Maklee delivers the numbers for a leading financial body

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Maklee is the name behind an astonishing story of Oracle tuning success for a world-leading financial news and data company.

The client, utilizing an HP ProLiant DL785 G5 server with 8 Quad core AMD Opteron 8393 SE processors, needed to benchmark the RedHat Linux operating system as a future platform upon which to deploy Oracle.

Using an “out of the box” configuration, the server performed an impressive 44,000 database inserts per second, which denotes 2.64 million transactions per minute. Maklee was engaged to push the system to its limit and discover its maximum scaling capabilities.

Maklee’s initial tuning results showed 20% increased throughput, or 53,311 transactions per second (3.19 million transactions per minute).

In order to achieve even better results, Maklee performed a second round of more aggressive tuning. The system now performed a remarkable 106,705 transactions per second, or 6.4 million transactions per minute, reflecting CPU utilization of 45%. The benchmark proved the HP ProLiant DL785 G5 server’s capability in handling high-end production workloads, and Maklee’s expert tuning realized the server’s maximum potential.

 

Maklee’s tuning service earns top grades for leading Singapore University

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Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is ranked among the top 20 technology universities in the world. With staff numbering 2,500 from over 40 countries and approximately 28,000 students, NTU is a powerhouse of research and innovation on a 200-hectare garden campus in south-west Singapore.

The University’s Centre for IT Services (CITS) called on Maklee Engineering to analyze and tune the NTU Enterprise Oracle Database for enhanced concurrency load.

NTU Enterprise Oracle Database is the heart of the university’s databases, housing most of the data for Student, Human Resource and Finance applications. The application suite is comprised of in-house built, outsource built and turnkey applications, based on Microsoft .NET, Oracle mod_PLSQL and Oracle Forms/Reports technology.

The backend Oracle database server runs on HP Superdome Integrity Servers in a cluster environment for high availability. The Oracle database uses 10g RAC. Clients connect to front-end application servers which connect to the database servers.

In terms of performance and scaling, workload peaks typically occur at the beginning of the study semesters in January and July, when students register for courses. The system was unable to handle the high workload, and, as a result, the number of concurrent users for course registration had to be limited to a maximum of 200.

The Maklee team spent a week onsite analyzing baseline data from the current system. Then, the team tuned the operating system and the Oracle database environment, in addition to conducting analysis and tuning of the top SQL statements.

The changes implemented by Maklee achieved extraordinary results – load tests of post-graduate course registration demonstrated that the system and database can now handle more than 1200 concurrent users. This represents a six-fold increase in the system’s performance capabilities.

In addition, Maklee reviewed NTU’s backup and recovery process. In the past, a full database export was performed every night, taking approximately 6 hours to complete.Maklee Engineering took charge of the problem, and tuned the EXPDP datapump parameters. Following Maklee’s intervention, the full database, including all tables, is exported every night in less than 2 hours.

To find out what Maklee can achieve for your organization, please contactinfo@maklee.com

 

Frankfurt Airport’s luggage delivery system is right on target with Maklee

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Maklee has continued its success at Frankfurt Airport with outstanding results for its Baggage Reconciliation System (BRS-XP).

Frankfurt Airport is one of the world’s busiest, with thousands of flights serving over 300 destinations worldwide each week and a high percentage of international transfers.

BRS-XP is an innovative passenger baggage reconciliation system that provides efficient, accurate baggage control, ensuring that only bags belonging to passengers on board are loaded and that each bag has proper authorization. BRS-XP comprises an airport-wide network based on type p520 IBM servers running the IBM AIX operating system. This complex and sophisticated system takes into account the requirements of all airlines while executing the comprehensive collation and reconciliation of passenger and baggage data.

Maklee was consulted to improve the performance of the Oracle database, which is the core of the BRS-XP system. This was achieved by creating changes in the areas of memory management, I/O subsystem and the network subsystem. Maklee tuned numerous database parameters in addition to improving the execution plans of key SQL statements. After implementing all recommendations, elapsed time for key wait events in the database was cut by 50%, and key SQL statements are now executed at a rate 2 to 3 times faster.

Frankfurt Airport is now enjoying a BRS-XP system that shows a substantial increase in throughput, with system performance that is faster and more efficient, offering the capabilities to manage future growth.

If you would like further information about the ways Maklee can improve the performance of your system, please contact info@maklee.com.

 

MANOR + Maklee= Successful Migration

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MANOR is the largest chain of department stores in Switzerland, with approximately 11,200 employees in 87 different sites. MANOR’s department stores are part of the MANOR department store group, which includes the furniture stores FLY, the sport outfitters Athleticum as well as supermarkets and restaurants. MANOR’s revenue from its department stores in 2007 was 1.8 billion Euros.

OpenVMS & Oracle are at the core of MANOR’s IT environment, satisfying the company’s needs for high performance computing at all department stores (for inventory, sales etc.)

To support the growth of the business, MANOR was looking for a higher level of performance and throughput. In February 2008, MANOR performed an Alpha vs. Itanium benchmark, benchmarking the production environment (OpenVMS AlphaServer GS1280 1.15 Ghz) vs. HP Integrity server rx7640 1.6 Ghz with Oracle 10g.

Maklee was engaged by MANOR to make parts of the current production environment run in the most optimal way possible on the Integrity servers (preferably 20% faster than Alpha). This goal had to be achieved without changing the application itself.

The results were surprisingly positive: after tuning the Itanium server (rx7640) it ran 50% faster than Alpha. Maklee has raised the “performance bar” for MANOR.

MANOR followed Maklee’s recommendations and ordered two Integrity servers rx6600 (for MANOR’s dual site environment). MANOR began final testing in March/April 2008 and before implementing the new servers in production, performed an evaluation installation of Oracle RAC on OpenVMS.

Maklee assisted MANOR with the RAC installation and tuned the RAC environment for optimal performance. Maklee assisted MANOR in tuning the new Itanium servers before they went “live”. MANOR achieved a performance improvement that couldn’t be expressed in percentage but in factors!

After completing testing, MANOR (database administrators and OpenVMS/San team) & Maklee migrated 10 of 50 production Oracle databases to the RX6600. These run in a mixed architecture cluster (Alpha & Itanium) on OpenVMS in a dual site environment (nodes approx. 5km apart).

Thanks to Maklee, MANOR has managed to migrate much faster than initially planned.

Olaf Leonhardt – OpenVMS/SAN Management

Josef Fekete – Senior DBA

Radoslav Vavros – Senior DBA

Jean-Pierre Willer – Senior DBA

Klaus Berger – OpenVMS / SAN Management

For more information about MANOR please contact Olaf.Leonhardt@manor.ch

To find out how Maklee can help you – please contact info@maklee.com.

 

A leading European bank is achieving more – in less time

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Maklee Engineering consulted a European bank to improve the performance of their Oracle batch jobs. The bank was considering migrating from Alpha (ES47s) to Integrity-based servers (rx7640). However, a few batch jobs were running more slowly on Itanium than on Alpha. For example, a batch job that was running for 26 minutes on Alpha took 35 minutes to complete on Itanium. Maklee was called in to assist, and achieved a result of 12 minutes for completion of this particular batch job. In addition, a significant increase in performance was noted in all other batch jobs. The bank now has confidence in performance and scaling of the new systems and will be integrating the new servers into their production environment over the next few weeks.

 

To find out how your Oracle environment can achieve more for you, please contact:info@maklee.com

 

Adaptive Tuning Training for Oracle

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A double-edged approach to solving your performance problems.

Maklee Engineering is pleased to offer a new service – combined Oracle Tuning & Training in a three-day seminar conducted on-site in your Oracle environment.

Tuning Oracle is not a simple task, yet its rewards are immense – it is not uncommon for precise tuning to result in a ten-fold performance increase.

Maklee’s on-site Oracle Tuning & Training Seminar is a powerful combination of theory and practice:

Day 1:  Oracle Tuning theory & discussion, with a focus on the features specific to your environment.

Days 2 & 3: Tuning and analysis in your Oracle environment, with a guaranteed minimum performance improvement of 25%, or no charge for the training seminar.

In the current financial climate, Maklee maximizes your training budget by conducting seminars on-site. This means that more staff can participate, and tuning skills and techniques are implemented directly in your Oracle environment. The seminar is tailored for 100% relevance to your environment, so every aspect of both theoretical and practical training is applicable to your company’s needs.

The service is provided for Oracle versions 9i, 10g and 11g on the following platforms: OpenVMS (Alpha & Itanium), Tru64, HP-UX, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris and IBM AIX.

Maklee’s customized seminars are individually designed to show immediate positive results in performance improvement and ROI.

For more information please cont act info@maklee.com.