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An Oracle and IBM White Paper
January 2009
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
Introduction ....................................................................................... 2
Executive Overview........................................................................... 4
Key Takeaways ............................................................................. 5
Application and Hardware Overview.................................................. 6
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management .......... 6
The Applications Tier.............................................................................. 7
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management
Server Tier .............................................................................................. 7
The Data Tier.......................................................................................... 8
Scalability ............................................................................................... 8
IBM Power Systems: Power System 570 Server ........................... 9
IBM System Storage DS8000 Turbo Series................................. 11
Performance and Benchmarking Environment................................. 12
Software and Hardware Overview ............................................... 12
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management
Software Release ................................................................................. 12
Oracle Database and Oracle RAC Software Release.......................... 12
Application Server for 100 Million Subscribers..................................... 12
Database Server for 100 Million Subscribers ....................................... 13
AIX 6.1 Operating System.................................................................... 13
System Architecture for 100 Million Subscribers.................................. 13
Results ........................................................................................ 16
Key Performance Numbers .................................................................. 16
Rating and Discounting ........................................................................ 17
Billing .................................................................................................... 23
Conclusion ...................................................................................... 24
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
2
Introduction IBM and Oracle have been working together for more than a decade to optimize Oracle
Database on the IBM POWER™ architecture running the AIX® operating system. Oracle
Database 10g and Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) 10g are well proven to
take advantage of IBM’s POWER6™ architecture and high I/O bandwidth, Together they
provide the response time needed to achieve breakthrough throughput to deliver a highly
scalable Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management and IBM POWER
solution on Oracle RAC architecture with the lowest total cost of ownership.
The Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management application is a Tier 1,
fully convergent prepaid and postpaid solution that is architected for leading service
providers and employs an architecture that enables convergent models to coexist and
offer integrated services. Following are a few key features of Oracle Communications
Billing and Revenue Management:
• Delivers a converged billing solution for the communications and media markets
• Enables charging for any service or event based on any payment type, network,
geography, or resource
• Provides industry-leading pricing, rating, discounting, promotions, and sharing
capabilities
• Demonstrates linear scalability to support any business model and scenario
• Integrates with other applications through a SOA-based enterprise-grade integration
architecture with built-in features for optimal performance
Over the years and through regularly scheduled releases, the Oracle Communications
Billing and Revenue Management application has grown into a robust convergent billing
solution that is architecturally stable, offers predictable performance, scales horizontally,
runs on several leading operating systems, and can be configured for specific needs. As
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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a result, there is a continuous need to perform benchmark and scalability analysis to
ensure that the application outperforms the needs of Tier 1 service providers.
This white paper describes the performance and scalability results of Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management 7.3.1 from a recent benchmark
conducted at IBM laboratories in Beaverton, Oregon, USA. The Oracle Communications
Billing and Revenue Management benchmark was done on IBM Power™ System 570
servers running AIX 6.1 and IBM DS8300™ storage subsystems.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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Executive Overview Oracle Communications and IBM recently completed an extensive performance and
scalability benchmark exercise for Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue
Management 7.3.1 running on IBM Power System 570 servers with the IBM AIX 6.1
operating system and IBM PowerVM™ virtualization technology. For this benchmark,
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition with Oracle RAC was used for the database
system, hosted by IBM DS8300 storage subsystems. The benchmark included various
workloads such as rating and discounting, billing, invoicing, and customer service
representative (CSR) activities using a variety of plans modeled after real-life enterprise
customer scenarios.
The environment simulated represents a production Oracle Communications Billing and
Revenue Management environment capable of sustaining 100 million subscribers
distributed across 12 RAC nodes. Results are based on two mobile price plans and
workloads. Descriptions of the plans are provided in subsequent sections of this
document. The benchmark results demonstrate outstanding performance and scalability
by both Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management and IBM Power
System 570 servers, using PowerVM technology for optimal flexibility, server
consolidation, and cost reduction.
The overall system configuration consisted of six Power System 570 sixteen-core servers
configured with 128GB of RAM used for the database servers; six Power System 570
sixteen-core servers configured with 256GB of RAM used for the Oracle Communications
Billing and Revenue Management application servers; and two DS8300 storage
subsystems, one with 128GB cache and 512K disks and the other with 64GB cache and
128K disks. The hardware configuration details and lab infrastructure environment are
described in detail in the “Performance and Benchmarking Environment” section (see
page 12).
The Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management performance benchmark
was performed for several key workloads and subscriber volumes to reflect linear
scalability and throughput.
The key workloads evaluated were
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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• Rating and discounting
• Billing
• Invoicing
They were performed for multiple-subscriber configurations, with volumes of 33 million,
66 million, and 100 million subscribers.
TABLE 1. THROUGHPUT RESULTS FOR DIFFERENT BENCHMARK WORKLOADS
SUBSCRIBER NUMBERS BENCHMARK
WORKLOAD
33 MILLION 66 MILLION 100 MILLION
DETAILS
Rating and Discounting
(end-to-end)
12,451 call data
records (CDRs)
per second
23,230 CDRs
per second
34,866 CDRs
per second
For 100 million subscribers, the
system setup can process 126 million
CDRs per hour.
Rating
(end-to-end)
17,810 CDRs
per second
33,713
CDRs
per second
48,896 CDRs
per second
For 100 million subscribers, the
system setup can process 176 million
CDRs per hour.
Billing
683 bills
per second
1,342 bills
per second
2,027 bills
per second
For 100 million subscribers, the
system setup can process 7.3 million
bills per hour. Total time to process
100 million subscribers is 13.7 hrs.
Invoicing of
100 events
per account
887 invoices
per second
1,742 invoices
per second
2,315 invoices
per second
For 100 million subscribers, the
system setup can process 8.3 million
invoices per hour.
Key Takeaways
The benchmark tests demonstrated near-linear scalability with volumes of 33 million, 66
million, and 100 million subscribers:
• For 33 million subscribers, 45 million CDRs per hour were processed.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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• For 66 million subscribers, 84 million CDRs per hour were processed.
• For 100 million subscribers, 126 million CDRs per hour were processed.
Per-hour processing numbers are dependent on the performance of the storage, and the
throughput can vary. The use of a high-end storage area is important in order to achieve
optimal results.
• 100 million subscribers can be billed in approximately 14 hours. This demonstrates that
for all 100 million subscribers, billing can be performed in a single day or single billing
cycle.
The Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management benchmark for 100
million subscribers was recently performed by the Oracle Communications and IBM
teams. Joint operational activities included product installation; benchmark execution;
and documentation, analysis, and reporting of the results.
Application and Hardware Overview
The following section provides a description of the applications and hardware systems that
comprised the 100-million-subscriber benchmark.
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management
The Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management architecture provides the
foundation for the end-to-end Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management
solution. Functionality is segregated into layers using well-defined interfaces, enabling each to be
modified and enhanced without disruption of functionality at the platform level.
At the same time, this design enables the platform to evolve without adverse effects on
functional capabilities. As a result, Oracle is able to develop and advance Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management’s capabilities rapidly while enabling service
providers to easily extend the system to meet unique business requirements.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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Figure 1. Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management architecture
The Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management platform utilizes a modern n-tier
architecture, which is typically deployed with the following three-tier configuration:
The Applications Tier
The applications tier consists of programs and processes that use the object-oriented API as an
interface to the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management system. This tier
includes the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management client applications such
as Customer Center, Pricing Center, and other native as well as third-party applications
developed by customers and partners using the same documented API. All enterprise as well as
network applications can integrate and interact with the Oracle Communications Billing and
Revenue Management system through the applications tier.
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Server Tier
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management server tier consists of three
components: the Real-Time Revenue Management Server, the Batch Processing Server, and the
Object Server.
• The Real-Time Revenue Management Server enforces business policies. It consists of
Connection Managers (CMs) and discount, rerating, zoning, and facilities modules. The CMs
manage connections between the application tier and the functional modules, process data
collected by Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management client applications, and
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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enforce the business rules. This architecture allows easy customization of the Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management system to meet unique business
requirements.
• The Batch Processing Server is optimized to handle large volumes of transactions (e.g.
hundreds of millions of transactions per day) in terms of preprocessing, enrichment, duplicate
checking, aggregation, and rating - among other functions.
• The Object Server provides an abstraction of the stored data. This layer consists of Data
Managers (DMs) that translate requests from CMs into a language recognized by the Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management database or other data access systems. The
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management system provides a DM for the
Oracle database server, as well as DMs for other external systems, such as the credit card and
tax processing applications.
The Data Tier
The data tier consists of Oracle Database and other data access systems. The Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management application currently supports Oracle
Database Enterprise Edition as well as Oracle RAC as the primary database system. Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management is also pre-integrated with other data access
systems in this tier; for example, credit card processing, LDAP and taxation systems.
Scalability
The Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management application achieves high
scalability in several ways. First, its multi-tier architecture is designed to run all Billing and
Revenue Management processes on the same computer or distributed among several computers.
Distributed processing allows for maximum flexibility and optimal load distribution for
configuring an Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management system as the number
of users expands. As a result, service providers can add as many servers as required in the
application, Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management server, and data tiers.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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Figure 2. Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management scalability architecture
A second factor that contributes to the high scalability of Oracle Communications Billing and
Revenue Management is the combination of transactional real-time and near real-time batch
processing that utilizes a multi-threaded, pipelined architecture and in-memory processing.
Integrated support for both types of rating makes extremely high performance possible.
To further improve scalability, Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management lets
providers easily balance load processing by reconfiguring client and database connections. This
enables providers to smooth out usage spikes at the front-end and avoid bottlenecks at the
database level.
Finally, transaction management functions have been built into the object layer, enabling Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management to fully scale and take advantage of the
underlying hardware. Without this capability, load balancing would be limited beyond a certain
transaction level.
IBM Power Systems: Power System 570 Server
Figure 3. Power System 570 modular building block
Twelve IBM Power System 570 servers, as represented by Figure 3, were used for the
performance measurements conducted in this scalability test. The IBM POWER6 processor-
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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based servers used in this test deliver outstanding price and performance, mainframe-inspired
reliability and availability features, flexible capacity upgrades, and innovative virtualization
technologies. Enterprise systems based on POWER6 technology, such as the ones used for the
database servers in this test, can be used for database and application serving, as well as server
consolidation.
The Power System 570 server is a modular system designed for resource optimization, secure and
dependable performance, and the flexibility to change with business needs.
The Power System 570 server was the first server delivered with POWER6 processors, resulting
in performance and price/performance advantages while ushering in a new era in the
virtualization and availability for the AIX operating system. POWER6 processors can run 64-bit
applications, while concurrently supporting a 32-bit-applications environment to enhance
flexibility. They feature simultaneous multithreading, enabling two application threads to run at
the same time, which can significantly reduce the time to complete tasks.
The Power System 570 is more than an evolution of technology wrapped into a familiar package;
it is the result of thinking outside the box. The IBM modular symmetric multiprocessor (SMP)
architecture means that the system is constructed using four-core building blocks. This design
enables clients to address their current requirements and allow for growth by adding more
building blocks, all without the disruption and expense of replacing the complete system.
For server consolidation, the Power System 570 provides the flexibility to simultaneously run any
combination of AIX, IBM Linux for Power, and x86 Linux applications, all on the same system.
In addition, the PowerVM available on the Power System 570 enables dynamic resource
adjustments across all of these environments to optimize performance and efficiency while
minimizing energy usage, for better control of your IT environment.
For complete business system needs, the Power System 570 provides a unique combination of
performance across multiple workloads and availability features to keep your business running.
In addition, PowerVM virtualization helps maximize your efficiency and non-disruptive growth
options, designed to keep your costs in line with your business. The configuration highlighted in
this performance test makes use of the PowerVM virtualization technology to serve the Oracle
RAC 10g cluster servers.
IBM AIX 6.1 Operating System
For the performance tests conducted in this project, all servers ran the AIX 6.1 operating system,
the newest release of the operating system. This version introduces a new, software-based
virtualization approach called Workload Partitions (WPAR) that complements existing logical
partitioning capabilities of IBM Power Systems by reducing the number of operating system
images to be managed during workload consolidation.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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In addition, this new version of the AIX operating system offers new security; file system;
network data administration; tracing; maintenance; and Reliability, Availability and Serviceability
(RAS) features.
IBM System Storage DS8000 Turbo Series
Figure 4. IBM System Storage DS8000
The IBM System Storage DS8000 series is designed for the most demanding, mission-critical
environments requiring the highest level of availability for both the open systems arena and the
enterprise space supporting both IBM System z and IBM Power Systems. This, combined with
its world-class resiliency features, make it an ideal storage platform for supporting today’s
around-the-clock, global business environment. Moreover, with its tremendous scalability, broad
server support, and flexible virtualization capabilities, the DS8000 Turbo can help simplify the
storage environment and consolidate multiple storage systems onto a single DS8000 system.
The DS8000 can help lower the total cost of ownership and reduce the complexity of managing
storage environments. Physical capacity can range from 1.1TB up to 460TB on a single system
without disruption, providing scalability on which to grow or consolidate data. A consolidated
system such as this can help customers address their cost, performance, and capacity
requirements more effectively, while simplifying their storage environments. RAID-5, RAID-6,
and RAID-10 configurations can be intermixed within a single DS8000 series system, which adds
to its outstanding flexibility. And the DS8000 now supports Dynamic Volume Expansion, where
open systems LUNs and System z disks can be increased in size while online to the host servers.
The DS8000 supports several varieties of FlashCopy, including Incremental FlashCopy and
Space-Efficient FlashCopy. The DS8000 also supports both synchronous and asynchronous
Remote Copy as well as a hybrid synchronous/asynchronous three-site Remote Copy capability.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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The IBM SAN Volume Controller can extend the DS8000’s powerful capabilities to offer
additional advanced functions, such as thin provisioning, as well as heterogeneous storage
virtualization and online data migration.
Two DS8300 series systems were used in this performance test. The IBM DS8300 can be used to
sustain up to 4.9 million I/O per second (IOPS).1
Moreover, the DS8000 system can stripe data across multiple RAID arrays to help minimize disk
“hot spots” and reduce the need for manual tuning.
Performance and Benchmarking Environment
This section describes the system architecture and configuration environment for the Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management benchmark.
Software and Hardware Overview
The software and hardware components and their configuration for the system used in the
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management benchmark were as follows:
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Software Release
• Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management 7.3.1 for AIX
Oracle Database and Oracle RAC Software Release
• Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0—64-bit production, with
Partitioning and Oracle RAC options
Application Server for 100 Million Subscribers
Six IBM Power System 570 servers were used for the Oracle Communications Billing and
Revenue Management application. Each system was used with all resources in a dedicated logical
partition (LPAR) to host the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management
application workload, with the following configuration:
• Eight 4.7GHz POWER6 processor chips, totaling 16 cores
1 “The IBM DS8000 Enterprise Class Performance and Functionality,” Enterprise Strategy Group, February 2008
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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• 256GB of RAM
• 4 x IBM 2-Port Gigabit Ethernet-SX
• 12 x 146GB 15K-RPM SAS disk drives
Database Server for 100 Million Subscribers
Six IBM Power System 570 servers were used for Oracle Database. Each system was configured
with two LPARs, with even resources between the two, for a total of 12 LPARs hosting 12
Oracle RAC nodes.
The six IBM Power System 570 servers had the following configuration:
• Eight 4.7GHz POWER6 processor chips, totaling 16 cores
• 128GB of RAM
• 4 x IBM 2-Port Gigabit Ethernet-SX
• 12 x 146GB 15K-RPM SAS disk drives
• 6 x 4-Gigabit PCI Express Dual Port Fibre Channel Adapter
AIX 6.1 Operating System
All active LPARs hosting both the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management
application components and Oracle Database server nodes used the following AIX version:
• AIX Version 6.1 TL1 (application servers)
• AIX Version 6.1 TL1 SP1 (database servers)
System Architecture for 100 Million Subscribers
This section outlines the systems and plan types used in the benchmark.
Plan Types
The mobile price plans used in this performance benchmark are standard performance
configurations used by Oracle Communications performance engineering. The two price plans
described below were used in the benchmark evaluation:
• The benchmark comprised mobile price plans that were representative of customer cases for
telephony and SMS services. The plan incorporates two resources ― free minutes and
currency ― and two types of discounts that are applied during usage rating and billing. A flat
fee is applied to two services.
• The second benchmark used a similar plan, but it did not apply the discounts.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Application Layout
The 100-million-subscriber accounts were split into groups of approximately 8 million
subscribers over 12 schemas. Each schema was handled by one Oracle RAC node. Together, the
12 schemas (Oracle RAC nodes) made up a single Oracle RAC database instance. Oracle RAC
was installed on Power System 570 servers, as detailed in the “Configuration Layout” section of
“Rating and Discounting” on page 17.
Subscriber growth is managed by distributing subscriber information across multiple schemas in
Oracle RAC. This distribution allows linear subscriber growth. As more subscribers are added to
the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management system, they can be distributed
across existing or new schemas. Similarly, new schemas can be added on demand to expand
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management subscriber growth beyond 100 million
subscribers.
Hardware Layout
The Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management benchmark environment
consisted of a private Gigabit Ethernet network that connected the Oracle Communications
Billing and Revenue Management application servers (Application Server No. 1 through
Application Server No. 6) and the Oracle RAC server nodes (Database No. 1 through Database
No. 12) Power System 570 servers.
Each Oracle Database server node consisted of a Power System 570 LPAR configured as
follows:
• Eight 4.7GHz processor cores, two logical nodes per server
• 64GB of RAM
• Four configured Gigabit Ethernet adapters (one for VPN login purposes, two dedicated
exclusively to cluster communication, and one for database/application communication)
• One internal disk installed for the operating system, database software, and paging space
• One internal disk (on one database server node only) for storing shared files required by the
test environment, NFS mounted by all other database nodes, and application servers
All database nodes used a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet switch for the cluster communication on a
separate network. The Oracle Database and Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue
Management application server used a separate Gigabit Ethernet switch and network for the
workload communication. Figure 5 illustrates the systems network configuration.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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Figure 5. Hardware layout for Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management benchmark
The DS8300 storage subsystems were configured in the following manner:
• DS8300 No. 1: 128GB cache, 16 host adapters, and one 512K disk used for database data and
redo logs (480 data disks plus 32 spares).
• DS8300 No. 2: 64GB cache, 8 host adapters, and one 128K disk used for database data (120
data disks plus 8 spares).
• All database data and redo logs are managed by Oracle Automatic Storage Management.
Each of the 12 database nodes were connected by use of three Fibre Channel ports on two dual-
port host bus adapters (HBAs) attached to DS8300 No. 1 and two Fibre Channel ports on one
dual-port HBA attached to DS8300 No. 2.
The six Power System 570 servers were configured in the following manner for the Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management workloads—rating and discounting, billing,
and invoicing:
• Application Server No. 1: 4 x (pipeline processes + Rated Event Loader [RE Loader]), 4 x
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management real-time
• Application Server No. 2: Router, 4 x Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue
Management real-time
• Application Server No. 3: 4 x (pipeline processes + RE Loader), 4 x Oracle Communications
Billing and Revenue Management real-time)
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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• Application Server No. 4: 4 x Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management real-
time
• Application Server No. 5: 4 x (pipeline processes + RE Loader), 4 x Oracle Communications
Billing and Revenue Management real-time
• Application Server No. 6: 4 x Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management real-
time
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management workloads—rating and discounting,
billing, and invoicing—were all evaluated independently for performance results. Each
application server was set up with chains of processes to evaluate Oracle Communications Billing
and Revenue Management workloads. Each of these chains of processes collaborates for a given
workload to provide optimal throughput.
Application servers Nos. 1, 3, and 5 each had four NFS exports, each of which is a file system on
one local disk. The pipeline router process on Application Server No. 2 uses these 12 mounts to
distribute files for the RE Loader to process.
Results
The Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management performance benchmark was
performed for several key workloads and subscriber volumes to test linear scalability and
throughput. The key workloads evaluated were:
• Rating and Discounting
• Billing
• Invoicing
The benchmark was performed for multiple-subscriber configurations, with volumes of 33
million, 66 million, and 100 million subscribers.
Key Performance Numbers
The benchmark tests demonstrated near-linear scalability with volumes of 33 million, 66 million,
and 100 million subscribers.
• For 33 million subscribers, 45 million CDRs per hour were processed.
• For 66 million subscribers, 84 million CDRs per hour were processed.
• For 100 million subscribers, 126 million CDRs per hour were processed.
• 100 million subscribers can be billed in approximately 14 hours, demonstrating that for all 100
million subscribers, billing can be performed in a single day or a single bill cycle.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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Rating and Discounting
The rating and discounting workloads perform evaluations of service usage and associated rating
and discounting. This involves processing of CDR files and updating of subscriber balances.
During the performance evaluation, batch processing for 33-million-, 66-million-, and 100-
million-subscriber accounts was performed, with emphasis on evaluating Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management system scalability. The following sections
provide insight into the configuration layout, multi-schema end-to-end results, batch processing
architecture, scalability chart, and CPU and I/O utilization.
Configuration Layout
Figure 6 identifies the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management components
involved in batch processing:
Figure 6. Batch processing configuration layout for 100 million subscribers
For the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management rating and discounting
workload, the following was the configuration layout setup:
• Four application servers were set up to process the workload—each application server was
represented by an IBM Power System 570 server with eight 4.7GHz POWER6 processor
chips, totaling 16 cores and 256GB of RAM.
• On one application server, the router was set up to route CDR files for rating. The router used
16 cores.
• Three application servers were used by the Pipeline Manager (for rating and discounting) and
by the RE Loader (for loading the data into the database). Forty-eight total cores were assigned
to the pipeline and RE Loader combination.
• Each application server had four pipeline processes. Because the configuration is represented
by three application servers, a total of 12 pipeline processes existed. Each rating engine was
mapped to one Oracle RAC node.
• Twelve Oracle RAC nodes were set up in a multi-schema architecture to handle 100 million
subscribers. Two nodes per physical Power System 570 server was the setup—a total of six
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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servers. Each server was represented by eight 4.7GHz POWER6 processor chips, totaling 16
cores and 128GB of RAM. Ninety-six total cores were used by the Oracle RAC node setup.
Table 2 summarizes the configuration layout for the rating and discounting workloads.
TABLE 2. RATING AND DISCOUNTING CORES AND RAM USAGE
NODE ROLE CORES MEMORY
Rating Server 1 Pipeline
Processes
16 256GB
Rating Server 2 Pipeline
Processes
16 256GB
Rating Server 3 Pipeline
Processes
16 256GB
Pipeline Router Router 16 256GB
RAC Node 1 Database Server 8 64GB
RAC Node 2 Database Server 8 64GB
RAC Node 3 Database Server 8 64GB
RAC Node 4 Database Server 8 64GB
RAC Node 5 Database Server 8 64GB
The total hardware layout available for benchmarking consisted of 192 cores. However, only a subset
number (160 cores) was used during the rating and discounting performance evaluation.
Table 3 summarizes end-to-end usage rating and discounting performance evaluation. End-to-
end rating implies the complete flow from initial routing, rating, discounting, and database
updates including event recording and balance updates.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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TABLE 3. 100-MILLION-SUBSCRIBER END-TO-END RATING AND DISCOUNTING PROCESSING RESULTS
MULTISCHEMA RATING CDRS/SEC COMPLETE END-TO-END CDRS/SEC COMPLETE END-TO-END MILLION
CDRS / HOUR
Schema 1 3375 3243 11.67
Schema 2 3428 3292 11.85
Schema 3 3495 3351 12.06
Schema 4 3373 3238 11.66
Schema 5 3260 3143 11.31
Schema 6 3252 3139 11.30
Schema 7 3269 3153 11.35
Schema 8 3243 3127 11.26
Schema 9 3249 3137 11.29
Schema 10 3238 3120 11.23
Schema 11 3267 3153 11.35
Schema 12 3260 3153 11.35
Total 39,709 38,249 137.69
As Table 3 shows, the complete end-to-end CDRs/second for 100 million subscribers is 38,249.
However, this end-to-end number does not account for the process start time and the delay until
the final CDR is rated. The final end-to-end numbers are calculated after subtraction of these delays and are
shown in Table 4.
TABLE 4. RATING AND DISCOUNTING RESULTS
NO. OF
SUBSCRIBERS
NO. OF END-TO-
END CDRS /
SECOND
FINAL END-TO-END CDRS / HOUR
33 million 12,451 45 million CDRs/hour
66 million 23,230 84 million CDRs/hour
100 million 34,866 126 million CDRs/hour
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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Table 5 highlights the end-to-end rating results achieved using the price plan that did not include
discounting.
TABLE 5. RATING RESULTS
NO. OF
SUBSCRIBERS
NO.OF END-TO-
END CDRS /
SECOND
FINAL END-TO-END CDRS / HOUR
33 million 17,810 64M CDRs/hour
66 million 33,713 121M CDRs/hour
100 million 48,896 176M CDRs/hour
Scalability
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management end-to-end batch processing shown
in Table 4 and Table 5 demonstrates near-linear scalability with respect to the number of
processed CDRs per second. The rating and discounting results are also charted in Figure 7:
Figure 7. Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management batch processing and linear scalability
The processing of end-to-end CDRs per second grew linearly from 33 million to 66 million to
100 million subscribers. The linear growth implies that the system can be configured to scale
even beyond 100 million subscribers and that the processing growth and time can be predicted.
This is important for service provider, because it means that they can forecast the hardware and
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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architecture needed to scale the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management
system based on their projections.
Pipeline Manager
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management provides a high-performance
processing engine, with an in-memory cache, whose functionality can be tailored to each
customer’s needs by choosing and assembling standard plug-ins, as well as supporting
customization using a powerful, flexible, and efficient scripting language. It also provides a
language for describing the format of the input/output files, mapping input/output fields onto
internal data structures called extended data records (EDRs), and describing the grammar of the
input/output files.
Rated Event Loader
The RE Loader uploads the events rated by the Pipeline Manager into the database. Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management provides a multi-schema feature for
distributing subscriber accounts on multiple schemas. The multi-schema feature provides nearly
unlimited scalability and can be expanded for subscriber growth.
Figure 8. Conceptual data flow diagram for Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management pipeline rating
Following is the data flow during pipeline processing:
• CDR files are processed by a pipeline configured in “router mode.”
• When a CDR is processed, the A-number and the charging time stamp are used to find the
schema number on which the subscriber account resides.
• The CDR is then guided to the appropriate pipeline processes for rating. The sets of pipelines
process the incoming CDRs and produce a set of output files containing “rated” calls.
• The output files are then loaded into the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue
Management database via the RE Loader processes.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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• The three processes described above –- Routing Pipeline, Rating Pipeline and RE Loader –-
work in parallel.
• While the router is processing file i, the rating frameworks are processing files i-1, and RE
Loader processes are loading files i-2.
Figure 9. Pipeline process model
Application and Database Server CPU Utilization
An important metric for this rating and discounting processing workload was CPU utilization.
Figure 10 and Figure 11 show the CPU percentages of both the application and Oracle Database
server nodes during the benchmark tests.
Figure 10. Application servers’ CPU percentage for 100 million subscribers
Time
File i File i+1 File i+2
File i-1 File i File i+1
File i-2 File i-1 File i
Router
Rating
RE Loader
Application Servers CPU Utilization
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Elapsed time
CPU%
Rating Server 1
Router Server
Rating Server 2
Rating Server 3
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
23
Figure 10 shows the CPU utilization during the 100-million-subscriber rating and discounting
workload.
Figure 11 shows the CPU utilization of each of the 12 LPARs used during the 100-million-
subscriber rating and discounting workload for the Oracle Database nodes, with an average 38
percent CPU utilization across all servers.
Figure 11. Database server nodes’ CPU percentage for 100 million subscribers
Billing
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management billing is used to generate a bill for a
given subscriber account on a cyclical or on-demand basis. The generation of the bill is
dependent on the billing cycle of the account—monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or
annually. To generate a bill for a given customer account, a setup of applications is run that
finalizes the bill for a given period.
Billing was evaluated as a key workload during this performance and benchmark analysis.
Following are the billing results:
TABLE 6. BILLING RESULTS
NO. OF
SUBSCRIBERS
NO. OF BILLS /
SECOND
TIME NEEDED TO BILL GIVEN NO. OF
SUBSCRIBERS
33 million 603 15 hours to bill 33 million
66 million 1342 14 hours to bill 66 million
100 million 2027 14 hours to bill 100 million
Oracle RAC Nodes CPU Utilization
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Elapsed Time
CPU%
Node 1
Node 2
Node 3
Node 4
Node 5
Node 6
Node 7
Node 8
Node 9
Node 10
Node 11
Node 12
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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These results show that it is possible to bill all the subscribers in a single billing cycle and in less
than 24 hours.
Scalability
Table 6 shows Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management’s excellent linear
scalability for billing across various numbers of subscribers. Figure 12 is a chart of the results:
Figure 12. Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management billing linear scalability
It is evident from the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management billing chart
(Figure 12) that the number of bills per second grew linearly with the addition of hardware chains
to accommodate the increase in subscriber count and workload. These results also demonstrate
the architectural flexibility of Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management for
scaling independently of workloads and across subscriber growth boundaries.
Conclusion
As this document has shown, the results achieved by Oracle Communications Billing and
Revenue Management 7.3.1 with a 100-million-subscriber workload demonstrate unprecedented
performance and scalability. The results also demonstrate Oracle Communications Billing and
Revenue Management’s ability to handle the most stringent workload requirements of Tier 1
Service Providers and provide for substantial growth requirements as subscriber numbers grow.
Furthermore, the benchmark results prove the ability of all the application components of Oracle
Communications Billing and Revenue Management to scale independently, as well as together, to
track the requirements of the complete revenue management lifecycle with real-life production
workloads.
Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on IBM Power System 570 Server, IBM System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
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The performance numbers were higher than those achieved in previous Oracle Communications
Billing and Revenue Management benchmarks. These results demonstrate the capability of the
IBM Power System 570 server and the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue
Management application running on the AIX 6.1 operating system to handle a real-life workload
in a high-end production environment with excellent performance. All of this, combined with the
use of IBM Power Systems and Oracle RAC 10g, provides an optimal performance platform with
near-linear scalability. It also facilitates deployment and business productivity.
Since 1986, IBM and Oracle have had a relationship revolving around business and technology
innovation. From application selection, purchase, and implementation to upgrades and
maintenance, IBM offers the services and systems to help you succeed at each stage of your
Oracle investment. IBM’s POWER Systems hold top performance benchmark positions for
many Oracle applications and, in some cases, the top first, second, and third benchmark
positions. IBM’s Global Business Services Oracle Practice is one of Oracle’s strongest
partnerships, with more than 10,000 skilled Oracle Applications consultants.
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Performance and Scalability Benchmark:
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue
Management on IBM Power System 570, IBM
System Storage DS8300, and AIX 6.1
January 2009
Author: Dinesh Sardana, Tony Velcich, Brian
Pawlus
Contributing Author: Numi Castillo, IBM
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