Sterling B2B Integrator: General Recommendations Checklist

Edit online

The general recommendations checklist provides a list of guidelines to plan for the required elements, and to enhance the performance of Sterling B2B Integrator.

In the following table, the Test and Production columns indicate whether the recommendations are Recommended (R), Critical (C), or Not Applicable (NA) in the test and production environments.

Note: You should set up a Sterling B2B Integrator test environment with a sample set of data to verify the recommendations provided in this checklist.
Recommendation Test Production Comments

OS version and OS kernel parameters

 C C

You should ensure that you install Sterling B2B Integrator on certified OS versions and levels.

Refer to the System Requirements documentation of the corresponding OS versions.
Network speed C C You should ensure that your network cards are operating at the highest speeds. The network interface and the network switch can negotiate to lower speed. When that happens, performance degrades even under normal processing periods.
Note: You must provide extremely low latency and low packet loss between the cluster nodes and the database when using Sterling B2B Integrator. Latency should be 0 milliseconds and packet loss should be 0. Sterling B2B Integrator cannot operate effectively with a network latency of more than 10 milliseconds.
AIX page space allocation C C

The AIX default page space allocation policy does not reserve swap space when processes allocate memory. This can lead to excessive swap space, which forces AIX to kill processes when it runs out of swap space.

You should ensure that you either have sufficient swap space, or set the following environment policy variables:

PSALLOC=EARLY

NODISCLAIM=TRUE

Monitor CPU Utilization

 NA C You should monitor CPU utilization to ensure that there is no CPU contention.
Monitor Swap Usage C C If not enough space is left on the swap device (or paging file), the operating system may prevent another process from starting, or in some cases, be forced to kill the running processes.
Monitor Paging C C

The JVMs and database management systems rely on large memory buffers or heaps, and are sensitive to paging. Performance can noticeably degrade if enough memory is not available to keep the JVM heap in memory.

You can monitor paging levels using standard operating system or third-party measurement tools, such as:
  • UNIX/Linux – SAR
  • Windows – System Monitor

Monitor Heap

Garbage Collection Performance

 C C Monitoring heap GC performance is critical for performance and availability. For example, if the amount of heap that is free after a GC is continually increasing, and approaching the maximum heap size, the JVM can experience OutOfMemory exceptions.

EDI Encoder Service

EDI Envelope Service

 R R As of Sterling B2B Integrator 5.2, the EDI Encoder Service and EDI Envelope Service notify the user of an incorrect value or mismatch in the Mode parameter by writing information on how to correct the problem in the status report of the business process step. This can cause a performance degradation in some very heavy usage scenarios by adding additional load on the database. It is recommended that all business processes that use the EDI Encoder Service and/or EDI Envelope Service be reviewed to make certain they are using the correct Mode parameter, and that the values match in the business process.
  • EDI Encoder Service should be set as Mode. For example: <assign to="Mode">IMMEDIATE</assign>
  • EDI Envelope Service should be set as MODE. For example: <assign to="MODE">IMMEDIATE</assign>
Planning
Server node sizing NA C

You should ensure that you have sufficient computing capacity to process peak transaction volumes.

Refer to System Requirements documentation to get an estimate of the processor, memory, and other requirements.

You can also engage IBM Professional Services to conduct a capacity plan study of your system. This study involves measuring your system, and using the measurements to forecast resource requirements at anticipated peak processing periods.
Database disk sizing NA C

You should ensure that you have sufficient disk space for the database server.

The size of the database disk subsystem may vary from a few gigabytes to several terabytes. The size depends on the processing volume, its complexity, and the length of time you want to keep the data active in the database.
JVM
JVM version C C

You must ensure that you install Sterling B2B Integrator on certified JVM versions and levels.

Run the –version command in the command prompt to ensure that you have installed the correct version.
Verbose GC statistics NA C You can enable verbose GC statistics collection. Understanding the health of GCs for each JVM is critical for performance.
Paging C C The JVM heap must be resident in the memory. The performance can noticeably degrade if the operating system has to page portions of the heap out to disk.
OutOfMemory Exceptions C C OutOfMemory exceptions can cause unpredictable behavior. You should ensure that you have allocated sufficient physical memory to Sterling B2B Integrator based on your processing requirements.
JVM VM mode C C For HotSpot JVM, the server mode is applicable for long-running workloads.
Heap size C C

Correct heap size configuration is critical for both performance and availability. If the heap size is too big, the GC pauses can be long. Similarly, if the heap size is too small, it can lead to OutOfMemory exceptions. You should ensure that heap size is not set larger than physical memory to avoid thrashing.

Sterling B2B Integrator supports both 32-bit and 64-bit JVMs. You should allocate more heap space when you are running a 64-bit JVM.
Database
Monitor and regulate indexes C C

Sterling B2B Integrator comes with a default set of indexes. In some cases, the indexes may not apply to your operational environment.

You should regularly monitor the resource cost of frequently used queries to check if additional indexes are required. Similarly, you can also monitor the database to delete indexes if they are not required.
Cursor sharing C C

If you are using Oracle database, cursor sharing enables dynamic SQL to be reusable, thereby reducing the contention on the shared pool.

You should ensure that you set cursor_sharing=EXACT
Parameters governing DB2 locking strategy C C Set DB2_EVALUNCOMMITTED, DB2_SKIPDELETED, and DB2_SKIPINSERTED to reduce lock contention.

Parameters governing DB2 memory

 C C Set parameters to manage various memory structures such as LOCKLIST, SORTHEAP, and so on, to AUTOMATIC.