Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

(Revision 2/2009)

VMware ISV Solutions Engineering VMware Inc.

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

Contents
Introduction.........................................................................................................................................1 Siebel Architecture .............................................................................................................................2
Siebel Web Clients ................................................................................................................................................................................................3 Web Servers...............................................................................................................................................................................................................3 Siebel Web Server Extension ..........................................................................................................................................................................3 Siebel Enterprise Server .....................................................................................................................................................................................3 Siebel Servers ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................3 Application Object Manager ..........................................................................................................................................................................3 Siebel Gateway Name Server .........................................................................................................................................................................4 Siebel Database ......................................................................................................................................................................................................4 Siebel File System..................................................................................................................................................................................................4

Siebel Virtualization Benefits............................................................................................................5

Server Containment.............................................................................................................................................................................................7 Rapid Provisioning ................................................................................................................................................................................................7 Change Management.........................................................................................................................................................................................8 High Availability: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery....................................................................................................9

Best Practices.................................................................................................................................... 10
Careful Planning ..................................................................................................................................................................................................10 Avoid Memory Over-Commitment .........................................................................................................................................................10 Start with 1 or 2 vCPU Virtual Machines ...............................................................................................................................................10
For Siebel Gateway Server ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 10 For Siebel Servers ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 11

Use Latest Processor Generation ..............................................................................................................................................................11 Plan the Distribution of Application Object Managers ...............................................................................................................11 Leverage VMware High Availability Features ....................................................................................................................................11
For Siebel Gateway Server ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 11 For Siebel Servers ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 12

Leverage VMware Virtual Machine Templates .................................................................................................................................12 Leverage VMware Virtual Machine Snapshots .................................................................................................................................12 VMware Tools........................................................................................................................................................................................................12 Avoid Running Programs in the ESX Server Service Console..................................................................................................12 VMware NIC teaming .......................................................................................................................................................................................12

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 13 Resources .......................................................................................................................................... 14

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

Acknowledgments
The following team members have offered valuable support in this effort: Desmond Chan, Senior ISV Solution Engineer Andrew Hald, Consultant, Professional Services Phil Anthony, Senior Systems Engineer, Systems Engineers Rajagopal Ramanujam, Solution Architect, Partner Solutions and Marketing Christopher Rimer, Director, Oracle Alliances, Product Marketing Tushar Patel, Staff Systems Engineer, Systems Engineers Johanna Holopainen, Senior Manager of ISV Alliances, Product Marketing Tamao Nakahara, Alliances Marketing Specialist, Alliances Christine Holland, ISV Alliance Marketing Communications Manager, Alliances Rob Hopkins, Senior Database Admin Manager, Development

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

Introduction
Oracles Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software includes all the business processes and associated systems that interface with customers. It provides a single repository for customer and supply chain information enabling the sales force to respond quickly and accurately to customer inquiries. VMware is the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. The world's largest companies use VMware solutions to simplify their IT, fully leverage their existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business demands. VMware provides a robust, well-tested and high performance software suite for customers to reap benefits ranging from server containment, rapid provisioning, and high availability to change management. The multi-tier architecture of Siebel software makes it a good candidate for virtualization. Customers who have virtualized the tiers appropriate to their deployment scenarios have achieved lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and higher return on investment (ROI). In this paper, we will describe best practices used during the deployment of Siebel software on VMware Infrastructure 3 with particular reference to the experiences of a customer in the real estate industry based in Southern California. Customers are encouraged to refer to the best practices described in this paper before they start their Siebel virtualization efforts.

Figure 1 VMware Virtual Infrastructure

Introduction

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

Siebel Architecture
Siebel software provides comprehensive CRM capabilities to customers with a robust, faulttolerant and highly available architecture. The Siebel multi-tier architecture has built-in redundancy and fail-over capabilities in each layer of the application environment. The different layers of the Siebel architecture include: Siebel Web Clients Web Servers and Siebel Web Server Extension (SWSE) Siebel Enterprise Server o Siebel Servers o Siebel Server Components Application Object Managers (AOM) (a.k.a Object Managers) Siebel Gateway Name Server Siebel Database and Siebel File System

Web Clients

3rd Party Load Balancer

Web Server

Web Server

SWSE

SWSE

Optional 3rd Party Load Balancer

SC Broker

SC Broker

AOM

AOM

AOM

AOM

Siebel Database

Siebel File System

Figure 2 Overview of Siebel Architecture

Value Proposition

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

Siebel Web Clients

Siebel supports a number of Client types including Siebel Web Client, Mobile Web Client, Wireless Client, and Handheld Client. Customers use these client software offerings to access the CRM functionality via a web connection to the Siebel backend servers.

Web Servers
Siebel software provides an interface that can be accessed using a web browser. To host a Siebel solution, customers deploy a cluster of web servers to accept user requests. The web servers are load balanced to provide for high availability and are responsible for routing user requests in appropriate forms to the Siebel Servers for processing.

Siebel Web Server Extension

Siebel provides a plug-in, Siebel Web Server Extension (SWSE), for third-party web servers. It identifies requests for Siebel information from web clients and flags these requests for routing to a Siebel Server. When a Siebel Server returns with the requested information, SWSE helps complete the composition of the web page forwarding to the Web Client. In addition to its web-specific functionality, SWSE includes the Siebel load-balancing module. This module provides round-robin load balancing for Application Object Managers (AOM) running on Siebel Servers. Customers can choose to use this module for load balancing or to deploy a thirdparty load balancer between the Web Servers and the Siebel Servers.

Siebel Enterprise Server

The Siebel Enterprise Server is a logical grouping of Siebel Servers that connect to one Siebel Database. The Siebel Servers are configured, managed and monitored as a single logical unit. Consequently, the Siebel administrator can start, stop, monitor, or set server parameters for all Siebel Servers within the Siebel Enterprise Server.

Siebel Servers
A group of Seibel Servers forms a Siebel Enterprise Server. Each of them functions as an application server and is composed of server components, such as Synchronization Manager and Application Object Manager (AOM). Each server component performs a defined function and runs in one of three modes: interactive, background and batch modes.

Application Object Manager

Application Object Manager (AOM) is one of the core server components. The AOM server components are application- or service-specific and they serve user requests in interactive mode. An Application Object Manager provides the session environment in which its associated application runs. AOM consists of three layers: business object layer, data manager and Siebel Web Engine. The business object layer starts an application-user-session and processes any required business logic before sending a data request to the data manager. The data manager is the layer that interacts with the back end database server by way of SQL queries. The business object layer further processes the result of SQL queries before it forwards the result to the Siebel Web Engine, which helps create the web pages for users. Subsequently, the Siebel Web Engine forwards the web

Value Proposition

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

pages to Siebel Web Server Extension on the Web Server for finalization before sending to the end users.

Siebel Gateway Name Server

The Siebel Gateway Name Server is the dynamic address registry for Siebel Servers and components. A Siebel Server registers its network address in the non-persistent address registry of the Gateway Name Server at startup and clears the information at shutdown. Siebel Enterprise Server components query the Gateway Name Server address registry for Siebel Server availability and address information. The Gateway Name Server is crucial for the proper functioning of Siebel Enterprise Server.

Siebel Database
Siebel CRM uses a third-party relational database management system (RDBMS) to store Siebel tables, indices, and seed data. The data managers in the AOM Server components use ODBC database connections for all communications. The Siebel administrator can manage and tune these connections for optimal performance and can configure them for connection sharing.

Siebel File System

The Siebel File System is a server with a shared directory accessible through the network by the Siebel Servers running the File System Manager (FSM) component. Web clients can upload and download files to the Siebel File System through the FSM component.

Value Proposition

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

Siebel Virtualization Benefits

VMware delivers capabilities that streamline the deployment and maintenance of Siebel enterprise applications in a virtualized environment. Some of these key capabilities include: Server containment Rapid provisioning Change management High availability: business continuity and disaster recovery

Figure 3 Server Containment

Value Proposition

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

Figure 4 Rapid Provisioning

Figure 5 VMware High Availability

Value Proposition

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

Server Containment
Traditional Siebel deployments generate significant server sprawl due to the need to provision separate systems for development, test and production environments. Each developer requires a dedicated environment and each test cycle requires dedicated servers assigned for the duration of the tests. Along with the development requirements, the necessity of dedicated systems for each layer of the Siebel environment results in over-provisioning, manageability, and resource challenges, all leading to higher operational and ownership costs. VMware virtualization technology contains server sprawl and increases server utilization by running multiple Siebel components in virtual machines consolidated onto fewer, highly scalable, reliable enterprise-class systems. Customers using VMware Infrastructure have been able to consolidate ten or more servers per physical processor, and have seen many other benefits as outlined below. Key Benefits: 1. Provide dedicated and isolated environments, consolidated onto one physical system, for all developers. 2. Run multiple Siebel components (e.g. web server and Siebel Server) on the same physical system, providing consolidation benefits such as less hardware, datacenter space, power consumption, and so forth., while lowering total cost of ownership (TCO). 3. Increase the average utilization of physical servers, leading to efficient capacity utilization. 4. Eliminate the need for dedicated hardware and provide interoperability when multiple operating systems and Siebel application versions reside on the same system.

5. Eliminate the need for dedicated test systems when multiple test environments share the
same physical server.

Rapid Provisioning
VMware virtualization solutions significantly reduce time to provision new instances (development, test, or production) of Siebel environments. In a non-virtualized environment, a new Siebel deployment typically requires the procurement of new hardware, followed by installation and configuration of the operating system and the Siebel application software. This process takes significant time and IT resources. Users of VMware Infrastructure can take advantage of Virtual Machine Libraries and templates to provision new pre-configured Siebel environments in minutes. These features enable rapid Siebel deployment with sophisticated automation capabilities, centralized administration and management of hardware resources while giving business units and Siebel application owners complete control over Siebel application resource utilization. Key Benefits: 1. Rapidly provision new Siebel component instances from virtual machine templates. 2. Pass Siebel development and test images back and forth between test and development users.

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

3. Recreate distributed Siebel component instances from a production environment on a single physical system for test purposes. 4. Move test/QA instances to production in minutes. 5. Reset test images (after test completion) from templates and virtual machine libraries, cutting down on test setup and reset time. 6. Store different Siebel component instances and versions in virtual machine libraries that can be provisioned instantly. 7. With the VMware Snapshot feature, roll back development and test images during problem resolution. 8. Rapidly provision additional Siebel Server instances during peak loads.

Change Management
Testing patches and upgrades are high on the list of IT challenges facing Siebel customers. IT departments face two key change management challenges:

Testing patches and upgrades for compatibility with standard corporate hardware, operating system, and Siebel configurations. Efficiently deploying critical patches and upgrades throughout the enterprise.

Traditionally, IT organizations procure hardware that mirrors production and create test beds that mirror the operating system and Siebel configurations of the production environment. With VMware Infrastructure, customers can clone a set of production virtual machines, or create a set of virtual machine libraries that mirror production. They can use these images to provision the test environment and test the latest patches and upgrades against Siebel enterprise applications, eliminating the need for dedicated hardware to perform these tests. The patches can then be rolled into production with minimal interruption to end users. In case of Siebel application problems, the virtual machines can be instantly rolled back to their pre-patched state using Snapshots. Key Benefits: 1. Accelerate change management with fewer system resource requirements. 2. Test patches on multiple configurations (guest operating system, Siebel versions, etc.) concurrently all hosted on the same physical system. 3. Instantly roll back Siebel virtual machines (during problem resolution) using VMware Snapshots. 4. Create a library of standard production configurations to perform change management testing and deployment. 5. Dynamically migrate Siebel server instances on virtual machines to other systems to perform hardware maintenance or system changes on the current physical system, without disruption to end users.

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

High Availability: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

VMware virtualization solutions work alongside Siebel enterprise application capabilities to deliver enhanced infrastructure and high availability for critical business functions. Using VMware Infrastructure, customers can implement a unified disaster recovery (DR) platform that allows production Siebel instances on virtual machines to be recovered in the event of hardware failure, without investing in costly one-to-one mapping of production and DR hardware. While a typical Siebel enterprise solution consists of multiple Siebel layers and instances running simultaneously and working together to provide failover and load-balancing, VMware VMotion enables the live migration of running virtual machines from one physical server to another with zero downtime, continuous service availability, and complete transaction integrity. Live migration of virtual machines enables companies to perform hardware maintenance without scheduling downtime and disrupting business operations. VMware High Availability (HA) provides easy to use, cost-effective high availability for Siebel enterprise applications running in virtual machines. In the event of physical server failure, affected virtual machines are automatically restarted on other physical servers that have spare capacity. VMware HA minimizes downtime and IT service disruption while eliminating the need for dedicated stand-by hardware and installation of additional software. VMware HA provides uniform high availability across the entire virtualized IT environment without the cost and complexity of failover solutions tied to either operating systems or specific Siebel applications. VMware Consolidated Backup provides an easy to use, centralized facility for LAN-free backup of virtual machines. Consolidated Backup simplifies backup administration and reduces the load for ESX Server host machines. Key Benefits: 1. Save layers of images for regression (that is, keep exact versions of operating system, Siebel enterprise applications, patches, state etc.) using Snapshots and Consolidated Backup. 2. Use Snapshots to enable point in time restores and rollbacks during test and development problem resolution. 3. Automatically detect failure of physical servers running Siebel application instances in production, and automatically restart failed Siebel application virtual machines with VMware HA. 4. Ensure capacity availability to support Siebel application virtual machine failovers. 5. Perform full and incremental file backup of virtual machines with Consolidated Backup 6. Migrate Siebel application virtual machines from failing server hardware without disruption to end users with VMotion live migration. 7. Fail over during disaster recovery by using SAN replication and restarting Siebel application virtual machines in DR sites.

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

Best Practices
Customers have had many successes with deploying Siebel on VMware Infrastructure. VMware has interviewed a customer who operates a leading online real estate listing site located in Southern California to understand its Siebel virtualization experiences and lessons learned. This section contains this customers recommendations, along with other deployment tips from VMware.

Careful Planning
Scrutinize the service level agreement with the users and carefully lay out the peak and average load to help planning. Understand the hardware needed to sustain the workload requirements and procure sufficient hardware resources for the planned workload. Carefully plan the deployment of virtual machines that will run on the ESX Server hosts.

Avoid Memory Over-Commitment

Avoid memory over-commitment in virtual machine configuration. Memory over-commitment can result in paging-to-disk activity, which is detrimental to the Siebel workload performance. The customer in reference has experienced a 30% increase in CPU usage when paging-to-disk occurs because of memory over-commitment. Allocate sufficient memory for the virtual machine to avoid paging-to-disk. Configure a virtual machine hosting Siebel Server such that it accommodates the memory requirements of the hosted Application Object Managers, during regular and peak load periods. The number of AOM processes spawned on a virtual Siebel Server depends on the number of users (tasks) that will be supported. The ratio of users (tasks) supported by one AOM during a specific workload period determines the total number of AOMs running at that time. Customers should plan the memory configurations of the virtual Siebel Servers accordingly. Under-sizing the memory is most often the cause of performance issues in a virtualized Siebel environment.

Start with 1 or 2 vCPU Virtual Machines

Start with 1 or 2 vCPU virtual machines. Stay at 1 or 2 vCPU unless careful analysis using system tools shows value for higher-vCPU virtual machines. VMware recommends that customers use a combination of system OS tools and VMware monitoring tools (such as VirtualCenter resource monitoring). NOTE: vmkusage and esxtop are monitoring tools to monitor CPU, memory and IO characteristics but need to run on the ESX Server service console. VMware does not recommend running any program on the service console unless directed by the administrator or VMware support. For Siebel Gateway Server Siebel Gateway Server can support a very high number of users per vCPU. Using VMware Infrastructure eliminates the need to dedicate a separate system for a Siebel Gateway Server. Customers can run a Siebel Gateway Server as a 1 vCPU virtual machine along with other Siebel virtual machines.

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

For Siebel Servers The virtual Siebel Servers running the Application Object Managers can be configured to have either 1 or 2 vCPUs. Ensure adequate memory for each one of these servers.

Use Latest Processor Generation

VMware highly recommends that the customers use servers built with the latest processor generation (e.g. Intel Xeon 51xx/53xx, rev.E/F AMD at the time of this writing).

Plan the Distribution of Application Object Managers

Siebel Application Object Managers running different Siebel modules can co-locate on one Siebel Server. Carefully plan the distribution of the AOMs across the virtual Siebel Servers, taking into consideration their workload requirements and the memory allocation scheme. The AOM memory allocation can be broken into three areas: user memory, shared memory between users and administrative memory used to manage the AOM itself. According to the Siebel documentation guidelines, each user adds around 3 to 4 MB to user memory area and each AOM process adds more than 150 MB to the shared memory area. (Refer to your server vendor for the specific sizing requirements for your Siebel environment). Customers are encouraged to split the AOM workloads across different virtual machines, so that one virtual machine failure does not entail service downtime for all the AOMs. Virtualization with VMware also helps isolate the different workloads in a Siebel environment. For example, customers can run separate virtual machines for AOMs, each dedicated to a different Siebel module (Callcenter, eSales, eService etc.). This separation provides very flexible and defined load balancing across the different virtual machines running specific modules of the Siebel environment.

Leverage VMware High Availability Features

Use VMware High Availability and VMotion to provide enhanced high availability and fault tolerance. VMware High Availability can ensure that a virtual machine on a failed ESX Server host can be restarted in a timely manner on another ESX Server host in the same HA cluster. Use VMotion to migrate a virtual machine from one ESX Server host to another one without having to shut down the virtual machine, resulting in zero downtime to the service. NOTE: VMware HA does not provide process level fail-over but rather a virtual machine level restart. For Siebel Gateway Server In the topology of a Siebel implementation, there can be only one active Siebel Gateway Server. The Siebel Gateway Server is crucial for the proper functioning of the Siebel Enterprise Server, as it is the entry point to the Siebel Enterprise Server. Once the Siebel Gateway Server fails, there can be no more new user connections while the existing ones continue to work. Siebel recommends that customers implement a clustering technology for the Siebel Gateway Server to ensure high availability for the Siebel Enterprise Server. VMware High Availability (HA) provides a cost effective alternative to traditional clustering solutions. Siebel-VMware customers are encouraged to leverage the VMware HA feature to provide high availability for their Siebel Gateway Server and other components in the Siebel architecture. VMware HA provides availability to the Gateway Server virtual machine if the virtual machine goes down due to hardware failures.

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

For Siebel Servers VMware provides enhanced availability to a Siebel Server environment, by way of the following: Siebel Servers running Application Object Managers (OLTP) can be load balanced across multiple virtual machines. Distributing the Siebel Server (AOM) virtual machines across multiple ESX Server hosts ensures availability in case of physical server failures. The Siebel Servers running the batch components, e.g. EIM, can leverage VMware HA to provide enhanced availability from hardware failures. In case of hardware maintenance, customers can use VMotion to provide live migration of AOM servers from the current ESX Server host to another host without disruption to end users.

Leverage VMware Virtual Machine Templates

VMware highly recommends that virtual machine templates be created from virtual machines with pre-installed and pre-configured OS and/or Siebel software. Customers can efficiently deploy additional virtual machines from these templates. A library of templates can be archived for later use, and customers can benefit tremendously from leveraging the cloning feature of the Virtual Machine Templates. NOTE: VMware recommends that customers identify hostname dependencies that might exist at different layers of Siebel application environment and plan their application cloning and customization accordingly.

Leverage VMware Virtual Machine Snapshots

VMware Snapshots are ideal for journaling the states of the virtual machines at different times. Customers can generate a snapshot of their virtual machines before making any changes, such as upgrading and patching. In case the changes cause undesirable results, customers can easily roll back to a previous snapshot with all the states saved.

VMware Tools
Install the latest VMware Tools on the guest operating systems of the virtual machines to ensure high performance in memory, network bandwidth and graphics.

Avoid Running Programs in the ESX Server Service Console

Running programs in the ESX Server service console can adversely affect the performance of the virtual machines and ESX Server host if the programs consume excessive amounts of CPU or memory. VMware recommends that customers not use the ESX Server service console directly for any of the administrative tasks. Use the VMware VirtualCenter management interface, and SDK interfaces if required, for the administration of the virtual machines running the Siebel environment.

VMware NIC teaming

Procure more than one NIC card on an ESX Server host and group them as a NIC team to provide NIC card redundancy and increased performance due to traffic distribution across the NIC cards.

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Conclusion
Siebel provides a comprehensive CRM software solution that includes all the business processes and associated systems that interface with customers. Deployment and maintenance of Siebel enterprise applications in a physical environment is not a trivial task. The capabilities of VMware Infrastructure enable customers to streamline Siebel deployment and maintenance by providing the following capabilities: Server containment Rapid provisioning Change management High availability: business continuity and disaster recovery

To enhance the Siebel virtualization experience, this paper provides a number of recommendations and deployment tips. Customers are encouraged to refer to this paper before they embark on their Siebel virtualization efforts for deployment planning and designing.

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Best Practices for Siebel Deployment on VMware Infrastructure

Resources
Customers can find more information about VMware and Oracle-Siebel products via the links listed below: VMware Official Website:www.vmware.com Oracle Official Website: www.oracle.com VMware Infrastructure 3 product website: http://www.vmware.com/products/data_center.html VMware Infrastructure 3 download website: http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/eval.html VMware support website http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/ VMware Best Practices Papers http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsmp_best_practices.pdf http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi_performance_tuning.pdf Oracle-Siebel Website: http://www.oracle.com/applications/crm/siebel/index.html Oracle support website: http://www.oracle.com/technology/about/index.html Oracle-Siebel Deployment Planning Guide: http://downloadeast.oracle.com/docs/cd/B40099_01//80Siebel_HTML/books/DeplmtPlan/booktitle.html The following link shows other VMware products that can complement the provisioning of Oracle software: http://www.vmware.com/products/

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VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Ave. Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 1-877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.com
2007, 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. Protected by one or more of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,397,242, 6,496,847, 6,704,925, 6,711,672, 6,725,289, 6,735,601, 6,785,886, 6,789,156, 6,795,966, 6,880,022, 6,961,941, 6,961,806, 6,944,699, 7,069,413; 7,082,598 and 7,089,377; patents pending.