Every Capacity Group automatically generates a default Activity Period at creation. It defines the default conditions of system utilization of the Capacity Group and will become active whenever no other non-default Activity Period is active. You cannot delete a default Activity Period from a Capacity Group.
Under the Activity Period tab, next to the Definition tab, specify the header information on the top section.
Activity Period: This input field is mandatory and should be used to assign a name that is unique within the same Capacity Group. The Default Activity Period will always be defaulted to “Default” and cannot be changed.
Active: This check box should be ticked to activate the Activity Period. If an Activity Period is deactivated its administration settings are disabled. A Default Activity Period cannot be deactivated.
Max. Server Util.: This is the maximum percentage of utilization allowed on all application servers in context. This is calculated on the total number of available background processes.
For instance, a Capacity Group has two application servers in its context with 50 background processes available on each, a Max. Server Util. of 80% means that the total utilization on the two servers combined can never exceed 40 background processes (see above picture).
Program Priorities: The Low, Medium and High input fields allow you to define priority percentage values which will determine the background process entitlement for concurrently running programs. The total must amount to 100%.
Program Settings: At program level there are two attributes that can be set. The Priority attribute can be High, Medium, Low or Exclusive and it refers to the values set in Program Priorities.
For instance, in the above picture, a total number of 100 background processes available means that in the event that instances of all listed programs would concurrently run 10, 20 and 70 processes would be assigned to Archive GT, Flight Report and Conversion of Logical System Names respectively. Multiple instances of the same programs would equally share the allocated amounts amongst themselves.
In a slight variation of the above example, if only 2 of the three programs, say, Archive GT and Conversion of Logical System Names would concurrently run, the 20 background processes entitled to Flight Report would be allocated to the running programs in proportion to their priorities. If an instance of Flight Report would become active during this situation, the distribution would be balanced back to 10, 20 and 70.
If a program priority is set to Exclusive it will claim all available processes within the limits of the Activity Period and any running programs in context will be paused until the exclusive program has finished. This option is useful for programs that are most critical to the business.
When Active attribute is checked the assignment of the selected Diffuser program to the Capacity Group is active. Unchecking it would retract the assignment of the program until checked again. While unchecked the program can be executed normally but it would not be controlled by the Capacity Group.
Server Settings: At server level there are three attributes that can be set: Total Job Percentage, Min. Free WP and Active. These attributes allow you to ring-fence system utilization at application server level.
The Total Job Percentage is the maximum percentage of utilization allowed on the selected application server by the Diffuser programs in context.
Min. Free WP is an absolute number representing the minimum amount of background processes that are required remain in status “Waiting” at all times during the validity of an Activity Period. This is a useful option to limit the amount of resources that a Diffuser program will use on the selected application server and make sure that there are always background processes available to program executions external to the Capacity Group.
If the Active checkbox is ticked the selected server and its settings will be considered in the distribution of workload. If it’s unticked it will be ignored by the Background Monitor and none of its background processes will be used by the Capacity Group.
In the picture above, if there are a total of 100 background processes available on application server BTI2250_MD2_00, setting Total Job Percentage to 80% will ensure that any program(s) in context will use up to 80 waiting background processes. Setting Min. Free WP to 2 will ensure that the Capacity Group will allow a server utilization of up to 80 background processes as long as there are at least 2 waiting processes left on the application server. That is, for instance, if external program executions are already claiming 20 background processes the Capacity Group will allow a server utilization of up to 78.
At this point your Default Activity Period is fully defined. Press save in the top menu bar to store the changes.
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