Recommendations for Application Servers of type NSH_Proxy

AppServer

MaxNshProxyContexts

Maximum number of NSH connections to the NSH Proxy Server.

Set this value to the maximum number of concurrent NSH connections that you want the NSH proxy server to manage. By default this value is set to 50.

Note: For releases earlier than 8.2, the default value is set to 20. If you upgrade from a release earlier than 8.2, the value set for that release persists after the upgrade. If you did not set a a value during the previous release, the default value from the previous release persists after the upgrade.

AppServer

MaxNshProxyThreads

Maximum number of NSH proxy threads that are available to process Network Shell client connections.

Each proxy thread can accommodate multiple Network Shell client connections by switching between connections when there is no traffic on a particular connection. Increasing the maximum number of proxy threads can improve performance for Network Shell users. However, using an excessive number of threads can potentially degrade the performance of a Network Shell proxy server.

By default this value is set to 15.

Note: For releases earlier than 8.2, the default value is set to 3. If you upgrade from a release earlier than 8.2, the value set for that release persists after the upgrade. If you did not set a a value during the previous release, the default value from the previous release persists after the upgrade.

The value of this parameter can be significantly less than MaxNshProxyContexts, to account for idle NSH connections. In the absence of usage estimates specific to the installation, BMC suggests an initial estimate of 20 percent of MaxNshProxyContexts.

For example, if MaxNshProxyContexts is set to 132 and you expect 20 percent of users to be active at the same time, set this value to 26 (132 × 0.2). If you have two load balanced NSH proxy servers, you can distribute the 26 NSH contexts between the two servers (13 each).

Maximum idle time for thread processing.

This setting enables you to adjust the performance of proxy threads that process Network Shell client connections. Use one of the following values:

• 0 - Provides the best thread switching performance. A thread is always available to serve another connection after traffic ends on the current connection.

• -1 - Provides the fastest performance for a particular connection. Each thread is dedicated to a single connection so the thread never switches connections.

• >0 - Provides a compromise between the two settings described above. A value greater than zero specifies a period, in milliseconds, that a thread should remain idle. While the thread is idle it continues to serve the current connection. When the specified period expires, the thread can switch to another connection. The longer you instruct a thread to be idle, the harder it is for that thread to process more than one connection.

By default, this parameter is set to 500 milliseconds.

Maximum heap size for this Application Server.

Recommended values:

• For 32-bit systems:
  • Microsoft Windows: 1024 MB
  • Linux: 1536 MB
  • Oracle Solaris: 2048 MB
• For 64-bit systems:
  • Windows: 4096 MB
  • Linux: 4096 MB
  • Solaris: Not applicable

AppServer

MaxJMXConnections

These connections are used for communication between Application Servers. In environments with many Application Server instances, this setting may need to be increased from the default of 20.

AppServer

MinPort,MaxPort

These settings specify a range of available ports used for communication between Application Servers. The default range provides for 50 ports (BasePort+50-BasePort+9899) which is sufficient for most environments.

Maximum idle time (in minutes) for a connection with a Network Shell client.

When there is no traffic over the connection between a Network Shell client and its proxy for this period of time, the connection is automatically closed. By default, this value is set to 120 minutes.

The number of seconds to continue trying to obtain a Network Shell proxy socket connection to the Application Server, before timing out. By default, this value is set to 60 seconds.

The number of seconds to allow for NSH proxy socket reads before the socket times out. By default, this value is set to 7200 seconds.

Database

MaxGeneralConnections

Maximum connections in the pool for the general thread group.

• In BMC Server Automation versions 8.1 and later, the default setting for this parameter should be sufficient.
• In BMC Server Automation versions 8.0 and earlier, this connection pool is used by NSH script jobs to log output. In those versions,  BMC recommends a value of 2 × MaxWorkItemThreads, especially for environments that depend heavily on NSH script jobs.

Database

MinGeneralConnections

Controls the minimum number of database connections created on startup for the General Connection pool. Because connections are created on demand, this has no impact on performance.

Database

Controls the minimum number of database connections created on startup for the Client Connection pool. Because connections are created on demand, this has no impact on performance. The default is 0.

Database

MaxIdleTime

Maximum idle time, in seconds, for database connections. The Application Server closes database connections that are idle longer than the specified timeout. If there is a network device between the Application Server and database with a lower idle timeout, then this setting should be adjusted. The default is 600 seconds (10 minutes).

Database

MinTimeToLog

Controls logging of long running database queries. Leave at 0 to disable this functionality.

Database

FetchSize

Number of rows fetched simultaneously from the database. The default is 100 rows.

Database

IdleConnectionTestPeriod

Number of seconds that connections are idle before being tested. The default is 600 seconds (10 minutes).

AppServer

ValidateRequestURL

If set to true, the Application Server verifies that its own address appears in the list of request URLs encoded in the session credential.

For Application Servers in a load balancer environment, or otherwise using a custom ProxyServiceURL, take into account the type of traffic that you are load balancing:

• If you are load balancing only authentication traffic (that is, connections to the AuthServiceURL), but are not load balancing traffic to the NSH_Proxy server (that is, to the ProxyServiceURL), or setting a custom ProxyServiceURL, set this parameter to true.
• If you are load balancing all traffic — to both the AuthServiceURL and the ProxyServiceURL — or setting a ProxyServiceURL that does not match the appserver hostname, set this parameter to false, as the client sends its request to the load balancer, and not to the NSH proxy server that receives the connection request.

AppServer

ValidateClientIpAddress

Whether to enable (a value of true) or disable (a value of false) client network address validation.

In a load balancer environment, use the following guidelines to set the value for this parameter:

• If you are load balancing only authentication traffic (that is, connections to the AuthServiceURL), but are not load balancing traffic to the NSH_Proxy server (that is, to the ProxyServiceURL), then check whether the load balancer was configured to pass through the client IP address:
  • If the load balancer was configured to pass through the client IP address, set this parameter to true.
  • If the load balancer was not configured to pass through the client IP address, then from the point of view of the Authentication Server, the client's IP address is that of the load balancer (that is, client connections appear to originate from the load balancer rather than from the actual client). Therefore, set this parameter to false.
• If you are load balancing all traffic — to both the AuthServiceURL and the ProxyServiceURL — set this parameter to true, regardless of whether the load balancer was configured to pass through the client IP address.

AuthServer

ProxyServiceURLs

Set this parameter to contain the URL for the client's view of the load balancer for the NSH proxy servers.