1. © 2012 Wellesley Information Services. All rights reserved. Correctly Sizing Your Landscape for Scalable, High- Performing Dashboards and Required Software Compatibility Dr. Bjarne Berg Comerit

2. © SAP AG 2009 / 1 Deployment, Testing & Change Management Best-in-Class Dashboards Performance & Security Options & Prototyping SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 overview Product updates and implementation criteria Recent changes to dashboard terms Hands-on lab: Build a dashboard with SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Dashboards vs. reports Scoping vs. requirements gathering KPI definitions Required skills and resources Answers to dashboard FAQs Key dashboard roll-out decisions Mobilizing your dashboard Support organization Volume, stress, and UAT Training and change management Day 1  Day 3  Seminar Roadmap We are here Landscape, Connectivity & Sizing Data connectivity deep dive Key criteria to retrieve data sets Sizing and scaling recommendations User management and access control SAP NetWeaver ® BW Accelerator and SAP HANA Hands-on lab: Advanced techniques Web service integration and Adobe Flex Builder Panel discussion: Dashboard Projects Ownership and branding Post-production changes 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 2 Customization, Branding & Governance  Day 2 Common causes of poor dashboard performance Effective performance testing Performance-enhancing design techniques Preventing unauthorized access to dashboards Password protection and SSO 14 13 6 1

3. In This Session … We start by doing step-by-step sizing effort of a dashboard project and look a five real-world sizing examples Then we will conduct a structured walkthrough of compatible and required software components. We end by taking a quick-peek at dashboard performance options with in-memory processing from SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator and HANA. 2

4. What We’ll Cover … Sizing Environment for BI 4.0 and SAP Dashboards Core components of Dashboard and BI Compatibility Requirements In-memory performance options Wrap-up 3

5. The Sizing Tool – Getting Started SAP has provided a sizing tool for the BI environments. It is based on Flash and is actually a dashboard itself. Download it: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/ index?rid=/library/uuid/1055c55 0-ce45-2f10-22ad-a6050fff97f1 4 This tool can help you size your BI 4.0 environments with a few key assumptions and inputs. Output Area (Sizing Results) Input Areas (items and users)

6. The Sizing Tool – Entering Users First, you have to enter the estimated active concurrent users (ACU) for the following user types: Information Consumers Business Users Expert Users 5

7. The Sizing Tool –On-Line Help User Definitions The tool provides on-line definitions of the user types and guidelines on how to determine Active Concurrent Users (ACU). This is defined as approximate 10% of the active users. 6 Many dashboard users is large organizations may be classified as Information Consumers. They may not wait 5 minutes between clicks, but typically do little drill-down and filtering.

8. The Sizing Tool – Assumptions The next step is to make an assumption on the size of dashboards. The sizing tool classifies small dashboards as having 25 rows in the result set, medium having 250, and large dashboards having 2,500 rows. 7 Assumptions: the tool was based on supporting two queries per dashboards, and benchmarked was for accessing two relational data sources. One with 6 dimensions with 77,000 entries and 400,000 line items, and one with 6 dimensions with 7,000 rows and 40,000 line items.

9. The Sizing Tool – Output The output of the tool is measured in SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS). 100 SAPS is defined as 2,000 fully business processed order line items per hour. It is a measure that hardware vendors can use to decide which of their configurations can meet your performance requirements. All hardware vendors are familiar with this measure and this is what you will provide them when requesting a hardware quote. 8

10. The Sizing Tool – Memory Requirements 9 The sizing tool also provide a sizing estimate for the hardware memory required for each of the tiers. This is measured in Gigabytes

11. The Sizing Tool – Terminology If you get stuck on the terminology used in SAP sizing and performance benchmarking, there is a link to the SAP benchmark glossary in the tool. 10 There are also performance benchmark and installation guides available on SAP Marketplace for individual software components.

12. The Sizing Tool – Saving your Sizing example 11 Your BI and dashboard sizing effort can be saved or printed from the tool and you can have many scenarios

13. The Sizing Tool – Demo 12 DEMO

14. The Sizing Tool – Companion Guide With the BI sizing tool, there is also a sizing companion guide written by Jason DeMelo. This document explains how each tool was benchmarked and the assumptions made when building the sizing tool. You can download it from: https://service.sap.com/~sapdownload/011000358700000307202011E/S BO_BI_4_0_Companion_V4.pdf 13 Involve your basis team in the sizing effort and also make sure that the assumptions you made are realistic from a functional standpoint (i.e. how complex and intensive are your dashboards really).

15. PC Hardware Requirements for Client Side: BI 4.0 From a PC client perspective you need: Memory  Minimum of 2.0GB memory (really want more in practice)  I recommend 4.0GB (or more if you can afford it) Processor  Minimum of 2.0 GHz core (more cores the better) Disk Space  Min of 3.5GB free space if you only install English  Min of 7.5GB free space if you install all languages Screen Size  Recommended resolution size is 14 Make sure you build dashboards on a standardized screen resolution and size so that everyone sees the same images

16. Real-World Examples 15 These are real examples from companies that have been using BI 4.0 for at least 6 months

17. What We’ll Cover … Sizing Environment for BI 4.0 and SAP Dashboards Core components of Dashboard and BI Compatibility Requirements In-memory performance options Wrap-up 16

18. The Different Tiers in SAP BI First we have the application tier. This is include the Web Application Services such as the Central Management Console (CMC) and the BI launch pad.  SAP recommends adding a web application server for each 500 ACUs and that at least 5GB heap memory is assigned and 900 threads are configured. The next is the intelligence, or management tier. This include the dashboard cache service, File Repository Service (FRS) and the CMS.  Only the first File Repository input and output Service pair (FRS) to register in the CMS is the active pair. If you add more FRSs, these are assumed to be passive backups for fault tolerance and failures. Lastly we have the processing tier. This include the Adaptive Job Service and the Processing Services for the various BI tools,  Each BI tool has different memory and processor requirements. 17

19. The SAP BusinessObjects BI Scalability 18 BI is highly scalable If you have a high number of users, you can split the application, processing, and intelligence layers on separate hardware servers You can also horizontally partition the processing and intelligence layers on several servers Tier Components for Processing Tier Components for Intelligence If you split the Web application components on multiple servers, make sure you also deploy a hardware load balancer

20. Dashboard Performance – Some Recommendations You can scale number of instances based on the Active Concurrent Users (ACUs), and SAP has made some recommendations:  The CMS can handle upto 500 ACUs per instance and you can currently scale this to 8 instances (will be increased in next release). You can add more CMSs if you see over 80% utilization of the CPUs.  The dashboard cache can handle upto 400 ACUs per instance and you can add as many instances you want (no limitations), but you are unlikely to need more than one.  The dashboard processing is normally one per machine with no limitations (the server automatically spawns and manages child processes). If you need more, add more instances. 19

21. More Key Factors That Determine Dashboard Performance Concurrent number of users during peak load times of system Logical design of dashboards  Simple, complex, and incredibly complex  Number of records retrieved by the dashboards Network capacity Database speed of source data Number of instance  This is used for spreading service loads on multiple nodes Number of CPUs and available memory of each server 20

22. What We’ll Cover … Sizing Environment for BI 4.0 and SAP Dashboards Core components of Dashboard and BI Compatibility Requirements In-memory performance options Wrap-up 21

23. The Components of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 22 The complete components of the BI landscape consist of a variety of software Each of these components have their own requirements We will now look at each of these components and their respective size and version requirements

24. Compatibility Operating Systems: BI 4.0 Server-Side All server components only support 64-bit operating systems. The mobile server is currently only supported on Windows operating systems. For other the following versions are supported: 23

25. Compatibility : BI 4.0 and Database Servers Microsoft SQL Server Express 2008 is included with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0, but you may also use databases from SAP, Oracle, Sybase, IBM and MySQL. The database is used for storing CMS and the audit repository. 24 Using the SQL Server database that comes bundled with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 may save you a lot of money

26. Compatibility: BI 4.0 and Application Servers The application server handles the logic of BI 4.x and can run on a variety of hardware. The supported Java application servers include: Sizing the application server is based on SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS) instead of CPU and Memory. Note: WebSphere use IBM Java SDK for all operating systems and v6 is not supported for Analysis – OLAP edition,

27. Hardware: Server-Side Requirements From a server sizing perspective you need: Minimum CPU  4 x 2.0 GHz Core CPU Minimum Memory of Server  Min of 8.0GB memory - 16GB recommended (but more based on number of users) Minimum Disk Space  If you only install English: 11GB Windows; 13GB AIX/Solaris; and 14GB for Linux  If you install all languages: 14GB Windows; 15GB AIX/Solaris; and 16GB for Linux 26

28. Compatibility: BI 4.0 and Web Portals The Web Portal supported by SAP BI 4.0 is extensive and covers all major Portal Servers and their latest versions: 27 Note: Microsoft’s SharePoint portal product only runs on the Windows operating system

29. Compatibility: BI 4.0 and Clients Most Windows operating systems are supported by SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x at the client side. All desktop components of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x are 32-bit 28 Mac OS X is currently not supported except for the SAP Crystal Reports Viewer

30. Compatibility: BI 4.0 and Web Browsers There are various browser and Java requirements for SAP BusinessObjects BI depending on the type of operating system you are using 29 The Safari browser 5.1 is supported only by the Mac OS X operating system. Internet Explorer 8/9 standards mode is currently not supported by BI launch pad. For Firefox usage, you need the Extended Support Release (ESR). PS: On server side IIS is supported as Integration option in MS SharePoint V6 for Server 2003. V7 for Server 2008 V7.5 for Server 2008 R2

31. Other Software Requirements To run the system correctly, there are several components needed on the client side. 30 While BO Explorer require at least Flash player 10.1, there have been some issues with large Flash files in Dashboards. For example: Flash v10.1 seems to be stuck in “initializing” phase when files are over 2 MB. This seems to be less of an issue for smaller files and we have seen no significant issues in version 11

32. Compatibility – Connections to SAP BW There are many ways to connect the BI tools to an underlying SAP BW system. With BI 4.0, the following BW versions are supported 31 Dashboards can also be built on BW systems on HANA through a relational universe if you have applied HANA service pack 3 or 4

33. What We’ll Cover … Sizing Environment for BI 4.0 and SAP Dashboards Core components of Dashboard and BI Compatibility Requirements In-memory performance options Wrap-up 32

34. Why In-Memory Processing? Focus Improvement20121990 2 16 Addressable Memory 3508x 79.15 MB/$ 0.02 MB/$ Memory 6083 x 304.17 MIPS/$ 0.05 MIPS/$ CPU Technology 702 MBPS 5 MBPS Disk Data Transfer 140x 1000 x 100 Gbps 100 Mbps Network Speed 2 64 2 48 x Source: 1990 numbers SAP AG, 2012 numbers, Dr. Berg Disk speed is growing slower than all other hardware components, while the need for speed is increasing Source: BI Survey of 534 BI professionals, InformationWeek,

35. In-Memory Processing — BW Accelerator (BWA) SAP BWA is a tool that has been available for almost 6 years and is being used by hundreds of companies. It can load data in-memory from SAP and non-SAP sources and you can build dashboards on the data using standard BEx queries and BICS connections (as covered earlier) 34

36. An Example of a HANA system we installed recently The long-term idea with HANA is to replace the databases under SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP ERP with in-memory processing databases, instead of traditional relational databases. This means much faster query response time and a smaller database. HANA is an appliance that can be implemented fast, is cost effective and can super-charge the data delivery and calculations in your dashboards!!

37. Looking Inside SAP HANA — In-Memory Computing Engine BusinessObjects Data Services We can also move the whole database that has the source data for your dashboards to the in-memory platform of HANA. This makes the system much faster!! (SAP Dashboards can consume data from HANA right now) Vs.

38. What We’ll Cover … Sizing Environment for BI 4.0 and SAP Dashboards Core components of Dashboard and BI Compatibility Requirements In-memory performance options Wrap-up 37

39. High-Volume User Management and Access Control Plan for a gradual rollout to a limited number of users Keep the numbers comparable if possible  This will allow you to predict system loads and performance issues by stipulations from real performance data  I.e., roll out to 50 users each week Simplified versions of high-impact dashboards may be created for casual users  I.e., a dashboard with only one query and summarized data with limited navigation and passing of variables Create a hardware contingency plan and budget accordingly 38 Only in rare cases should you use a big-bang approach. Since user patterns are hard to predict, this may cause significant performance issues.

40. Resources SAP Sizing tool: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/1055c550- ce45-2f10-22ad-a6050fff97f1 Evan Delodder and Ray Li, Creating Dashboards with Xcelsius (SAP PRESS, 2010). David Lai and Xavier Hacking, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook (Birmingham, PA: Packt Publishing, 2011). Dashboard and Presentation Designer (Xcelsius) forum on SDN http://forums.sdn.sap.com/forum.jspa?forumID=302 SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.x tutorials on SDN www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/dashboards-elearning 39

41. 7 Key Points to Take Home Use the SAP Sizing tool for initial sizing estimates Size your system based on concurrent users and SAPS Use realistic data volumes, users & dashboard complexity in your assumptions Use the SAP system guides on the SAP Service Marketplace, but plan to operate your system at max. 70% load for “spare capacity” Keep the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 environment on a separate stack from SAP NetWeaver BW Make sure the PCs have enough memory Examine the “standard” PC of the users and developers; pay attention to connectivity, screen size and resolutions, CPUs, and all software release versions to assure compatibility 40

42. Your Turn! 41 How to contact me: Dr. Bjarne Berg bberg@comerit.com

43. Disclaimer SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, SAP NetWeaver ®, Duet ®, PartnerEdge, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Wellesley Information Services is neither owned nor controlled by SAP. 42