Performance Tuning for Oracle WebCenter Content 11g - Fishbowl ...

Logging
11g uses the Weblogic logging. The granularity of information sent to the logging system goes from
TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, NOTICE, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL, ALERT, to EMERGENCY. In production
environment, change the logging level to ERROR. One could modify the
/user_projects/domains//config/servers/UCM_server1/logging.xm
l
or modify the logging levels using the Weblogic administrative console.
File Store Providers
Oracle’s ECM solution moved a File Store Provider to accommodate different usage patterns. The default file store
provider in 11g continues to use the vault/weblayout file structure.
Classically, the Oracle ECM solution would store relational data in a database and files in a file system. As the
number of managed assets increased, some scalability issues became apparent. Three metadata fields – dDocType,
dSecurityGroup, and dSecurityAccount – were used to spread the assets out to multiple directory structures. There
is a limit to how many files can go into a directory structure, and as the number of assets grew into the tens of
millions, hundreds of millions, and eventually billions inode issues and disk management became a bottleneck. UCM
updated the default file store provider to add additional dispersion directories to spread out the files.
A database file store provider was added where the assets are persisted in the database rather than a file system.
The Oracle 11gR2 Database SecureFiles API improved performance by over 40% compared to the 10g
implementation. Performance matches, and in some cases exceeds, major networked file systems. In addition to
the I/O gains, repositories that have Database Compression will automatically have de-duplication performed
against content stored the repository.
When content is uploaded to the repository, a temporary file is placed in the vault/~temp location with a cache
cleanup eventually clearing out that disk space. The current version allows that cache to be limited to one day, so
care must be taken when ingesting very large volumes of content. Content must also be indexed before that
temporary area becomes a candidate for cleanup.
Virtualization
Oracle differentiates between hard and soft portioning from a licensing perspective. With hard partitioning in use,
one only licenses the CPU used by the virtual machine. Soft partitioning requires licensing for all CPUs in the host
machine. Oracle VM can be configured to qualify as hard partitioning, but EMC VMWare is considered soft
partitioning. Hardware prices are trivial compared to software, so optimize the virtual hosts to consolidate licenses.
Typically, multiple smaller instances perform better than fewer larger instances. Attempt to optimize CPU
utilization, adding additional CPUs to the host servers as needed.
While CPU architecture, socket, and cores impact the licensing costs, memory does not. A physical CPU may be
shared among multiple virtual machines, but memory should not be a pooled resource.
Services and Components
WebCenter Content continues the service-based architecture introduced in earlier versions of the content
repository. Services that return search results, metadata, or actual assets can be extended or overridden.
GET_SEARCH_RESULTS, for example, can return a large amount of data if a repository has many custom metadata
fields. The content repository will cache the search results, but network traffic can be significantly reduced by
creating a template that returns only the fields and result sets needed.
© 2012. Fishbowl Solutions, Inc.