Webi Processing Server - Max Docs per User

[DellSC]

For the Webi Processing Server, there is a property called "Maximum Documents per User".  If you have multiple Webi Processing Servers defined in the platform, does this mean maximum per server or is it an over all maximum for the system as a whole?  None of the documentation I've looked through indicates which is is.

Thanks!

-Dell

[Matthew_Shaw · Accepted solution]

The documentation for the property “Maximum Documents per User” says “Specifies the maximum number of active sessions (Web Intelligence documents) that can be associated with a user at any given time. Therefore, if the default value is 5, then the user can use up to 5 active sessions at once.”

This is a little bit misleading. Firstly a user (a real physical living being) can create as many BI Platform user sessions within the BI Platform as they like. The only restriction is on the total number of ‘concurrent’ BI Platform user sessions, if you have a concurrent user license.  For example, a single user (a real physical living being) could create 100 BI Platform user sessions (with a user id ‘Matthew’) but wouldn’t be able to create any more BI Platform user sessions if the license key used was for “100 concurrent users”. If a named user license key is used, then there are no limits.

Secondly within any one BI Platform user session, that user can open as many Web Intelligence documents as he/she likes. There is no limit. For each document opened a ‘Web Intelligence session’ is created to manage it. Typically all ‘Web Intelligence sessions’ are created within the same Web Intelligence Processing Server (executable) for that BI Platform user session.

All the documents opened are cached to disk, however some are also kept in memory. For that ‘BI Platform user session’ on one Web Intelligence Processing Server, the default number of documents held in memory is 5. This is the “Maximum Documents per User” setting. As the user opens more than 5 documents the oldest one is simply dropped from memory. If the user starts to use the older one again, then it is loaded back into memory from disk and a different older one is dropped.

Whilst this setting can be changed the system will automatically drop this setting to 1. This can happen when the ‘Memory Analysis’ is enabled (which is on by default, it’s another setting in the Web Intelligence Processing Server properties) and certain conditions are met.  The Web Intelligence Processing Server checks the amount of memory it’s consuming every 2 minutes (“Server Polling Interval”, another property). If during one of these checks the memory consumption is above the “Lower Threashold” (another property), then a number of things happen:

1. Firstly inactive documents are dropped from memory. “Idle document timeout” (another property) specifies what is ‘idle’. The default is 5 minutes.
2. Secondly the time for future memory analysis checks is increased to 30 seconds (from the default 2 minutes)
3. Thirdly, within a single ‘BI Platform user session’, all but one of the Web Intelligence documents is dropped from memory. Remember they all are held on disk. So, the system automatically drops the number of “Maximum Documents per User” to 1 in order to try and reduce memory consumption. This happens within the Web Intelligence Process and so its highly likely it will affect all ‘Web Intelligence sessions’ for a ‘BI Platform user session’.

It’s important for the Web Intelligence Processing Server to control its memory usage, if it consumes too much it could consume the machine, result to memory paging and performance issues. For a 32 bit process it’s even more important, since a 32 bit process on Windows will blow up when it reaches 2 GB.

In general I would strongly advise against increasing the memory thresholds. It can be very dangerous to increase any of these as it will prevent the process of recovering memory earlier. I would also strongly advise against increasing the “Maximum Documents per User” from 5. Typically a user wouldn’t open, or work on more than this many at any one time. Increasing it will mean high memory consumption and the time to load the document state from disk is generally small, though it depends!

“Lower Threashold” is 1GB for XI3.1 (32 bit process) and 3.5 GB for BI4 (64 bit process).

Hope this helps!

Regards

Matthew

[DellSC · Accepted solution]

Thanks Matt!  That was just what I was looking for.

-Dell

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Great explanation!

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

This is the kind of in-depth information that we need to properly configure an environment. Great contribution, Matthew!

- Kristof

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Many Thanks   Matthew ,

This cleared many  confusion. 

Could you also please provide some info for below.

As you have written that  the  once parameter  values  " Memory Lower Threshold (MB):"  is a  reached all these things comes into play. So what it means that this value is not the  initial default memory allocated to the web intelligence processing server.

Could you please tell how or where we  can  check minimum memory  allocated to the webi server.

Regard ,

Abhinav

[Matthew_Shaw · Accepted solution]

Thank you for the feedback. I'm pleased its helped.

The "Memory Lower Threshold (MB)" will always be higher than the initial default memory allocated. The "Memory Lower Threshold" has a minimum setting of 1000MB which is higher than the initial memory allocated. You can't set the initial memory allocated on a Web Intelligence Processing Server and its less than 1000MB. (you can on the Web Intelligence Adaptive Processing Server, but this is a different server for a different purpose)

Regards

Matthew

Twitter: @MattShaw_on_BI

[former_member230867 · Accepted solution]

Hi Mathew,

Good article.

Is there then any benefit to set parameter "Maximum Documents per User" for WIPS? From what I understood from this article, it only affects number of documents kept in memory. Would there be any benefit to increase that? And what would be the outcome of it - increased performance? Or is it really only in conjunction with licensing?

Thanks.

Erik.

[Matthew_Shaw · Accepted solution]

Hello Erik

Increasing this figure can give a user an improved performance, since the document doesn't need to be loaded from the disk, once previously loaded within the users' session, but removed from memory. But you have to question how many of your users really use more than 5 documents *at the same time* ?

With the ability to 'pin' a document to the BI Launchpad a user could quite easily have a number of webi documents that they access regularly within their session, but do they really access more than 5 at the same time? Would they really be jumping to and fro between more than 5? Or would they just look at one and then move on to another.

Increasing the parameter will consume more memory, so memory is something you'd want to keep an extra eye on, if you increase this parameter.

"Or is it really only in conjunction with licensing?"

It has nothing to do with licensing in any way whatsoever.

Regards, Matthew

[former_member211284 · Accepted solution]

Hi Matthew,

Our Business Object version is 4.1 SP7 U1. We have two WIPS and one of them (seems the additional one) recently can't auto release the usage memory (I can observe it when we open/refresh report and export to excel file), the within 4 days, it will used up almost all memory (our server has 32 GB).  At the beginning, I thought it's a sizing issue, so I changed the settings of WIPS as:

Memory Lower Threshold (MB):5800

Memory Upper Threshold (MB):7500

Memory Maximum Threshold (MB): 10000

And seems it doesn't change the situation, memory consumption speed is not slower.  Now based on your explanation, I wonder if I should convert back.

Thanks in advance,

[Matthew_Shaw · Accepted solution]

Hello Jian

Seems to me there's either a product defect (memory leak) or the instance of the Web Intelligence Processing Server (WIPS) is somehow not right. I think it would be a good idea to create a new WIPS with a new name and see if the issue is reproducible.

I guess you've read

which is related but doesn't provide an answer for you. We changed our advice on 'should I or should I not disable memory analysis' based on experience of some selected customers running it disabled, but under monitoring from SAP development. All was fine, except for a memory leak on Windows which we fixed in BI 4.1 SP7 and BI 4.2.

Assuming you still have the problem with your new WIPS instance, I doubt reducing the memory thresholds will make much different - but you never know - it might and its worth a go. I doubt it will make much difference since your max threshold is 10 GB and you have 32 GB in your machine and all is being used. But please report back and share your experience please.

Seems you might need to log a support incident and then let us investigate the logs. Please set logs to high and submit them with your incident. Please also submit the 'Landscape Analysis' report from the BI Support Tool.

Thank you, Matthew

[former_member211284 · Accepted solution]

Thanks, Matthew, for letting me know that memory leak issue has been fixed in our current version (I thought update from Update1 to Update5 would include this fix, now seems not helpful).

I cloned the WIPS servers and it didn't help.  Today I will create the new server from the scratch.  Since we have two servers, should I let one run first and then add another additional server?

Just downloaded Admin tool, will get Landscape Analysis.

Thanks again.

[Matthew_Shaw · Accepted solution]

Hi Jian

Cloning a WIPS can copy any corruption should the original configuration not be entirely valid. Best to create a new one from scratch as you've now done.

I don't fully understanding the bit "we have two servers, should I let one run first and then add another additional server?" You basically want to see if the new WIPS has the same problem as your existing one. Seems that one of your existing WIPS is ok, the other not. So perhaps shutdown your existing WIPS that has the issue and start a new WIPS in its place. Another way, would be to have only one running at any one time. Do what you think is best.

When you want to shutdown a WIPS, best to set it to 'disabled' first, then the Platform won't allocate any more users to it, but let existing users assigned to it, to continue. Then once all users are no longer using it, then shut it down. Use the server metrics to see if anyone is using it.

Apart from the BI Support Tool, you may find the WebiAdminTool rather handy here. Read my blog which takes you to a wiki I put together. In that wiki page search for the word 'leak' and see my comments to learn how you might identify a memory leak. I actually doubt you will, but its worth a go nevertheless. What is worth is, is getting familiar with the WebiAdminTool, you may identify a user, a document or something odd that is causing your issue. To be honest, its more likely to be a content issue, or a corrupt WIPS config than a product defect.

Regards, Matthew

[former_member211284 · Accepted solution]

Thanks, Matthew.  The good news is the newly created WebiReportServer works fine over night now, with original configuration (obviously cloning the server is a stupid action).  As you mentioned, for right now I only enable one webintelligenceprocessingservice.  Later when it's really stable, will create more since we have 6 cpus.

It's really good to find you to consult our issues. Thanks again!

BTW, I've been able to generate landscape analysis.  But somehow I can't run WebiAdminTool,  it complains:

"Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/businessobjects/g

eneric/container/admin/ui/Main

Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.businessobjects.generic.contain

er.admin.ui.Main" ,

on this server, it's JRE6 and in the webi server, we check "Enable Memory Analysis". wonder if you could give more thoughts...

Sincerely,

Jian

[Former Member]

Excellent explanation!

Thank you very much Matthew!

[Former Member]

Thanks .Really it is very informative.