#ABAP_trial NW7.52 SP04 slow performance, how to optimize?

[albra]

Hi everyone,

I have successfully installed the NetWeaver Developer Edition on virtual box with OpenSuse 15.2 following the concise instructions. The SAP system works but is exceptionally slow. I have installed the NetWeaver Developer Edition on virtual box with a base memory of 6 GB and have assigned 150 GB memory, I have 10 GB swap on my laptop and 42 GB ram.

Is there anyway in which I can optimize performance of the SAP system?

Hope that someone can suggest and help with how to optimize performance. I am not a Linux nor SAP basis expert so any help is highly appreciated.

Best regards,

Allan

[abo]

6GB of VM memory out of a total of 42GB on the host isn't that bad; maybe check if it is swapping too much but that shouldn't be terrible news if you have a SSD. Could it be that the CPU isn't powerful enough? Even my 3yr old Ryzen desktop works reasonably well.

[albra · Accepted solution]

Hi everyone.

As suggested by sandra.rossi I'm posting this as an answer to my performance challenges with NetWeaver Edition 752 SP04, for others to view.

After numerous attempts of following the concise guide for installing the NetWeaver Developer Edition 752 SP04 I gave up and started looking for another approach. I found one using Docker and it works perfectly and runs with a high performance and responsiveness. So for others who might read this, having install challenges and performance issues following the concise guide, I would recommend this instead.

Follow the guide for installing this using Docker for windows:

GitHub - brandoncaulfield/sap-nw-abap-trial-docker-windows: SAP NW ABAP Trial in Docker on Windows �...

I would recommend the following fix of the install.sh before execution of this as explained in the above URL:

Open the install.sh file and replace lines 882-886:

    ./saphostexec -install || do_exit $ERR_install_saphost

    # TODO: is it ok to remove /tmp/hostctrl?
    cd /
    rm -rf /tmp/hostctrl || log_echo "Failed to clean up temporary directory"

with:

#Replace this line with one which tries to continue (this) main script using ‘&’:
    #./saphostexec -install || do_exit $ERR_install_saphost
    ./saphostexec -install &

#Wait for a while so that hopefully the asynchronous call ends:
    log_echo "Waiting 30 seconds for asynchronous call to /tmp/hostctrl/saphostexec -install to complete..."
    sleep 30
    log_echo "30 seconds are up, continuing the main script."

    # TODO: is it ok to remove /tmp/hostctrl?
    cd /
#Let's not remove the temporary directory, in case saphostexec command
#is still executing. So commenting out:
    # rm -rf /tmp/hostctrl || log_echo "Failed to clean up temporary directory"

# Now we modify the RUN_NPL executable (executable permissions are for sybnpl user):
FILENPL=/sybase/NPL/ASE-16_0/install/RUN_NPL
if test -f "$FILENPL"; then
    echo "$FILENPL exists. Adding the -T11889 option to config in that file:"
    sed -i 's/NPL.cfg \\/NPL.cfg -T11889 \\/g' /sybase/NPL/ASE-16_0/install/RUN_NPL
    cat $FILENPL
    echo "-T11889 config option added"
    sleep 15
else
    echo "$FILENPL does not exist. Not modifying what doesn’t exist, ontologically seems ok."
fi

This fix for the install.sh will fix issues with start of NPL and the challenge of a higher kernel version of 5.3.x. So the install.sh have to be fixed in order to have it installed in Docker 🙂

It works as a charm on my laptop, performance is very fast now and I can concentrate on training my ABAP skills 🙂

For reference I have a ThinkPad T15:

- 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz 2.42 GHz

- 48 GB ram

- Set the swap to 10 GB

- SSD with 954 GB

Best regards,

Allan Brauer

[albra]

Hi Andrea,

Thank you for responding. I have 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz 2.42 GHz processor on my laptop and SSD with 954 GB.

Is my processor not powerful enough? if so could you recommend which I should acquire that is powerful for this?

Best Regards,

Allan

[UBrand251]

Your hardware should be more than enough. Let's not forget that NW752 SPS04 was released in Sep.2018 (as of trial_downloads) and promoted by Julie Plummer in her blog, July 2019. The lucky ones among us used i7 8th or 9th Gen. CPUs with less RAM than your laptop. A small contribution to your performance issue could be a setting in VirtualBox. On my machine, VBox assigned 2 CPUs by default (Settings -> System -> Processor). On increasing to 4 or 6 CPUs, I experienced a performance gain. But I guess that you tried this idea already, right?

[abo]

albra please keep in mind that an "answer" should be just that, an answer; in this case, a comment is preferable.

ubrand2501 I think I've left the core count at the default value, I suppose the available RAM plays a larger role in the overall performance.

[UBrand251]

c5e08e0478aa4727abc4482f5be390b2 Since this is not a crowded topic, the discretion for posting an answer or a comment should be with the person asking. I still think that increasing cpu cores can help because Allan's laptop has enough ram to keep swapping low. Anyway, assigning more cores certainly won't hurt and it's worth a try.

[abo]

In my view, it's harder to get rid of a bad habit than to acquire a good one, so I and a few other users, who have been around even longer, make a point to explain the proper usage to newcomers.

Back to the question: for normally configured servers (i.e., not stingy operators...), the MiniSAP will normally feel a bit slower; my point is, check your expectations, since you're going to do a lot more thinking in comparison with waiting for results.

[albra]

Hi Andrea,

I was looking for the comment option and have found it now 🙂 Thank you for pointing it out.

Best regards,

Allan

[albra]

Hi Ulrich,

Thank you for responding. I have tried with 3 CPUs on VBox but this did not optimize performance much. I will try to see if I can increase the CPUs to even more and have a look at the performance when logging on and using transactions in the system. I guess I'm a little a customed to performance on SAP systems which I work on for clients, but I'm well aware that this is not comparable to my laptop. I just wanted to hear if there might be some additional settings I could conduct to speed it up 🙂

So again thank you for taking the time to respond.

Best regards,

Allan

[albra]

Hi ubrand2501 & c5e08e0478aa4727abc4482f5be390b2 and others whom might read this.

After numerous attempts of following the concise guide for installing the NetWeaver Developer Edition 752 SP04 I gave up and started looking for another approach. I found one using Docker and it works perfectly and runs with a high performance and responsiveness. So for others who might read this, having install challenges and performance issues following the concise guide, I would recommend this instead.

Follow the guide for installing this using Docker for windows:

GitHub - brandoncaulfield/sap-nw-abap-trial-docker-windows: SAP NW ABAP Trial in Docker on Windows �...

I would recommend the following fix of the install.sh before execution of this as explained in the above URL:

Open the install.sh file and replace lines 882-886:

    ./saphostexec -install || do_exit $ERR_install_saphost

    # TODO: is it ok to remove /tmp/hostctrl?
    cd /
    rm -rf /tmp/hostctrl || log_echo "Failed to clean up temporary directory"

with:

#Replace this line with one which tries to continue (this) main script using ‘&’:
    #./saphostexec -install || do_exit $ERR_install_saphost
    ./saphostexec -install &

#Wait for a while so that hopefully the asynchronous call ends:
    log_echo "Waiting 30 seconds for asynchronous call to /tmp/hostctrl/saphostexec -install to complete..."
    sleep 30
    log_echo "30 seconds are up, continuing the main script."

    # TODO: is it ok to remove /tmp/hostctrl?
    cd /
#Let's not remove the temporary directory, in case saphostexec command
#is still executing. So commenting out:
    # rm -rf /tmp/hostctrl || log_echo "Failed to clean up temporary directory"

# Now we modify the RUN_NPL executable (executable permissions are for sybnpl user):
FILENPL=/sybase/NPL/ASE-16_0/install/RUN_NPL
if test -f "$FILENPL"; then
    echo "$FILENPL exists. Adding the -T11889 option to config in that file:"
    sed -i 's/NPL.cfg \\/NPL.cfg -T11889 \\/g' /sybase/NPL/ASE-16_0/install/RUN_NPL
    cat $FILENPL
    echo "-T11889 config option added"
    sleep 15
else
    echo "$FILENPL does not exist. Not modifying what doesn’t exist, ontologically seems ok."
fi

Best regards,Allan

[abo]

Nice to know but a word of caution, if I may: running Docker with this particular MiniSAP is NOT supported and may not work; in fact, it didn't work when I tried it, most likely because of an incompatible kernel version (due to the way Docker works)

[albra]

Hi c5e08e0478aa4727abc4482f5be390b2

Yes, I also experienced the issue with the install.sh not working for, for example, OpenSuse 15.4 because of the kernel version being above 5.3.x. This is why I found the fix for this for the install.sh and implementing this will fix the issue with start of NPL and the challenge of a higher kernel version of 5.3.x. So the install.sh have to be fixed in order to have it installed in Docker 🙂

It works as a charm on my laptop now and I can concentrate on training my ABAP skills 🙂

Best regards,

Allan Brauer

[Sandra_Rossi]

You could post this as a separate answer so that people could see it (it's lost in comments, many people don't look at comments), and could vote for it too.