Increasing the Warehouse Cache Size

Technical Note 2202

Last Reviewed 13-May-2010
Applies to:
Mobility Warehouse v5.2 installed from version 6.0 through 7.20, running Sun Patch 4

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Summary

This technote provides information on increasing cache sizes used by the Mobility warehouse, which can improve performance for large deployments of 1000 or more users and/or devices. For deployments of that size, NetMotion Wireless strongly recommends increasing these cache sizes. While no damage will occur by using this procedure on smaller installations, the performance gains will not be noticeable.

Note: If your warehouse was installed from version 7.21 or higher, the cache sizes have already been set to 100MB and you do not need to change them. To verify your setting, open the Server Status page in the Mobility console, and then click "Warehouse Status". Note the Database Cache and Entry Cache sizes - both should be 100MB.

Important: Your Mobility warehouse (primary and standby) must have Sun Patch 4 applied before making these changes; otherwise the warehouse service may fail to restart.

To determine if Patch 4 has been applied to your warehouse, do the following:

1.Open the Sun ONE Directory Server console: on the Start menu, click Programs | Sun ONE Server Products (or Sun Java System Server Products)| Sun ONE Server Console 5.2 (or Sun Java System Server Console 5.2). Log on with the user ID and password you created during warehouse setup. The default user ID is admin.

2.On the Servers and Applications tab, expand the tree in the left-hand pane until you see the Directory Server listing.

3.Select (highlight) Directory Server.

4.In the right-hand pane, look at the Version: line.

5.A warehouse that has had Sun Patch 4 applied will read "Version: 5.2_Patch_4".

For information on applying Sun Patch 4, refer to http://www.netmotionwireless.com/support/technotes/2195.aspx..

Explanation

Two key cache size parameters, the Database Cache and the Entry Cache are used by the Directory Server. The Database Cache contains information about both the indices and entries in the database, kept in database format. The Entry Cache holds recently accessed entries formatted for delivery to client applications. Increasing these cache sizes can dramatically improve the performance of warehouse lookups that occur as a routine part of using the Mobility XE Server console.

Note: The Directory Server service (not the physical machine) will have to be restarted during this procedure. During that brief time (10-30 seconds) the Mobility system will not accept new connections. This restart of services can be done at your convenience after changing the values; it DOES NOT have to be done immediately after changing the values.

Increasing the Cache Sizes

To increase the Database and Entry Cache sizes:

1.Open the Sun ONE Server Console. (On the Start menu, click Programs | Sun ONE Server Products | Sun ONE Server Console 5.2.)

2.On the Servers and Applications tab, expand the tree until you see your Directory Server listing. Select your server, and then click Open.

3.On the Directory tab, expand the node "cn=config -> plugins -> ldbm database".

4.Under "ldbm database", right-click on "config" and select "Edit with Generic Editor".

5.Change the value of the attribute nsslapd-dbcachesize to 104857600 and click OK. This will change the Database Cache size to 100 megabytes.

6.Under "ldbm database", right-click on "userRoot" and select "Edit with Generic Editor".

7.Change the value of the attribute nsslapd-cachememsize to 104857600 and click OK. This will change the Entry Cache size to 100 megabytes.

8.Open the Tasks tab of the Sun Console and select "Restart Directory Server". After the service has restarted, close the two Sun console windows.

9.This procedure should be performed on your standby warehouse(s) as well as your primary.

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