Websphere portal server and Lotus Web Content Management performance tuning tips

Image via WikipediaIf you have had the pleasure to install and set up a WebSphere Portal environment, you know that sometimes it can be a big, fat bloated piece of something you'd expect from Redmond.

You will probably see the biggest increase from the Base portal tuning recommendations.
Give it as much memory as you can spare and increase the thread pool size -- you should see performance increase just from this. (If on Windows, you can't go above 1.5G, but for a server Windows should always be your last choice.)

After the base portal tuning, try again, then start to do some performance monitoring.
If you're a big WCM user, check the caches here and make them bigger.


Links:

• a starting point is IBM doc#swg27007059,
  IBM WebSphere Portal Performance Troubleshooting Guide,
  it contains basic generic troubleshooting methodology. You may want a methodology like this for your manager or client.. Also a step-by-step guide to the PMI / Tivoli Performance Viewer -- these are definitely worth checking to get basic measurements of your server.

• WebSphere Portal and Lotus Web Content Management 6.1.x Performance Tuning Guide
  Broken out into portal, WCM, database, web, etc components. Has specific parameters to change, but you need to know what you're doing.
  This document is also somewhere on the IBM side, but the lotus wiki versions allow for updates.
  (I have even corrected some of their documents.. if only they would conform to the formatting conventions)
  
• This looks good, but I only found it later, after I did my tuning..:
  WebSphere tuning for the impatient: How to get 80% of the performance improvement with 20% of the effort

Patches (aka fixpacks) sometimes fix performance issues. I haven't encountered one specifically, but it has been known to happen.

...
Also testing Zemanta with this post.. the included image is totally unrelated.
Actually, I said 'pool' -- I think that's where it came from, and you have to admit it looks cooler than a 'websphere'.

Add ogg support to iTunes on Mac OS X

iTunes for Mac:
this was harder to find than I thought.
Not hard, just not trivial; this should be a one-click add-capability type action,
but the instructions were not as clear. (Ideally, iTunes would already have support for open formats.)

1. Quit iTunes
2. Download XiphQT QuickTime component.
   This is a small 1M .dmg; double click to open it. You'll see some text files, but most importantly
   XiphQT.component
   
3. Copy it in to /Library/QuickTime
4. [Optional] This is only necessary if you want to double-click an .ogg file and have it open in iTunes. You can still use the 'add to library' menu item or drag files from the Finder on to iTunes. I think.
   Edit the info.plist file inside of iTunes;
   see instructions here: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Using_iTunes/Ogg_in_iTunes
   

Go to dir.xiph.org and try an ogg stream.
Start up iTunes and play.
I did this on 10.6.4.

sql server: "User, group, or role XXXX already exists in the current database." even after deleting user and recreating

A database user existed without an associated sql server login.
WebSphere wants login to match the schema name (up to now it seems okay...)

• tried to create a user with this login -- failed because 'user or role' already exists. or principal, I forget the error.
• delete that login. fail because its the owner of a schema.
• edit that schema, assign ownership to another user
• create login. failed because of user mapping, with a message similar to above.
  
• but it was actually created! I saw it later after trying to see if I could find any reference to the user.
• try to modify the user mapping again. okay for the default schema/database, and I could login okay, but trying to assign the user mapping for database 'master' failed, and I think those SqlJDBCXAUser role settings are necessary.
  

So I searched google for "User, group, or role" "already exists in the current database." "user mapping" master, and found the following:

SQL Server Tip - Fixing Orphaned Users and ran the following as sa:

sp_change_users_login 'auto_fix', 'UserName'

where UserName is the name of your user.

The row for user 'customizationusr' will be fixed by updating its login link to a login already in existence.
The number of orphaned users fixed by updating users was 1.
The number of orphaned users fixed by adding new logins and then updating users was 0.

checked the login to see if I could make the master mapping... It was already there!
Success. am i certified ms sqlserver dba now?

Exception: WUPD0248E: Fix pack update failure: The processing of fix pack WP_PTF_6104, component wp.ptf.config failed.

IBM says:

Completed processing extractor command line arguments. Performing extraction. Failed to perform extraction. Exception: WUPD0248E: Fix pack update failure: The processing of fix pack WP_PTF_6101, component wp.ptf.config failed.

Cause

The fixpack installation was performed utilizing a non-root user. Reviewing permissions on the directory structures for the /tmp file indicated the non-root user did not have write permissions on that directory. Therefore, the extraction of the updated .jar files to the /tmp directory failed.

Environment

Any supported UNIX® or Linux™ operating system may be affected. NOTE: Microsoft Windows operating systems should not be affected by this error message as the user ID used for Portal on Windows must be a member of the Administrators Group per the Portal 6.1 Information Center.

But, it happened to me on Windows.. the message in another log file was slightly different--it was making some changes of wkplc.properties which it said it couldn't write to. Odd, because I owned that directory, and am admin, and that's the only file I changed.. from a remote machine. Yes, it's usually more convenient to do something on a non-windows machine where you have real tools to work with. I am logged over the network as the same user, or should be, so why does writing over the next change it?

dir /Q will show owners..

C:\wps\WebSphere\wp_profile\ConfigEngine\properties>dir /q
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 3108-D2F9

Directory of C:\wps\WebSphere\wp_profile\ConfigEngine\properties

11/04/2009 11:32 AM 2,729 BUILTIN\Administrators db.config.properties
11/04/2009 11:32 AM 1,381 BUILTIN\Administrators empty.properties
06/14/2010 12:50 PM 87,670 ... test
06/14/2010 02:32 PM 87,670 BUILTIN\Administrators wkplc.properties
05/12/2010 11:48 AM 87,566 BUILTIN\Administrators wkplc.properties.standalone

Whatever '...' is, the administrator can't write to it.
Guess it's not surprising anymore when microsoft does things wrong.

Awareness works sometimes in Sametime, or for certain people, or I don't see myself as online

Probably a case issue...
see

Upper/Lower case discrepancies in DN cause problems with Awareness in Common PIM and Domino portlets

Question You are using one or more of the Lotus® Domino® and Extended Products Portlets or Common PIM Portlets with IBM® WebSphere® Portal. You initially have trouble with Awareness working in the portlet(s), but after you follow the troubleshooting script, "Troubleshooting Sametime Awareness in WebSphere Portal" (#1163790), the STLinks applet loads correctly in your browser.
However, you then notice that either no Awareness functionality ever appears in your browser, or if your name appears multiple times on a page, some will show Awareness (for example, green icon to symbolize a person is logged into Sametime and available, etc.) while others do not.
...

.. though in addition to the stlink.js change listed there, the one I was sent also has this:

1748,1756d1747
<
< //fix for PMR 73450,SGC,724 -- stcl portlet fails to load mixed case awareness.
<
< if(!STlinksCaseSensitive) {
< linkId = linkId.toLowerCase();
< }
<

now why didn't they put that there?

Generally their support is okay (at least after you get off the web and get someone on the phone).. is this to require maintenance ?

.... okay, I thought that fixed it.
I swear I saw it work.
But I am still seeing issues.

Will update later....