Improving Quickr Performance 101
Category QuickrIn my newsletter last week, I outlined the nine IBM improvements (below) to Quickr 8.2, then added a series of recommendations at a very high level that can apply to any version of Quickr or QuickPlace. I consistently see home-grown Quickr and QuickPlace installations that haven't had the benefit of professional Domino administration and performance optimization - sometimes because it's not even a Domino shop, sometimes because the skills are not on staff, and sometimes because Quickr is the only web app in place. Or, the Domino apps in place are so simple as to not need the kind of attention a more complex app like Quickr requires.
So - since not every one of my readers here gets the newsletter (sign up below), I thought I'd repeat here and take questions and comments. And of course, I'd encourage you to come to Collaboration University 2009 where Chris Miller, Gab Davis and Warren Elsmore all have sessions focused on this very topic.
So enjoy, and I hope this makes your Quickr, Quickr!
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So thrilled I was with the 8.2 performance improvements that I almost forgot some of the basics that I encourage customers to do - or do for them when their back is turned - to enhance performance on their Quickr/QuickPlace environments. So in no particular order, here is a list of things to check on your own environment. I'm not going to tell you WHY to do everything, because that's a much longer story. Possibly, more blog entries or newsletters too...!
Some things to do with notes.ini:
- Remove unnecessary tasks: Sched, CalConn, RnRMgr, Statlog
- Remove: ServerTasksAt4 (reschedule as a program document if you must)
- Remove: qptool placecatalog push -a (same)
- Add: HTTPJVMMaxHeapSize=256M
- Add: QuickPlaceWebCacheEnabled=1
- Add: UPDATE_SUPPRESSION_TIME=90 (or 120 if you can get away with it)
- Add: UPDATERS=4 (or, a number equal to or one less than your number of CPUs)
- Enable Transaction logging on a separate drive array (HUGE topic)
- Enable view indexing on a separate drive (big savings)
- Exclude graphics from logging. Do you really want to write to a database just because a gif was opened? (Hint: No.)
- Use authenticated LDAP lookups, not Anonymous
- You have some customizations with un-optimized code
- You may be using a theme, even a standard one, that is bad for performance
- You may have reverse proxy issues or firewall bandwidth restrictions
- The server may not be optimized for TCPIP throughput or timing
- Your users may not be caching properly, or your proxy may be caching improperly
- You may have rogue agents or placebots (Quickr agents) inappropriately implemented, especially in larger systems
Unfortunately, the poor-performance conclusion is reached WAY too early by most companies, and QuickPlace/Quickr gets a bad name for it. "Quickr is slowr! Let's look at SharePoint!" fills a conference room, and people nod in general agreement because it just seems like the right thing to say. But you, my newly-enabled admin guru, have the power to stop that dead in its tracks with "It's not the software. There are measures we can take to improve the situation and improve performance. We'll work on it and report back."
So go, people. Take this knowledge. Fix it.
