[Editor’s Note:  This is the second of a series of four articles on new AutoConfig features.  These articles are written by members of our AutoConfig Development team.  This is your opportunity to interact directly with that
team with your feedback on this tool.]

Our last article discussed ways of tuning your AutoConfig runs via profiling reports that identify bottlenecks during template
instantiation.  This article discusses another method of speeding up your AutoConfig runs.  In an R12 E-Business Suite instance, AutoConfig can now be run simultaneously across multiple nodes. This new feature significantly lowers maintenance
downtime for multi-node installations. One beta customer of this feature improved the time it takes them to run AutoConfig across their dozen mid tiers by 45%.

How Does AutoConfig’s Parallel Mode Work?

Executing AutoConfig in ‘parallel mode’ engages a locking mechanism so that processes running on individual nodes are synchronized. This mechanism prevents any conflicting updates to the database or the file system. The following figure
illustrates AutoConfig running in parallel across multiple nodes:

Diagram showing how AutoConfig runs in parallel on EBS 12

Executing AutoConfig in Parallel Mode

The following command can be used to run AutoConfig in ‘parallel mode’

Application Tier

perl $AD_TOP/bin/adconfig.pl contextfile=<CtxFile> [product=<product_top>] –parallel

Database Tier

perl $ORACLE_HOME/appssutil/bin/adconfig.pl contextfile=<CtxFile> –parallel

where

<CtxFile> is the absolute path to the context file
<product_top> is the Product short name

Note that while running AutoConfig simultaneously on multiple nodes, it is very important to ensure that the ‘-parallel‘ option is specified while starting AutoConfig on each node to prevent unstable and/or inconsistent
filesystem and database states.

Downloading the Latest AutoConfig Engine

Customers on Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 can obtain this new feature by installing:

This feature is currently not available for Oracle E-Business Suite 11i.  We currently do not have precise plans for delivery of this feature in 11i.

Your Thoughts?

Please let us know about your experience on using this new feature. We’d be very interested in hearing about how long it takes to run AutoConfig on your multi-node installations with and without the ‘parallel’ option. The new AutoConfig
Performance Profiler feature can be used to collect this information. Also let us know of any issues you encounter while using this feature.

References

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