on VMware vSphere 5.0 (Draft 1.1) Actuate BIRT · D EPL OYMENT AND T ECHNI CAL CO NSI DERATI ONS G UI DE 6 ActuateOne on VMware vSphere 5.0 and vCloud Director 1.5 VMware, Inc. 3401

ActuateOne

on VMware® vSphere™ 5.0 and vCloud

Director 1.5

Revision 1.1

March 2012

DEPLOYMENT AND TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS GUIDE

Actuate BIRT

on VMware® vSphere 5.0 (Draft 1.1)

November 2011

D E P L O Y M E N T A N D T E C H N I C A L C O N S I D E R A T I O N S G U I D E

D E P L OY M EN T A N D T E C HN I C A L C O N SI D ER A TI ON S G U I D E I I

ActuateOne on VMware vSphere 5.0 and vCloud Director 1.5

VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.com

Copyright © 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents.

VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Table of Contents

Revision Summary ........................................................................................................ 3

Introduction .................................................................................................................. 4

VMware and ActuateOne Overview ................................................................................. 5

ActuateOne Overview .................................................................................................. 5

VMware vSphere......................................................................................................... 6

vCloud Director ........................................................................................................... 7

vFabric Data Director ................................................................................................... 8

ActuateOne Architecture and Deployment Strategy ....................................................... 10

Testing Process and Results........................................................................................ 12

Testing Methodology and Overview.............................................................................. 12

Hardware and System Host Configuration ..................................................................... 12

Installed Software ...................................................................................................... 13

Virtual Machine Configuration...................................................................................... 13

Workload Used ......................................................................................................... 13

Results Observed ...................................................................................................... 13

ActuateOne Scalability Test: ........................................................................................ 16

Scalability Testing Process and Results ........................................................................ 16

Hardware and System Host Configuration ..................................................................... 17

Workload Used ......................................................................................................... 17

Results Observed ...................................................................................................... 18

Deployment Best Practices .......................................................................................... 22

Licensing .................................................................................................................... 23

Technical Support ....................................................................................................... 24

Conclusions................................................................................................................ 25

Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... 26

Resources .................................................................................................................. 27

D E P L OY M EN T A N D T E C HN I C A L C O N SI D ER A TI ON S G U I D E 3





Revision Summary This version of documents includes the follow ing additional topics:

ActuateOne horizontal scalability testing performed using vCloud Director 1.5 and vSphere 5.0

VMw are vFabric Data Director w as used to provision vPostgres Database and horizontal scalability

tests w ere executed using both Postgres and vPostgres database






Introduction This document provides direction for those interested in running ActuateOne on VMw are® vSphere™5.0

and VMw are vCloud Director 1.5. It provides basic guidance on the architecture of ActuateOne, and the

value of utilizing the VMw are platform for private cloud deployment of ActuateOne behind a corporate

f irew all. This paper covers the results of recent testing done jointly by VMw are and Actuate, and also

describes performance and functionality of ActuateOne on VMw are virtual infrastructure. In addition, it also

outlines some best practices in utilizing the tw o product sets together for your private cloud deployment of

ActuateOne.






VMware and ActuateOne Overview

The ActuateOne Platform w ith VMw are vSphere gives enterprises the ability to deploy their Business

Intelligence (BI) applications in a unif ied cloud environment w ith built-in security and role-based access

control. Together, the joint solution delivers three unique capabilities to the enterprise:

An eff icient and secure approach to using shared infrastructure for servicing highly frequent

requests

A standardized, portable, and extensible approach to enable w orkloads to be deployed w ithout

manual configuration and across multiple clouds

Agile access to shared infrastructure for provisioning w orkloads w hen in demand.

ActuateOne Overview Recognizing the need for seamless, dynamic and accessible Business Information solutions, Actuate – the

co-founder and co-leader of the premier BIRT open source development project – presents ActuateOne.

This innovative suite of integrated BI products and services features a common architecture for development

and deployment that meets the dynamically changing needs of information consumers. ActuateOne enables

any organization to build and deploy mission critical Business Intelligence and rich information applications.

These applications can be built for any user, anyw here, w ith a variety of tools based on one user

experience, supported by one server and built w ith one design using BIRT. Using value-add design tools:

End users can modify their view s of data to suit their needs

Business users can develop their ow n data visualizations, based on templates created by IT and/or

developers

IT and developers can create templates and data visualizations that can be used by business and

end users

Users can customize the BIRT content received in any format, including rich visualizations and dashboards,

to meet their ow n needs.

Using value-added deployment options, depending on project size, requirements and budget, deployments

can be

Scaled to support any number of employees, customers or partners, using a pre-built platform

Set up and running in less than an hour

Cloud ready, providing clustering and elastic provisioning w ith support for a stateless image that

allow s administrators to make changes at runtime w ithout service interruptions.






Figure 1: ActuateOne Suite

VMware vSphere

VMw are’s leading virtualization solutions based on our f lagship product, VMw are vSphere provides multiple

benefits to IT administrators and users. VMw are virtualization creates a layer of abstraction betw een the

resources required by an application and operating system, and the underlying hardw are that provides those

resources. A summary of the value of this abstraction layer includes the follow ing:

Consolidation: VMw are technology allow s multiple application servers to be consolidated onto one

physical server, w ith little or no decrease in overall performance.

Ease of Provisioning: VMw are virtualization encapsulates an application into an image that can be

duplicated or moved, greatly reducing the cost of application provisioning and deployment.

Manageability: Virtual machines may be moved from server to server w ith no dow ntime using VMw are®

VMotion™, w hich simplif ies common operations like hardw are maintenance and reduces planned

dow ntime.

Availability: Unplanned dow ntime can be reduced and higher service levels can be provided to an

application. VMw are® High Availability (HA) ensures that in the case of an unplanned hardw are failure,

any affected virtual machines are restarted on another host in a VMw are cluster.






Figure 2: Applications in a Virtual Environment

vCloud Director VMw are vCloud Director enables enterprises to build secure, multi-tenant private clouds by pooling

infrastructure resources into virtual datacenters. vCloud Director enables users to access these resources

through w eb based portals and programmatic interfaces as fully automated, catalog-based services. For

more information on vCloud Director, see the Resources section later in this paper.

For ActuateOne, vCloud Director provides the management capability for importing the BIRT application as

a virtual appliance also called a vApp. vCloud Director is also used to provision and de-provision the vApp in

a manner that is very consistent and repeatable, w hich signif icantly reduces ActuateOne set-up time and

simplif ies deployment.

Additionally, ActuateOne deployment can be scaled by continually adding or removing iServer as a virtual

machine (also know n as - scaling unit) to a running vApp, w hich contains ActuateOne w orkload in a

consistent and secure manner.






Figure 3: VMware vCloud Director

vFabric Data Director VMw are’s vFabric Data Director pow ers database-as-a-service for your cloud, thereby reducing the

database spraw l and drastically accelerating application development cycles w ith a self -service database

provisioning and operations platform. vFabric Data Director is an enterprise solution that extends the

benefits of VMw are’s leading virtualization platform to the database tier and lets administrators securely

automate and delegate routine tasks, including database provisioning, backup, and cloning.

The f irst database supported on Data Director is VMw are vFabric Postgres 9.0 (vPostgres), a new offering

from VMw are based on and fully compatible w ith PostgreSQL. vPostgres is a vSphere-optimized ACID and

ANSI-SQL relational database and is the f irst of a broad range of commercial and open source databases to

be supported by Data Director. These capabilities enable vFabric Data Director to offer the agility of public

cloud database services w ith enterprise-grade security, f lexibility, control, and compliance.

Actuate bundles a PostgreSQL database in their standard distribution for evaluation and small business

deployments. It also supports other major databases such as Oracle, IBM DB2, and Microsoft SQL

Server. Instead of using this Postgres DB instance, w e used VMw are vFabric Data Director to provision a

vFabric Postgres 9.0 for our test. By doing this, there w as an option to provision our Postgres DB instance

from existing Postgres DB templates, w hich define the scale of deployments from small, medium to large.

How ever, the focus of this test w as to primarily observe at the compatibility and performance aspects of how

vPostgres served as the backend database for Actuate iServer. The parameters like usability,

manageability, and overall cost savings vFabric vPostgres could pass onto our customers w ere not

discussed in this document. For more information on vFabric Data Director, you can visit the site

http://w w w.vmw are.com/products/application-platform/vfabric-data-director/overview .html

http://www.vmware.com/products/application-platform/vfabric-data-director/overview.html






Figure 4: VMware vFabric Data Director

D E P L OY M EN T A N D T E C HN I C A L C O N SI D ER A TI ON S G U I D E 1 0





ActuateOne Architecture and Deployment Strategy

Figure 5 illustrates a typical customer solution architecture deploying ActuateOne w ith multi-instance and

multi-tenancy in a physical environment.

Figure 5: ActuateOne Architecture Design in a Physical Environment

The architecture includes all components found in a real-w orld ActuateOne deployment, beyond the iServer:

Application Server Tier : The ActuateOne Information Console, running on an application server,

relays requests to the Actuate BIRT iServer.

iServer Tier: For BI content generation requests, the Actuate iServer retrieves data from a

database.

Encyclopedia Tier : For BI content view ing requests, the Actuate iServer retrieves the report

document from the iServer Encyclopedia and renders it in HTML. The Information Console then

presents the results to the end user on the Internet.

Storage Tier: SAN or shared disk arrays can be used to house the iServer Encyclopedia w ith 24x7

reliability.

If ActuateOne is deployed in a virtual environment using vCloud Director, the architecture remains the same.

The main difference is that the physical servers w ould be virtualized in a cloud environment. This offers

more agility and f lexibility to ActuateOne w orkloads as they can be easily scaled out and scaled back on

demand. Figure 6illustrates the ActuateOne architecture in a virtual environment.






Figure 6: ActuateOne Architecture Design in a Virtual Environment






Testing Process and Results To characterize the performance of ActuateOne on VMw are Infrastructure, performance tests w ere carried

out jointly by VMw are and Actuate. The configuration tested and the results are summarized below .

Testing Methodology and Overview

The primary testing objective w as to determine w hether ActuateOne BIRT iServer and Information Console

products could run more resiliently on VMw are platform. ActuateOne w as deployed in a virtual environment,

and four tests w ere conducted to validate BI content generation and view ing during the vMotion, VMw are

DRS and VMw are HA features.

Hardware and System Host Configuration The follow ing table describes the configuration of ESX host servers and storage in the test configurations.

Table 1: ESX Host Hardware

H AR D W AR E C ON F I GU R ATI ON

Server One HP Proliant DL980 G7 server equipped w ith:

Intel® Xeon® X7560 @ 2.26 GHz

Sockets: 8

Number of Cores per socket: 8

Hyperthreading: Enabled

512 GB RAM

6 x 1GBPS NICs

2 x 10GBPS NICs

Tw o HP Proliant DL380 G7 servers equipped w ith:

Intel® Xeon® X5680 @ 3,332 GHz

Sockets: 2


Hyperthreading : Enabled

98 GB RAM

6 x 1GBPS NICs

2 x 10GBPS NICs

Storage

HP P4600 iSCSI SAN

Storage RAID 10

Netw ork RAID 10






Installed Software The follow ing table lists the softw are used in the Actuate solution.

Table 2: Installed Software

I N STAL L ED SOF TW AR E

VMw are ESX 5.0

vCenter 5.0

vCloud Director 1.5

vShield 1.5

vFabric Data Director 1.5

Actuate ActuateOne BIRT iServer 11 SP2

ActuateOne Information Console 11 SP2

Database Postgres SQL 8.4

Virtual Machine Configuration

The follow ing table describes the configuration of virtual machines running on ESX host servers in the

Actuate test configurations.

Table 3: Virtual Machine Configuration

VI R TU AL MAC H I N E H AR D W AR E C ON F I GU R ATI ON

ActuateOne BIRT iServer 4 vCPUs

16 GB RAM

ActuateOne Information Console 2 vCPU

4GB RAM

PostgreSQL 2 vCPU

4GB RAM

Workload Used The view ing load test simulated multiple users simultaneously logging in and conducting different types of

view ing requests on randomly selected pages of pre-generated BIRT designs. It is conducted w ith a

constant load of user view ing requests to the ActuateOne Information Console and BIRT iServer. All

systems w ere utilized w ith a steady operational w orkload pattern, w here each system stayed at around 50

percent CPU utilization. With the load test in effect, a VMw are feature (vMotion, DRS, or HA) w as activated

and given enough time to complete w ithin a predetermined length of time.

Results Observed Test 1: Load Test With vMotion Activation

A 15-minute load test w as conducted w ith one ActuateOne BIRT iServer and one Information Console

instance. At the f ive-minute mark of the load test, vMotion w as activated to move the iServer VM to another

ESXi host. For both configurations, the average response time and throughput remained w ithin the expected

timeframe.






Table 4: Test 1- Load Test With vMotion Activation

TI ME PER I OD AC TI ON AVER AGE R ESPON SE TI ME TH R OU GH PU T

Minute 1-5 Load without vMotion 0.1 seconds 50 requests/sec

Minute 6-9 vMotion being activated 4.7 seconds 39 requests/sec

Minute 10-12 Load with vMotion 0.1 seconds 49 requests/sec

Figure 7: Test 1- Load Test With vMotion Activation

Test 2: Load Test With VMware DRS

A 30-minute load test w as conducted w ith tw o ActuateOne BIRT iServer and tw o Information Console

instances. At the 20-minute mark of the load test, the DRS feature w as activated. For both configurations,

the average response time and throughput remained w ithin the expected timeframe.

Table 5: Test 2 - Load Test With VMware DRS

TI ME PER I OD AC TI ON AVER AGE R ESPON SE TI ME TH R OU GH PU T

Minute 1-17 Load without DRS 0.2 seconds 150 requests/sec

Minute 18-20 DRS being activated 7.7 seconds 75 requests/sec

Minute 21-30 Load with DRS 0.8 seconds 144 requests/sec

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1 16 31 46 61 76 91 106 121 136 151 166

%U

sed

iServer CPU Utilization during vMotion

%Used






Test 3: Load Test With VMware HA

A 15-minute load test w as conducted w ith tw o ActuateOne BIRT iServer and tw o Information Console

instances. Each iServer and Information Console pair ran on a different ESX host. At the f ive-minute mark of

the load test, one ESX host w as forcibly restarted to simulate a crash.

Table 6: Test 3- Load Test With VMware HA

TI ME PER I OD AC TI ON AVER AGE R ESPON SE

TI ME

TH R OU GH PU T

Minute 1-5 Load without HA 0.2 seconds 150 requests/sec

Minute 6-10 HA being activated 8.7 seconds 42 requests/sec

Minute 11-15 Load with HA 0.2 seconds 150 requests/sec

Test 4: BIRT Content Generation with vMotion

The f inal test simulated BIRT content generation w ith and w ithout the operation of vMotion. A long-running

generation job w as submitted and w as expected to f inish in approximately 30 minutes. At the f ive-minute

mark, the iServer executing this job w as moved via vMotion. The job continued to run before, during, and

after vMotion w as activated. The w hole job f inished successfully, w ithout any issues , in 30 minutes. The

generated BIRT document w as complete w ithout any issues.






ActuateOne Scalability Test:

The primary testing objective w as to determine w hether ActuateOne BIRT iServer and Information Console

products could scale vertically as w ell as horizontally on VMw are Virtual platform. ActuateOne w as deployed

in a VMw are vCloud Director environment, and tests w ere conducted to validate BI content view ing. The

hardw are used for the validation w as different than used in the previous tests.

The Workload used remains same as before as mentioned in Table 1. The Virtual Machine configurations

w ere changed for the vertical scalability tests but for the horizontal scalability tests, same configuration w as

used.

We also validated the use of VMw are vFabric Data Director to provision and configure vPostgres Database

for ActuateOne BIRT application. Also, Scalability tests w ere performed to verify Actuate BIRT performance

w hile using vPostgres Database.

Scalability Testing Process and Results

The follow ing tests w ere executed to check the ActuateOne scalability on VMw are vSphere platform:

1. iServer horizontal scalability tests:

For the f irst test, ActuateOne application components w ere deployed to vCloud director catalog.

The iServer cluster w as configured using VMs mentioned in the table below . The number of

iServer VMs in the cluster w as increased to 2, 4, and 6 for different tests.

Table 7: Virtual Machine Configuration

VI R TU AL MAC H I N E H AR D W AR E C ON F I GU R ATI ON

ActuateOne BIRT iServer 2 vCPUs

16 GB RAM

ActuateOne Information Console 2 vCPU

4GB RAM

PostgreSQL 2 vCPU

4GB RAM

2. Factory Scalability Test:

VMw are recommends starting one Java factories per vCpu for the iServer VM. This test evaluates

the impact of starting more than 4 factories on a 4 vCPU iServer VM.

F AC TOR I ES MEMOR Y

2 4 GB

4 16 GB

8 16 GB

16 19 GB






3. vPostgres Test:

VMw are vFabric Data Director w as used to provision vPostgres Database for the Actuate Cluster.

The same horizontal scalability tests w ere executed using the new database. A midsize vPostgres

database w ith 2 vCPU and 4GB RAM w as deployed and the Database configurations for iServer

Cluster w ere done using the Data Director UI.

Hardware and System Host Configuration The follow ing table describes the configuration of ESX host servers and storage in the test configurations.

Table 7: ESX Host Hardware

H AR D W AR E C ON F I GU R ATI ON

Server Two HP Proliant BL460 G7 servers equipped with:

Intel® Xeon® X5650 @ 2.6 GHz

Sockets: 2


Hyperthreading : Enabled

64 GB RAM

Storage

EMC VNX

Aggregate of 15 SSD disks

RAID 10

8 Gbps fibre connectivity

15K RPM disks

FC protocol

.

Workload Used The view ing load test simulated multiple users simultaneously logging in and conducting different types of

view ing requests on randomly selected pages of pre-generated BIRT designs. It is conducted w ith a

constant load of user view ing requests to the ActuateOne Information Console and BIRT iServer. All

systems w ere utilized w ith a steady operational w orkload pattern, w here each system stayed at around 50

percent CPU utilization. With the load test in effect, a VMw are feature (vMotion, DRS, or HA) w as activated

and given enough time to complete w ithin a predetermined length of time.






Results Observed

Test1: iServer Scalability Test

30-minute load tests w ere conducted w ith various combinations of ActuateOne BIRT iServer and one

Information Console instance cluster. For all configurations, the average response time and throughput

remained w ithin the expected timeframe. The table below show s the Throughput for ActuateOne Application

and the resource utilization for all the virtual machines in the cluster.

Table 8: Test 1- iServer Scalability Test

N OD ES

TH R OU GH PU T

W I TH TH I N K TI ME N O TH I N K TI ME

1 61 65

2 124 125

4 231 235

6 332 336

Figure 8: iServer Scalability Test (With Think time)

Figure 9: iServer Scalability Test (No Think time)






The iServer VM’s 2 vCPU w ere completely saturated during the test execution but there w ere no bottlenecks

and ready time observed. The table below show s the VM resource utilization for the entire duration of the

tests

Table 9: 6 Node iServer Cluster Esxtop resource Utilization

Ready

(Avg/Max) Avg Max Avg Max

iServer 99 100 0.19/4.45 3144.36 3522.56 5678.03 5232.58 0.03 2.93 0 0 0.01 0.64

iServer-03 80.83 100 0.29/0.515 2988.71 3440.64 2152.98 2054.69 0.76 4.5 0 0 0.63 2.97

iServer-04 83.55 100 0.22/0.56 3019.43 3399.68 2107.48 2025.37 1.38 143.87 0.06 3.35 0.09 2.24

iServer-05 83.52 100 0.28/0.92 3045.49 3522.56 2078.78 2017.47 0.44 2.74 0 0.8 0.19 0.98

iServer-06 83.67 100 0.3/0.625 3058.57 3440.64 1969.47 1996.88 71.04 613.32 0.43 9.22 2.64 14.17

iServer-07 85.21 100 0.29/0.775 3066.08 3399.68 2059.97 2000.5 79.17 621.7 0.57 9.72 2.41 12.2

ActuateNFS 1.49 1.705 0.08/0.325 19.34 81.92 5.1 1.72 0.29 4.5 0 0 0.44 18.57

I/O sec Latency(ms)

Memory

Avg Max Recd Txmitted Avg Max

Read

VM

CPU

Avg Max

Write

Network Disk

(%) (mb) Packets/sec






Test 2: Factory Scalability Test

The view ing tests w ere run for a 4 vCpu iServer VM w ith different number of factories for different

configurations. Due to more number of factories per vCpu, the 8 and 16 factory tests did not scale properly

as expected. VMw are recommends starting one Java factory per vCPU for BIRT iServer VMs.

Table 10: Test 2: Factory Scalability Test

F AC TOR I ES TH R OU GH PU T

2 67

4 124

8 168

16 161

Test3: vPostgres Test:

vPostgres performed w ell w ith iServer and compared to Postgres, there w as some improvement in the

throughput for larger deployments. For the horizontal scalability tests (Test1), the Postgres DB w as installed

w ithin the iServer1. As VMw are vFabric Data Director provisioned another VM for vPostgres, the

performance for 4 and 8 node tests w as better w hile using vPostgres DB.

Table 11: Test 2: Factory Scalability Test

N OD ES TH R OU GH PU T

VPOSTGR ES POSTGR ES

1 65 65

2 125 125

4 246 231

8 470 440






Figure 10: Factory Scalability Test w ith vPostgres

Table 12: 8Node iServer Cluster w ith vPostgres Esxtop resource Utilization

Ready

(Avg/Max) Avg Max Avg Max

iServer-vPost 90.84 100 0.29/0.88 3113.87 3522.56 2282.99 2229.29 0.74 3.33 0 0.77 0.84 22.66

iServer 92.29 100 0.32/1.16 3150.96 3604.48 2148.98 2204.66 0.42 3.33 0 0 0.17 4.79

iServer-02 91.8 100 0.44/7.26 3137.42 3522.56 2082.23 2123.45 0.73 5.62 0 0.71 0.71 7.43

iServer-03 92.57 100 0.15/0.85 3178.61 3686.4 2254.66 2205.62 0.71 3.91 0 0.83 0.8 28.89

iServer-04 81.59 100 0.33/1.17 3052.54 3481.6 2136.24 2077.05 0.74 4.42 0 0.86 0.8 22.5

iServer-05 87.6 100 0.11/0.585 3106.13 3604.48 2290.85 2243.64 111.9 1745.8 1.24 73.3 3.04 18.04

iServer-06 93.28 100 0.15/0.46 3155.06 3645.44 2219.99 2185.87 100.5 882.86 0.99 8.29 2.81 26.98

iServer-07 79.95 100 0.42/5.78 3023.99 3440.64 2145.81 2099.3 105.2 736.73 0.93 11.9 3.1 18.57

Avg Max

Read Write

Avg Max Avg Max Recd TxmittedVM

CPU Memory Network Disk

(%) (mb) Packets/sec I/O sec Latency(ms)






Deployment Best Practices Actuate and VMw are relentlessly w orked closely together to determine how IT data centers can best meet

service requirements w hen deploying ActuateOne in VMw are virtualized environments. Results from the

testing described earlier in this paper show s that running ActuateOne on VMw are virtual machines can

provide an effective production-ready platform. With added benefits such as management and

administrative f lexibility, strong isolation and higher availability, VMw are platform can serve as an ideal

platform for ActuateOne Server consolidation.

Specif ic recommendations include:

Carefully design storage configurations and evaluate external storage choices, RAID levels, and latency

of IO operations.

High spindle count on LUNs to ensure I/O capacity available.

Use Thick Eager Zeroed disks for better I/O performance.

Consider Nehalems or Westmeres w ith EPT for maximum performance.

Consider using server-class netw ork interface cards (NICs) for the best performance and configure

paravirtualized vmxnet3 adapters for better netw ork throughput.

Disconnect or disable unused or unnecessary physical hardw are devices, such as

o COM ports

o LPT ports

o USB controllers

o Floppy drives

o Optical drives (that is, CD or DVD drives)

Disconnecting or disabling these devices w ill help free up interrupt resources, because traditionally some

devices such as USB controllers operate using a polling scheme that consumes extra CPU resources.

Lastly, some PCI devices reserve blocks of memory, making that memory unavailable to ESX.

Install VMw are tools on the virtual machines. The VMw are Tools package provides support required for

shared folders and for drag and drop operations. Other tools in the package support synchronization of

time in the guest operating system w ith time on the host, automatic grabbing and releasing of the mouse

cursor, copy and paste operation betw een guest and host, and improved mouse performance in some

guest operating systems

Use VMw are vMotion w ith VMw are DRS to balance the load.

Scale out versus scale up: Determine w hat components of the architecture w ork w ell w ith more than one

virtual machine, and how large each virtual machine should be.

Adding capacity: Determine how you could extend the configuration tested by adding more virtual

machines or increasing the size of virtual machines to allow a higher user count or larger batch jobs to

be run.

Availability: Plan use of VMw are HA and VMw are FT as w ell as other availability solutions (such as other

clustering technologies). Consider use of other disaster recovery options such as VMw are’s Site

Recovery Manager (SRM).

For better performance, ensure that the vCloud Organization vDC is configured to Thick Provision the

vApps w hile deploying from the Catalog.






Licensing Customers w ho w ant to run multiple instances of the Actuate softw are using VMw are based virtual

machines, can license w ith Per Instance Licensing (the default), Multi-Instance Licensing, or Work Unit

Licensing.

Actuate Multi-Instance licensing allow s customers to deploy an unlimited number of instances of the

ActuateOne softw are on the licensed CPU Cores. Multi-Instance licensing is a cost effective option w hen

multiple instances of the softw are are being used in a virtualized environment supporting multiple

applications and/or large numbers of users.

ActuateOne Work Unit licensing model offers f lexibility for multi-core, server farm and cloud environments. It

enables organizations to effectively plan for the BIRT capacity required, w ith granular licensing options

based upon partial CPU usage.

Work Unit licensing ensures that customers can enjoy "pay as you grow " agility, know ing that Actuate

maintains a vested interest in the success of application development. Furthermore, the Work Unit licensing

model facilitates iterative, spontaneous application development and test cycles, since it enables IT

departments to conveniently budget and plan w hile responding eff iciently to end user requirements.






Technical Support Actuate support w ebsite:http://w ww.actuate.com/support/

http://www.actuate.com/support/






Conclusions

Overall, testing results show that running ActuateOne on VMw are Infrastructure performs w ell. Furthermore,

it has the potential to reduce cost, increase service levels, and simplify the manageability of the application.

The iServer Application can be easily deployed and configured for vCloud environment and due to its

scalable architecture, can provide additional CPU/Memory resources on demand. VMw are recommends one

iServer Java factory on one vCPU for best performance.

Based on the testing, AcutateOne could scale linearly for the VMw are Virtual configuration documented in

this guide. Our test setup time w as also signif icantly reduced due to effortless rapid provisioning of

vPostgres database enabled by VMw are vFabric Data Director.






Acknowledgements The follow ing individuals contributed to the creation of this deployment guide:

Michael Lee, Actuate

ShiHeng Guan, Actuate

Manvender Raw at, VMw are

Gilbert Lau, VMw are






Resources Customers can f ind more information about VMw are and Actuate products using the links listed below .

VMware Resources

VMw are off icial w ebsite:

http://w w w.vmw are.com/

VMw are Infrastructure Web site:

http://w w w.vmw are.com/products/data_center.html

VMw are dow nload Web site:

https://w ww.vmware.com/dow nload/

VMw are support Web site:

http://w w w.vmw are.com/vmtn/

vSphere Installation and Setup Guide

http://pubs.vmw are.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmw are.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-

installation-setup-guide.pdf

VMw are vSphere 5 Performance Best Practices:

http://w w w.vmw are.com/pdf/Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere5.0.pdf

vCloud

vCloud Director Installation and Configuration Guide:

https://w ww.vmware.com/pdf/vcd_15_install.pdf

vCloud Director Administrator's Guide:

https://w ww.vmw are.com/pdf/vcd_15_admin_guide.pdf

VMw are Performance Tuning Paper:

http://w w w.vmw are.com/pdf/vi_performance_tuning.pdf

vCloud Director Performance and Best Practices:

http://w w w.vmw are.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMW-Performance-vCloud-Director-1-0.pdf

System Compatibility Guide for a complete list of compatible hardw are:

http://w w w.vmw are.com/resources/compatibility/search.php

Compatibility Guide for a complete list of compatible storage devices:

http://w w w.vmw are.com/pdf/vi35_san_guide.pdf

I/O Compatibility Guide for a complete list of compatible netw orking devices:

http://w w w.vmw are.com/pdf/vi35_io_guide.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/

http://www.vmware.com/products/data_center.html

https://www.vmware.com/download/

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-installation-setup-guide.pdf

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-installation-setup-guide.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere5.0.pdf

https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vcd_15_install.pdf

https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vcd_15_admin_guide.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi_performance_tuning.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMW-Performance-vCloud-Director-1-0.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_san_guide.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_io_guide.pdf






Actuate Resources

Actuate off icial w ebsite:

http://w w w.actuate.com/home/

ActuateOne product w ebsite:

http://w w w.actuate.com/products/

BIRT Exchange dow nload w ebsite:

http://w w w.birt-exchange.com/be/dow nloads/

Actuate support w ebsite:

http://w w w.actuate.com/support/

Actuate w hite papers:

http://w w w.actuate.com/resources/w hitepapers/

BIRT developer w ebsite:

http://w w w.birtexchange.com

http://www.actuate.com/home/

http://www.actuate.com/products/

http://www.birt-exchange.com/be/downloads/

http://www.actuate.com/support/

http://www.actuate.com/resources/whitepapers/

http://www.birtexchange.com/

Documents

on VMware vSphere 5.0 (Draft 1.1) Actuate BIRT · D EPL OYMENT AND T ECHNI CAL CO NSI DERATI ONS G UI DE 6 ActuateOne on VMware vSphere 5.0 and vCloud Director 1.5 VMware, Inc. 3401