IBM Sterling File Gateway: Specific Recommendations Checklist

Edit online

After you tune your Sterling B2B Integrator installation, you can perform Sterling File Gateway-specific tuning and troubleshooting tasks.

IBM® Sterling File Gateway is installed on an instance of Sterling B2B Integrator, and shares many of the resources with the latter, including:
  • Communication Adapters
  • Business Processes
  • Security Services
  • Perimeter Services
  • Encryption
  • Decryption
  • Account Management

You should, therefore, tune your Sterling B2B Integrator installation first, and then perform the Sterling File Gateway-specific tuning and troubleshooting tasks. Be aware that the changes you make to Sterling File Gateway can also affect the performance of Sterling B2B Integrator.

Note: Do not edit the properties files. Make all the changes in the customer_overrides.properties file. For example, to change the pgpCmdline2svcname property, enter the following line in the customer_overrides.properties file:
filegateway.pgpCmdline2svcname=CUSTOM
In this line, replace CUSTOM with the name of your Command Line 2 adapter. For more information about the customer_overrides.properties file, refer to the property files documentation in the online documentation library.

The following table describes some of the key parameters that must be configured to optimize Sterling File Gateway performance.

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.

Recommendation Test Production Comments

Number of Sterling File Gateway services that can be run concurrently.

Property: fgRouteConcurrentSessionLimit

 R R

Number of Sterling File Gateway services that can be run concurrently. The services are split into two groups, and each group has this value as the limit. Therefore, the total number of services that can run concurrently is equal to the value for this property multiplied by two. Set this to a value that is higher than the sum of business process threads in queues 4 and 6 (where Sterling File Gateway services run).

Default value: 8 (Maximum: 64)

If you are processing very large files, increase the probe values to avoid timeout conditions.

Property:
  • filegateway.bpCompletionProbes.2
  • filegateway.bpCompletionSleepMsec.2
 R R

Timeouts and sleep intervals that control the period for which Sterling File Gateway waits for each of the sub-business process it invokes. The timeouts and sleep intervals control the timeouts when a business process is executed synchronously during routing. The types of business processes that run during routing are consumer identification and PGP processing. Setting the values for these properties also enables one set of relatively quick probes, followed by a second set of slower probes. The first set will be reactive, but consumes more processor capacity. The second set will be activated for longer-running processes and will consume less processor capacity.

First, probe 120 times, with 100 milliseconds between each probe, for a total of 12 seconds.

Default value:
  • bpCompletionProbes.1=120
  • bpCompletionSleepMsec.1=100

Then, probe 600 times with 2000 milliseconds between each probe, for a total of 1200 seconds (20 minutes).

Default value:
  • bpCompletionProbes.2=600
  • bpCompletionSleepMsec.2=2000

If you have a high volume of PGP traffic, you can improve your performance by specifying a group for the file gateway.

Property: pgpCmdline2svcnam

 R R

The name of the Command Line 2 adapter to be used for PGP packaging and unpackaging. You can override this property in the customer_overrides.properties file if a custom Command Line 2 adapter is used for PGP operations. You can also specify an adapter group name to balance the outbound PGP sessions load across multiple adapter instances.

Default value: pgpCmdline2svcname=PGPCmdlineService

If you have very large files that will be processed by PGP, increase the value of the file gateway.

Property: fgRoutePGPCmdLineSocketTimeout

 R R

Timeout value, in milliseconds, for PGP package and unpackage operations invoked by Sterling File Gateway.

Default value: 240000 milliseconds (4 minutes)

If you have high volumes of FTP traffic, you can improve your performance by specifying a group.

Property: filegateway.ftpClientAdapterName

 R R

The FTP Client Adapter instance or service group that the FileGatewayDeliverFTP business process will use. You can override this property in the customer_overrides.properties file to use a custom FTP Client Adapter instance to contact trading partners. You can also specify an adapter group name to balance the outbound FTP sessions load across multiple adapter instances.

Default value: ftpClientAdapterName=FTPClientAdapter

Decrease the value of evaluation frequency.

Property:
  • MailboxEvaluateAllAutomaticRules
  • MailboxEvaluateAllAutomaticRulesSubMin
 R R

You can enable either MailboxEvaluateAllAutomaticRules or MailboxEvaluateAllAutomaticRulesSubMin.

MailboxEvaluateAllAutomaticRulesSubMin verifies the presence of routable messages once every 10 seconds, and can be edited for other intervals of less than one minute by modifying the MailboxEvaluateAllAutomaticRulesSubMin business process.

Suppress Duplicate Messages

Property:mailbox.disallowDuplicateMessages=true

 R R Prevents duplicate messages from using system resources.

Increase the number of steps a business process must complete prior to returning to the queue.

Property: noapp.AE_ExecuteCycle.#

 R R

Number of steps involved in the completion of a business process before the business process returns to the queue. Higher values will accelerate individual business process execution, while lower values will provide smoother multitasking capabilities. Interactive use favors a lower number of steps, while batch processing favors a higher number of steps. The value of noapp.AE_ExecuteCycle.# can be different for each queue. .# indicates the queue number.

When a business process has one service to begin a protocol session and another service to use the protocol session, a very low AE_ExecuteCycle may lead many business processes to be in the queue, with only the first service running. This may result in many protocol sessions accumulating in an open state, and session limits being met sooner than is necessary.

Increase the time period that a business process can use a thread, before releasing it to be used for another business process.

Property: noapp.AE_ExecuteCycleTime.#

 R R Maximum time period, in milliseconds, for which a business process can use a thread before releasing it for use by another business process. This value will override the value set for AE_ExecuteCycle. Tuning the value for this property ensures that a series of unusually slow steps will not tie up a thread completely. This value can be different for each queue. .# indicates the queue number. A value that is too low may result in the accumulation of more sessions than are recommended.

Increase the number of concurrent threads.

Property: noapp.MaxThreads

 R R Total number of concurrent threads that Sterling File Gateway is allowed to use. This number may be verified against the licensed number of threads. This value is the total number of threads available to a workflow engine to execute business process steps. Other, non-workflow engine threads do not come under the purview of this limit. For example, the threads set in fgRouteConcurrentSessionLimit do not come under the purview of this limit.

Increase the number of concurrent threads in HTTP server adapter.

Property: http.numOfmaxThread

 R R Total number of concurrent threads for all HTTP server adapters in the Sterling B2B Integrator installation. The default value is 10. If the users are experiencing slow response when many concurrent connections are made to the same port, you must increase this value to 50. Continue tuning this value until the system response is acceptable for the number of concurrent connections that must be supported. Setting this value to a value that is too high can be detrimental to system stability when too many concurrent connections are made.

Set storage type.

Property: filegateway_ui.storagetype=file

 R R

File System is more efficient.

Default value: database

Set persistence setting for business processes that perform protocol translation to System Default.

 R R
Business processes that must have persistencesettings set to System Default:
  • FileGatewayRoutePGPPackageDocument
  • FileGatewayRoutePGPUnpackageDocument
  • User defined business processes used for translation of custom file layers