SUNScholar/Optimisations

Introduction

This wiki help page assumes that you have used the three system setup procedures to install an Ubuntu server with DSpace software.

This wiki page details the major optimisations of the system performed at Stellenbosch University in order to create a truly production version of DSpace.

Tomcat

See: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/tomcat

• Remove "mod_jk", use "authbind" exclusively with no need of the Tomcat AJP connector in order to reduce the CPU and memory load

http://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/index.php/SUNScholar/Prepare_Ubuntu/S05

• Remove "development mode" of Tomcat by adding the following to the server context in order to reduce DNS lookups.

enableLookups="false"

XMLUI

• Use XMLUI exclusively to reduce the memory load.

http://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/index.php/SUNScholar/Install_Dspace/S08

Indexes

• Fix "browse index" configuration to reduce the PostgreSQL database server query load.

http://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/index.php/SUNScholar/Indexes#Browse_Indexes

Logs

• Changed all instances of "INFO" to "ERROR" in the following config file to reduce disk I/O and CPU load.

log4j.properties

Bitstream checker

Modified bitstream checker settings as follows to reduce database size.

#### Checksum Checker Settings ####
# Default dispatcher in case none specified
plugin.single.org.dspace.checker.BitstreamDispatcher=org.dspace.checker.SimpleDispatcher

# check history retention
checker.retention.default=1y
checker.retention.CHECKSUM_MATCH=2w

References

• https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC18/Performance+Tuning+DSpace
• http://www.turnkeylinux.org/tomcat

All our tweaks and optimisations seem to be working. The load dropped when we started using "authbind" for Tomcat thereby eliminating the need for the Apache "mod_jk" module, which was creating extra processing overhead.	Looks like we have enough disk space in the /home partition for the next 3yrs at least, at our current rate of submissions. The /var partition which holds the database was reduced in size by tweaking the bitstream checker properties and then running a full database vacuum.
We have more than enough compute muscle.	Our memory usage stabilised when we stopped using the JSPUI. However after the upgrade to DSpace 1.8.2 and enabling discovery we are back to a memory intensive system.

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