PeopleSoft

1
PeopleSoft SunCompetency CenterOverview

• Ed Chaban
• Ed.Chaban_at_Sun.COM
• 1 925 694 7627

2
Competency Center Overview

• Dedicated Senior Staff/Equipment
• Global Virtual Team- Sales, Marketing,
  Engineering,
• 8 Engineers covering Americas, Europe and Asia
• 12 Servers w/ over 3 terabytes of storage in
  Pleasanton
• Custom Configuration and Sizing
• Benchmark Performance/Analysis
• Engineering Rotations for Sun and partner
  employees
• Excellent Relationship through PeopleSoft
  Alliance Solution Center

3
Configuration and Sizing

• X Workload Requires Y Hardware
• Size to meet requirements, not a sales quota or
  budget
• Size for Customer Performance Expectations
• Questionnaire
• Conference calls/ Customer visits
• Configuration Issues
• Architectural Issues
• Benchmark results
• Automated Sizing tool under development
• More than one way to size/architect a system
• Spreadsheets and automated tools are of limited
  use

4
PeopleSoft 8 Sizing on Sun

• What we know
• Sizing models that existed before certified
  benchmark results are somewhat useful, but have
  flaws (anything before March of 2001)
• Only certified "real world" benchmarks matter.
• Database/Batch server requirements for 8 are
  similar to those of 7.5
• Oracle is still the best understood database
  environment for PeopleSoft.

5
PeopleSoft 8 Sizing on Sun

• What we know (cont)
• Appservers are the main difference in PSFT 8
• Horizontal scalability demonstrated to 7
  appservers
• Vertical scalability demonstrated to 30
  processors
• Roughly 100 users/CPU w/ 80 utilization on
  750Mhz UltraSPARC III processors.

6
PeopleSoft 8 Sizing on Sun

• What we don't know
• How logically combining tiers affects performance
• Should not be a problem for low user count
  environments
• Suggest combining only 2 of the 3 tiers (app and
  web preferably)

7
PeopleSoft 8 Sizing on Sun

• Quick first order approximation for sizing
  PeopleTools-based applications
• Size the app server tier
• Figure(100 users/CPU)
• 2GB RAM per CPU
• Size the web server tier
• ( 1/6-1/4 of the App tier)
• Minimum 2GB RAM
• No more than 4 CPUs per machine
• Size the DB server
• (about 1/4-1/2 of he App tier)
• Could result in oversizing in large user count
  situations
• Assumes a reasonable batch load

8
PeopleSoft 8 Sizing on Sun

• Architectural Considerations
• App server tier
• Scales well both Horizontally and Vertically
• Domains versus workgroup servers
• Few large versus many small
• Web server tier
• Scales best Horizontally
• Load balancing mechanism
• DB server
• Scales only Vertically
• Can me made highly available through Clustering

9
PeopleSoft 8 Sizing on Sun

• Combining Tiers and Servers (Consolidation)
• Combining Tiers
• Jury is still out on performance
• Only makes sense in small (less than 200 users)
  environments
• Combining Servers (eg. HR and Financials on the
  same box)
• Commonly done in environments up to 1000 users
• Security concerns
• Availability concerns
• Versioning issues

10
PeopleSoft 8 Sizing on Sun

• Special Considerations for Universities
• Security Prying little eyes
• Isolating web and app tiers
• Isolating databases
• Class registration - Dealing with the onslaught
• Isolating tiers
• Seasonal resource shifting (Domains DR)
• Policy decisions

11
PeopleSoft 8 Sizing on Sun

• How to avoid incorrect sizing
• Realistic user count estimates
• Most people overestimate - especially
  self-service
• Beware the low-ball sizing
• CPU counts should be similar among architectures
• Don't forget Batch!
• Will batch happen during the day?
• Last Minute module additions
• Portal
• EPM

12
What are other Schools use Sun?

• University of Utah
• California State University System
• UC San Francisco
• North Carolina State
• Princeton
• Harvard
• Cleveland State University
• University of Minnesota
• Simon Fraser University (Canada)
• University of Alberta (Canada)
• And a host of others.....

13
Engagement

• Accessing the sizing and configuration
  questionnaire - peoplesoft_questionnaire_at_Sun.COM
• Request or Submitting a sizing request
• peoplesoft_sizing_at_Sun.COM
• Ed Chaban, PeopleSoft Competency Center Manager -
  
• Ed.Chaban_at_Sun.COM