This guide describes capacity planning, which is the process of determining the hardware and software resources required for running WebLogic Integration (WLI) applications.
It also provides information about tuning the environment to maintain and improve performance of WLI applications.
Note: | The tests described in this guide were conducted in a controlled environment; the numbers presented here may not match the results you get when you run the tests in your environment. The numbers are meant to illustrate the capacity planning process. |
Note: | This guide does not provide a ready-reckoner that you can use to find out the hardware resources required for a given scenario. It describes the methodology that you can follow to estimate the resource requirements based on certain tests. |
This document is intended for the following audience groups:
It is assumed that readers are familiar with the features of WLI. For more information, see the product documentation at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13214_01/wli/docs102/index.html.
The tests that are part of the capacity planning process must be performed by people who are experienced in conducting performance tests and familiar with techniques for statistical analysis.
This information in this guide is organized as follows:
Capacity planning is the process of determining the hardware and software resources required for running an application with a given user load at a satisfactory level of service. It is a continuous process that ensures that the required computing resources (primarily, hardware) for an application are available at the right time.
While planning for capacity, consider future growth requirements. The number of WLI applications and their scope might increase with time. It is important to determine future requirements, well in advance, so that necessary action can be taken to plan for, procure, and install the required resources. Besides ensuring that adequate resources are available for meeting the performance and scalability requirements, capacity planning can save considerable money and resources for the organization.
Capacity planning is necessary for the following purposes:
The load on a system may not always be uniform; it may vary from low, high, to very high. Capacity planning helps you provide users a satisfactory level of service at varying server loads. Even at peak loads, performance can be expected to remain within acceptable limits. If capacity is not planned, and if adequate resources are not available, users may experience significant variation in performance as the load varies. At very high loads, the system may run so slow that users cannot even use the system.
Capacity planning helps in determining the scalability characteristics of the application. If the available hardware resources are not adequate for the current load or if the load is expected to increase in future, system administrators can estimate the additional hardware resources required to maintain or improve performance.
Even in situations where the available hardware resources are adequate for the current load, capacity planning helps in identifying limitations of the existing hardware.
If the load on the servers is expected to increase due to factors such as business expansion and changes in marketing strategy, capacity planning helps in estimating the additional hardware resources necessary for the increased load.