Improved Performance on PeopleSoft Combined Benchmark using SPARC T4-4
- by Brian
Oracle's SPARC T4-4 server running Oracle's PeopleSoft HCM 9.1
combined online and batch benchmark achieved a world record 18,000
concurrent users experiencing subsecond response
time while executing a
PeopleSoft Payroll batch job of 500,000 employees in 32.4 minutes.
This result was obtained with a SPARC T4-4 server running
Oracle Database 11g Release 2,
a SPARC T4-4 server running PeopleSoft HCM 9.1
application server and a SPARC T4-2 server running
Oracle WebLogic Server in the web tier.
The SPARC T4-4 server running the application tier used
Oracle Solaris Zones
which provide a flexible, scalable and manageable virtualization
environment.
The average CPU utilization on the SPARC T4-2 server in the web
tier was 17%,
on the SPARC T4-4 server in the application
tier it was 59%, and
on the SPARC T4-4 server in the database
tier was 47% (online and batch)
leaving significant headroom for additional processing across the
three tiers.
The SPARC T4-4 server used for the database tier hosted Oracle Database
11g Release 2 using Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) for
database files management with I/O performance equivalent to raw devices.
Performance Landscape
Results are presented for the PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service
and Payroll combined benchmark.
The new result with 128 streams shows significant improvement
in the payroll batch processing time with little impact
on the self-service component response time.
PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service and Payroll Benchmark
Systems
Users
Ave Response
Search (sec)
Ave Response
Save (sec)
Batch
Time (min)
Streams
SPARC T4-2 (web)
SPARC T4-4 (app)
SPARC T4-4 (db)
18,000
0.988
0.539
32.4
128
SPARC T4-2 (web)
SPARC T4-4 (app)
SPARC T4-4 (db)
18,000
0.944
0.503
43.3
64
The following results are for the PeopleSoft HRMS
Self-Service benchmark that was previous run.
The results are not directly
comparable with the combined results because they do
not include the payroll component.
PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service 9.1 Benchmark
Systems
Users
Ave Response
Search (sec)
Ave Response
Save (sec)
Batch
Time (min)
Streams
SPARC T4-2 (web)
SPARC T4-4 (app)
2x SPARC T4-2 (db)
18,000
1.048
0.742
N/A
N/A
The following results are for the PeopleSoft Payroll
benchmark that was previous run.
The results are not directly
comparable with the combined results because they do
not include the self-service component.
PeopleSoft Payroll (N.A.) 9.1 - 500K Employees (7 Million SQL PayCalc, Unicode)
Systems
Users
Ave Response
Search (sec)
Ave Response
Save (sec)
Batch
Time (min)
Streams
SPARC T4-4 (db)
N/A
N/A
N/A
30.84
96
Configuration Summary
Application Configuration:
1 x SPARC T4-4 server with
4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz
512 GB memory
Oracle Solaris 11 11/11
PeopleTools 8.52
PeopleSoft HCM 9.1
Oracle Tuxedo, Version 10.3.0.0, 64-bit, Patch Level 031
Java Platform, Standard Edition Development Kit 6 Update 32
Database Configuration:
1 x SPARC T4-4 server with
4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz
256 GB memory
Oracle Solaris 11 11/11
Oracle Database 11g Release 2
PeopleTools 8.52
Oracle Tuxedo, Version 10.3.0.0, 64-bit, Patch Level 031
Micro Focus Server Express (COBOL v 5.1.00)
Web Tier Configuration:
1 x SPARC T4-2 server with
2 x SPARC T4 processors, 2.85 GHz
256 GB memory
Oracle Solaris 11 11/11
PeopleTools 8.52
Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.4
Java Platform, Standard Edition Development Kit 6 Update 32
Storage Configuration:
1 x Sun Server X2-4 as a COMSTAR head for data
4 x Intel Xeon X7550, 2.0 GHz
128 GB memory
1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (80 flash modules)
1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (40 flash modules)
1 x Sun Fire X4275 as a COMSTAR head for redo logs
12 x 2 TB SAS disks with Niwot Raid controller
Benchmark Description
This benchmark combines PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 HR Self Service online and
PeopleSoft Payroll batch workloads to
run on a unified database deployed on
Oracle Database 11g Release 2.
The PeopleSoft HRSS benchmark kit is a Oracle standard benchmark kit
run by all platform vendors to measure the performance. It's an OLTP
benchmark where DB SQLs are moderately complex. The results are
certified by Oracle and a white paper is published.
PeopleSoft HR SS defines a business transaction as a series of
HTML pages that guide a user through a particular scenario. Users are
defined as corporate Employees, Managers and HR administrators.
The benchmark consist of 14 scenarios which emulate users performing
typical HCM transactions such as viewing paycheck, promoting and hiring
employees, updating employee profile and other typical HCM application
transactions.
All these transactions are well-defined in the PeopleSoft HR
Self-Service 9.1 benchmark kit. This benchmark metric is the weighted
average response search/save time for all the transactions.
The PeopleSoft 9.1 Payroll (North America) benchmark demonstrates system
performance for a range of processing volumes in a specific
configuration. This
workload represents large batch runs typical of a ERP environment during
a mass update.
The benchmark measures five application business process run times for
a database representing large organization. They are Paysheet Creation,
Payroll Calculation, Payroll Confirmation, Print Advice forms, and Create
Direct Deposit File.
The benchmark metric is the cumulative elapsed time taken to complete the
Paysheet Creation, Payroll Calculation and Payroll Confirmation
business application processes.
The benchmark metrics are taken for each respective benchmark while
running simultaneously on the same database back-end. Specifically, the
payroll batch processes are started when the online workload reaches
steady state (the maximum number of online users) and overlap with
online transactions for the duration of the steady state.
Key Points and Best Practices
Two PeopleSoft Domain sets with 200 application servers each on
a SPARC T4-4 server were hosted in 2 separate Oracle Solaris Zones to
demonstrate consolidation of multiple application servers, ease of
administration and performance tuning.
Each Oracle Solaris Zone was bound to a separate processor set, each
containing 15 cores (total 120 threads). The default set (1 core from
first and third processor socket, total 16 threads) was used for
network and disk interrupt handling. This was done to improve
performance by reducing memory access latency by using the physical
memory closest to the processors and offload I/O interrupt handling to
default set threads, freeing up cpu resources for Application Servers
threads and balancing application workload across 240 threads.
A total of 128 PeopleSoft streams server processes where
used on the database node
to complete payroll batch job of 500,000 employees in 32.4 minutes.
See Also
Oracle PeopleSoft Benchmark White Papers
oracle.com
SPARC T4-2 Server
oracle.com
OTN
SPARC T4-4 Server
oracle.com
OTN
PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Managementoracle.com OTN
PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management (Payroll)
oracle.com OTN
Oracle Solaris
oracle.com
OTN
Oracle Database 11g Release 2
oracle.com
OTN
Disclosure Statement
Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names
may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 8 November 2012.
