate all with data for entire hierarchy, full year
Divide by total number of entities (descendents of selected parent), divided by 12 periods
Most applications are closer to 0.25 seconds
Rules Impact Ratio
Blank rules file, Consolidation Rules = N for baseline
Divide consolidation time with rules by time without
Usually 2-5 times
So if we are over 2 seconds an entity we may wish to look at the actual rules

17. Data Density <> Calc Time
Loose correlation between density and calc times
Most applications are rules bound
When HFM app server CPU is < 20%, it is communicating with the database server
Calculations not density
If CPU is waiting for the database server – or the connection to it.

18. The Black Art of Reading HFM Logs

19. The Black Art of Reading HFM Event Logs
Where does HFM store its event information?
Maintaining the logs
How can I view this?
OK, what does it actually tell me?

20. Understanding HFM Logs
Messages
Messages are informational –start/stop consol, log in, log out etc.
Some messages are purposely out of time order (consol starts get printed at completion of consol
Warnings
Often due to subcube size issues
HFM Subcube Troubleshooting Guide / Memory Management in HFM documents
Errors
Access rights
Syntax Issues

21. Where are the HFM events stored?
Text file containing XML, named HsvEventLog.log
Pre-HFM or 9.3.0
..\Hyperion Solutions\Hyperion Financial Management\Server Working Folder\
Starting with Oracle moved all product logs to a common parent folder
HYPERION_HOME\Logs\FinancialManagement or
HYPERION_HOME\Logs\HFM

22. How can I view this? Administration Module
Web: Administrators only
HFM Error Log Viewer utility
Free standing executable
Bundled with HFM under \Consultant Utilities
Can you access this? You need the server access

23. Web System Messages
Available to administrators

24. Launch the Utility Launch HFMErrorLogViewer.exe System Message panel
Details panel

25. Details
Web suppresses richer details shown in utility

26. Find “Registry”
Each server’s registry settings are written during an application start-up.
Most but not all registry entries are written
We’ll cover the actual entries in another presentation
Chris has a 90 minute presentation on the registry entries

27. System Memory at Inception
Just know they exist- and the next slide

28. Page File Size Increased in 9.2.0.3, 9.3.1 to 130 and 260 MB
Still exists in 64 bit HFM , but likely unused
If you run out of RAM the system may page out

29. Paging Watch “PageOutOps > 0” indicating page file usage
Writing out to disk – you are using a swap file – this slows things down

30. Consolidation start and finish
Summary indicates start time
Details have finish time
Is written when it completes

31. Extracting Log Entries
HFM writes to both the event log and the database
You can extract the database entries to a text file, which is preferable to the event logs
Can also truncate the entries using this utility
And split large files (anything > 30 MB is too large)
It is writing to both places the event log and the database – if the database goes down or looses connection you can look at the event log.
If you have 6 app servers you can look at the database table which will have all.
We can automate this maintenance through automated scripts – stored procedures

32. Ranzal Performance Lab Team
Co-founded in 2007
Chris Barbieri
Established HFM performance tuning techniques and statistics widely used today
4+ years as Sr. Product Issues Manager at Hyperion
Member of HFM launch team in 2001, certified in HFM and Enterprise
MBA, Babson College
B.S. Finance & Accounting, Boston College
Kurt Schletter
Over 20 years in IT
Hyperion Support Manager at United Technologies, serving 3,600+ HFM users
5+ years Hyperion product infrastructure services
MBA, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
B.S. Management with Computer Applications, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Another 90 presentation about the Lab.
We are the only ones in the world

33. Questions?
Visit for a listing of complete webinars
This is where to go for full presentations mentioned

34. Chris Barbieri cbarbieri@ranzal.com Needham, MA USA +1.617.480.6173