Database Server requirements

TrueSight Capacity Optimization supports Oracle and PostgreSQL databases. You must validate these databases for your environment by performing an appropriate sizing exercise. Use the following information to understand the requirements for these databases.

Oracle database requirements

This section explains the requirements for the TrueSight Capacity Optimization database server that uses an Oracle database:

Operating system: Any 64-bit operating system supported by the Oracle database.

Oracle Database versions: The following versions are currently supported:

Version	Editions
18c (18.1.0.0.0)	Standard Edition 2 (SE2) Enterprise Edition (EE)
12c R2 (12.2.0.1)	Standard Edition 2 (SE2) Enterprise Edition (EE)
12c R1 (12.1¹)	Standard Edition One (SE1) Standard Edition (SE) Enterprise Edition (EE) Express Edition (XE) (11.2 only)
11g R2 and later (11.2)

¹ - Oracle version 12.1.0.2.0 does not work as expected (caused by Oracle bug 20508819). You can perform one of the following tasks as a workaround:

Add Oracle instance init parameter _optimizer_aggr_groupby_elim=false to use Oracle version 12.1.0.2.0.
Use Oracle version 12.1.0.1.0 or 12.2.0.1.

Notes

The Database Server supports both the multi-tenancy options for Oracle 12c R1 and later: Container Database (CDB) and Pluggable Database (PDB).
You must use Oracle 12c R1 and later with CentOS 7.x, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x, and Oracle Enterprise Linux 7.x because Oracle 11g R2 is not supported on these operating systems.
The Oracle Advanced Compression (OAC) feature is not recommended for use with a TrueSight Capacity Optimization Database Server. Activating this feature can have a significant impact on performance in terms of ETL execution time and data warehouse (DWH) data processing time.
The Oracle Spatial that is installed on a TrueSight Capacity Optimization database instance affects the database CPU performance when using the truncate command on the temporary tables and drop tables. Therefore, BMC recommends avoiding the installation of Oracle Spatial on a TrueSight Capacity Optimization database instance. If you need Oracle Spatial for any other purposes, contact Oracle for the possible workarounds to improve the CPU performance.

Oracle clients: Computers or VMs that host the Application Server or ETL Engine components must be running a supported Oracle client with the following packages, components, and configurations:

Oracle Client install options¹

Oracle Client configurations

Oracle Net
Oracle Database Utilities
Oracle JDBC/THIN Interfaces
SQL*Plus
SQLLDR
Oracle Call Interfaces

¹These options are available only while performing a Custom installation of the Oracle Client.

Oracle Client 12.1.x, 64-bit
Oracle Client 18.x, 64-bit

Note

TrueSight Capacity Optimization does not support the Oracle Instant Client.
11.x Oracle clients are not supported. If you are using any of the 11.x Oracle clients, you must upgrade the client to 12.1 or later versions.

Character set: AL32UTF8 — As part of Internationalization support and Unicode standard alignment, use this character set to prevent issues related to wrong character encoding during the integration of heterogeneous datasources.
Oracle Partitioning: Install and enable Oracle Partitioning on the Database Server, especially for very large databases to ensure maximum performance.
Oracle Java Virtual Machine (JVM): Install and enable Oracle JVM on the Database Server.

Configuration recommendations: Review the following Oracle configuration recommendations. These recommendations are based on technical considerations. Refer to the latest Oracle documents for details about any licensing restrictions.

Configuration item	Recommendation
Schema	TrueSight Capacity Optimization database schema uses four tablespaces: two for capacity data and two for indexes. For better performance, BMC recommends that the two data tablespaces be allocated on a different physical device than the two index tablespaces. The default schema owner user is BCO_OWN. This user must have permissions on the five tablespaces and also on a temporary tablespace. The schema uses global temporary tables that can reach considerable size. Allocate a minimum of 3 GB for the temporary tablespace and 3 GB for the UNDO tablespace.
Memory Management	Use automatic memory management. Configure only the limit, and Oracle will manage the SGA and PGA. Set the memory limit at 80 percent of the total memory.
Listener configuration	By default, the Oracle instance sets the listener port to 1521. You can also set a different port according to Oracle guidelines. Set the max sessions parameter to 300. This is the minimum requirement. For very large deployments involving many Application Servers and ETL engines, you must increase the max sessions parameter to avoid saturation.
Block size	The default block size should be used. BMC recommends you to set a block size between 8 KB and 32 KB.
Archive logging	BMC recommends running the database in archive logging (ARCHIVELOG) mode and using Oracle best practices: Perform periodic full backups (for example, weekly). Perform incremental backups (for example, daily). Perform continuous archive log backups (for example, every 6 hours). The size and frequency needed for the archive logs depends linearly on the size of the TrueSight Capacity Optimization database in terms of daily population load. As a rough estimation, provide 2.5 GB/hour for every 10 million rows loaded per day. For example, provide 5 GB/hour for a TrueSight Capacity Optimization database sized for 20 million rows per day. Archive logging allows you to do a full backup without shutting down TrueSight Capacity Optimization. Daily shutdown for backup can cause problems to application tasks and services: no task can be executed in the database maintenance window, so you would have to reconfigure OOTB tasks. If the database is shut down, TrueSight Capacity Optimization will log several exceptions and send the administrator an email, so you would also have to stop TrueSight Capacity Optimization components before turning off the database.
REDO logs	Allocate at least 4 GB for the REDO logs. You must allocate enough archive space to accommodate the REDO logs for the backup period. For example, if backup is taken every six hours, the archive space will need to be at least 24 GB. Recommended number of groups and file size: Six groups of REDO logs, with redo file size of 512MB.
Auto space advisor	If you schedule this task, it is recommended that you schedule it for execution on a weekly basis.
Gather database statistics	If you schedule this task, it is recommended that you schedule it for execution after every 2 or 3 days.

PostgreSQL database requirements

This section explains the requirements for the TrueSight Capacity Optimization database server that uses a PostgreSQL database:

Operating system: Any 32- or 64-bit operating system supported by the PostgreSQL Database Server
PostgreSQL Database versions: Versions 11.x, 10.x, 9.6, 9.5, 9.4 and 9.3.6 are currently supported. BMC recommends you to install PostgreSQL version 10.0 or later for improved performance.
To migrate the data from PostgreSQL 9.x to 10.x or 11.x, see Migrating the data from PostgreSQL 9.x to 10.x and later.

Note

The current compatibility offering for the PostgreSQL database supports large environments handling up to 80 million records per day
Configuration recommendations: Review the following PostgreSQL configuration recommendations.

Configuration item	Recommendation
Users, Roles	The first installation of TrueSight Capacity Optimization Application Server will automatically create the users and roles needed by the application. The installer will request the credentials for the PostgreSQL privileged user (usually named postgres). Default names are provided for users and roles but they can be customized during installation. The default schema owner user is BCO_OWN.
Schema and Tablespaces	TrueSight Capacity Optimization database schema uses five tablespaces: two for capacity data, two for indexes, and one for view configurations. For better performance, BMC recommends that the two data tablespaces be allocated on a different physical device than the two index tablespaces. Default names are provided for tablespaces (BCO_DATA, BCO_DATA_IDX, BCO, BCO_IDX) but they can be customized during installation. Tablespaces are automatically created during installation of the first TrueSight Capacity Optimization Application Server. Before launching the installation, a proper directory structure must be prepared on Database Server to host tablespaces. For example, a parent directory like "/var/lib/pgsql/data" can be used to host tablespace files (or any other directory on the Database Server machine). Inside this parent folder, a folder for each tablespace must be created before launching the installation. By default the structure could be as follows (the names are case sensitive) /var/lib/pgsql/data /BCO_DATA /BCO_DATA_IDX /BCO /BCO_IDX The folders created above must be accessible and owned by the OS user that runs the PostgreSQL process. The directories must be empty. The Capacity Optimization installer will request the location of the above tablespaces folder.
Client Authentication	Make sure all TrueSight Capacity Optimization server machines (excluding Remote ETL Servers) can access the Database Server by allowing access in pg_hba.conf Recommended configuration in pg_hba.conf is to use MD5 encryption for passwords.
Instance parameters	BMC recommends adding the following parameters to the configuration of the Database Server in postgresql.conf or equivalent file: `listen_addresses = ''` `max_connections = 300` `default_statistics_target = 1000` `constraint_exclusion = on` `wal_buffers = 16MB` `min_wal_size = 4GB` `max_wal_size = 8GB` `random_page_cost = 1.1` `effective_io_concurrency = 200` `autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor = 0.01` `autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor = 0.05` `autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit = 2000` `checkpoint_timeout = 15min` `checkpoint_completion_target = 0.9` `log_min_messages = fatal` `log_min_error_statement = fatal` `#following parameters should be tuned according to actual memory available to Database server machine` `#following and example of configuration for 16GB RAM server` `maintenance_work_mem = 1512MB` `effective_cache_size = 9GB` `work_mem = 6MB` `shared_buffers = 3GB` `#for PG versions >= 10, max workers have to be configured. This is a sample configuration for a 16 CPU configuration` `max_worker_processes = 16` `max_parallel_workers_per_gather = 8` `max_parallel_workers = 16` Note*: For PostgreSQL 9.4 and earlier, add `checkpoint_segments = 32` parameter instead of `min_wal_size = 4GB` and `max_wal_size = 8GB` parameters.

Some recommendations for improving the PostgreSQL database performance:

Use PGTune to configure the PostgreSQL database. For more information, see PGTune .
Ensure that the database is managed by official PostgreSQL database administrators.

For information about deploying TrueSight Capacity Optimization in a PostgreSQL environment, see Deploying TrueSight Capacity Optimization in a PostgreSQL environment .

Running the database on a virtual machine

The TrueSight Capacity Optimization database can be set up by using a virtual machine, instead of a physical machine.

Ensure that resources are available to the TrueSight Capacity Optimization database, similar to mission critical workloads hosted on virtual machines. The choice of hypervisor and its configuration determines the levels of contention with other virtual machines sharing the CPU, memory, and other resources.
For TrueSight Capacity Optimization, I/O throughput is a key sizing parameter, as explained in Sizing considerations. Configure the hypervisor layer to ensure that the required I/O throughput is available.

Database Server requirements

Oracle database requirements

Running the database on a virtual machine

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