Question from

Michael Robb

@Michael Robb  

Does anyone have any tips for improving the performance of a development environment and making it possible for multiple people to make changes in it at the same time without having to wait a long time?

The performance of a development (DEV) environment is related to a few factors:

1. Number of logged-in users simultaneously viewing reports, uploading data, adjusting models, etc.

2. Number of open projects.

3. Complexity of open projects.

re #1: Establishing a cadence is handy, e.g. set up a schedule for certain DEV users to make changes only during certain times.

re #2: Resetting an instance normally closes all of its projects, except for ones that have been set to automatically reopen upon environment reset. Minimizing the number of open projects (seen in the Open Project menu - distinguish between Open Projects and Other Projects) boosts the amount of environment memory available.

re #3: Large data sets, large model object row counts, complex allocation strategies or data table column formulas...in general, the longer your project takes to precalculate on STG or PRD, the longer you might expect to wait when making adjustments on DEV.

Has there been any discussions @ Apptio about allowing for Report Building in Staging? in order to limit users who actually need Dev access. That may improve performance.  Also any discussions around enhancing the platform for report management.  We have had users create ad-hoc reports that have brought the system down. The report auto-save feature is nice, but a lot of junk gets saved and promoted through environments without any approval process. Capabilities that would allow an admin to select which reporting changes can be promoted and which should not would be very helpful.

-Kevin

Thank you for your feedback. I forwarded your comment to our system architecture team - and indeed, they have heard similar use requests from other Apptio users, so it's something that's now on their radar for potential inclusion in a future release.

Hey Chris,

(sorry for hijacking another thread)

We're having the same issues at the moment, specifically that we keep being told we run out of memory a lot. Does the 'Open Project' vs 'Other Project' option still exist in release 11.8.3.5? (I think that's what we're on) as I can't seem to find the option to turn off some projects we'd like to keep but don't need calculated.

Also, are there any new tips/tricks we can try to help the general performance?

Thanks,

Oli

There's no "Close Project" option in V11 or V12, although a full instance reset will close all projects and then only automatically open projects which are flagged as "auto-open" - this setting can be adjusted via support ticket request.

So if you suspect currently open projects are contributing to out-of-memory issues, you could submit a ticket which both (1) requests a DEV reset, and (2) inquires as to which projects are flagged as "auto-open."

Thanks for the help Chris. For those that aren't flagged as auto open, are they still accessible, but just take longer to load when they are opened by someone?

Yes, you're right - they can be opened, but they'll probably take a bit longer than usual to open. Once they're open though, they stay open until the next instance reset.

Thanks for the advice.  I appreciate it!

We have been working around this same constraint for years. I'm told V12 offers big improvements in this area. In addition to the suggestions above I can add a couple more:

• Enable performance controls in Dev
• Look at your calculation times (PreCalc analyzer). There might be reports you're not using at all that consume a considerable amount of resources, you could turn these off until you need them. 

We found turning off unused reports did improve performance quite a bit. However, don't forget, you'll also need to remove links to the report on the landing page if they are there.