How to configure Netezza resources usage to efficiently manage work load.

1. Netezza Workload Management
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Keeping work load management of the appliance in-line with change in work load is a key administrative
function so that users are serviced efficiently. This section will detail the workload management options
available in the Netezza appliance using some example scenarios.
Maximum number of Concurrent Jobs
The maximum number of concurrent jobs which can be run on a Netezza system is restricted by the
system registry setting “gkMaxConcurrent”. The default value is 48 and that means if more than 48 jobs
are requested to be executed, additional jobs are queued for execution. As and when jobs executing in
the system gets completed the jobs on queue will be scheduled to run. If all the jobs were executed by
users who are members of the default public group and no other workload management related features
are configured, all the 48 jobs gets executed with equal priority and every one of the jobs will get 1/48th
of the available resources. The number of maximum concurrent jobs can be changed by changing the
“host. gkMaxConcurrent” parameter value using the “nzsystem set -arg” command. This will require a system
pause and restart. If the maximum number of concurrent jobs allowed to run in the system is kept
smaller, it may help with the system performance since there will be more resources available for each
job.
Resource Sharing Groups
Similar to setting up of groups to manage user access restrictions, Netezza allows resource group
definitions to control the resource usage of users in the system. “Resource Sharing Groups (RSG)” helps
allocate resources disproportionately to various jobs by attaching the users running the jobs to particular
resource group. Note that each user can be attached to only one “resource group” compared to access
groups where users can be part of many. Resource Sharing groups provide the options to control the
 Rowsetlimit –max number of rows any query executed by the users in the group can return
 Sessiontimeout –max time sessions of users in the group can be idle before it gets cancelled
automatically
 Querytimeout – max time queries executed by users in the group can run before it gets cancelled
 Defpriority – default priority if queries executed by users in the group if none explicitly
mentioned. It can have the values critical, high, normal, low which is in reverse order of priority
 Maxpriority – max priority the users in the group can have and the acceptable values are same as
the Defpriority.
 Resource minimum – minimum percentage of system resources guaranteed to the queries run by
the users in the group when the system is fully (100%) utilized
 Resource maximum – the maximum percentage of system resources guaranteed to the queries
run by the users in the group when the system is not fully utilized
 Job maximum – the maximum number of concurrent jobs which can be executed by the users in
the group and currently it has a limit of 48 max which is hardcoded

2. Netezza Workload Management
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Netezza Schedulers
There are multiple queues in Netezza to help configure and schedule queries and jobs based on the usage
pattern. Understanding them will help in coming up with a configuration which can provide optimal user
response to their queries.
Gate Keeper: Without any additional configuration, gate keeper acts as a queue to control the total
number of concurrent jobs/queries executed in the system. As detailed earlier the maximum number of
concurrent jobs/queries by default is 48 and it can be lowered by modifying the “host. gkMaxConcurrent”
registry setting. When more than the maximum number of allowed queries arrives, they get queued in
Gate Keeper and will get scheduled when one or more of the jobs currently running in the system
completes.
GRA Scheduler: GRA (Guaranteed Resource Access) scheduler manages the system resource allocation
for the jobs based on the resource group definition of the user executing the job belongs to. Once the
“Gate Keeper” identifies that the job can be scheduled since the number of jobs running in the system is
less than the maximum allowed, the job gets passed to the GRA scheduler that allocates the resources
for the job before scheduling it to run. If no resource groups are defined and if “n” (where n < 48)
number of jobs arrives for execution, then each of the jobs will be allocated 1/nth of the total resources
available in the system.
Priority Query Execution (PQE) combined with GRA prioritizes the execution of queries based on the
query priority. When PQE is enabled which is the case by default, when queries with different priorities
from users of the same resource group arrives for execution, the queries with high priority will be
scheduled in advance to the ones with low priority. Also when PQE is enabled, if the jobs are assigned
different priorities, the GRA uses the priority to allocate the system resources disproportionately based
on priority i.e critical jobs will receive more resources compared to low priority jobs.
Snippet Scheduler: The snippet scheduler is ultimately responsible for the scheduling of the snippets
belonging to a query/job on the SPU in appropriate sequence.
The following diagram depicts the various Netezza scheduling components.
Host SPUs
CPU
Memory
Disk
Gate Keeper
GRA+PQE
Scheduler
Snippet
Scheduler
User
Query
SQB: Even though Netezza is an appliance for data ware housing scenarios dealing with processing of
large volume of data, there can be user queries which can be satisfied in a very short duration (in
seconds). In order to satisfy the short duration queries and not delayed due to other long running queries

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overwhelming the system, Netezza has a feature called Short Query Bias “SQB”. SQB allows the
appliance users to define what a short duration query means in terms of execution time and how many
slots in the GRA and Snippet Scheduler queues along with the SPU memory need to be reserved for the
short queries. Once defined any query which Netezza estimates to complete with in the defined short
duration, will be queued using the reserved slots so that they get scheduled appropriately without waiting
in the normal queue where all the other queries are queued for execution preventing delays in servicing
the short queries.
The following is the updated diagram with SQB defined and the allocations are highlighted in red.
Host SPUs
CPU
Memory
Disk
Gate Keeper
GRA+PQE
Scheduler
Snippet
Scheduler
User
Query
The system registry settings which can be used to manage the SQB allocations are detailed below
Parameter Description
host.schedSQBEnabled To enable or disable SQB and by default it is “true”.
host.schedSQBNominalSecs Time below which the query is considered short. Default value
is 2 secs.
host.schedSQBReservedGraSlots Number of GRA scheduler slots reserved for short queries.
Default value is 10.
host.schedSQBReservedSnSlots Number of snippet scheduler slots reserved for short queries..
Default value is 6.
host.schedSQBReservedSnMb Amount of SPU memory reserved for short queries. Default
value is 50 MB.
host.schedSQBReservedHostMb Amount of host memory reserved for short queries. Default
value is 64 MB.
Putting things together
Having gone through the basics of the work load management components available in Netezza we can
use it to come-up with a workload management configuration for the following scenario so that it will be
clear on how these components work together. This will also help in understanding the details one need
to look at to configure the work load management.
The scenario we will be dealing with is an environment where there are two data warehouses (DW)
hosted on a Netezza server on separate databases. As with any DW environment data is ETLed or
ELTed into the tables in batch mostly nightly and during the day users runs queries against the data to

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perform analytics through BI tools. Data for one of the ware houses, DW1 need to get loaded during the
day when data is made available at certain intervals and the volume of user interaction during the day is
also high against DW1. Data for the second DW, DW2 needs to get loaded before users start querying
the data at 8:30 AM in the morning daily. The normal work day for users using both the DW is from
8:30 AM to 5:30 PM and both the DWs are of equal priority for business.
The business users can be categorized as normal users who bring up standard pre-built reports which
allow then to perform drill-down to aggregated data which in turn runs relatively short queries. The
second set of users is power users who does detailed analytics and data discovery which involves long
running queries. Other than business users, DW production support team members and administrators
are the other users of the Netezza system. Having gathered the basic information about the system usage
we can define the resource groups required to manage the resource allocation so that the user experience
and the data load requirements can be met. One way to do is to define the resource groups
RSGBAT1 & 2 – The resource sharing groups to which users running the batch jobs for the two DWs
can be attached to.
RSGPOW1 & 2 – The resource sharing groups to which power users of the two DWs can be attached
to.
RSGNOR1 & 2 – The resource sharing groups to which normal users of the two DWs can be attached
to.
RSGADM1 & 2 – The resource sharing groups to which production support and admin users of the two
DWs can be attached to.
By default the user group “PUBLIC” gets created which can be altered to have resource allocation
defined to the group.
Given that there are business users and support users access the system, the system resource can be
allocated in the ratio 90:5:5 between business, public and support users. So the resulting resource
allocation looks as follows
Business Users Public Support Users
90% 5% 5%
Since both the DWs are important to business, the resource allocation among the business user group
can be divided equally for the two DWs. After the split the resource allocation will be as follows
Business Users Public Support Users
DW1 DW2 N/A N/A
45% 45% 5% 5%
From the usage perspective we understand that there can be batch processes, queries from power users
and normal users hitting the server. Also based on whether it is during day time or night the usage varies.
For simplicity we assume that there can be no user activity during night i.e. from 5:30 PM to 8:30 AM all
the business user related resources can be allocated to the resource sharing groups related to batch. The

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following is the min – max percentage of resource allocation to all the resource sharing groups in the
system.
Business Users Support Users
DW DW1 DW2 DW1 & 2
RSG RSGBAT1 RSGPOW1 RSGNOR1 RSGBAT2 RSGPOW2 RSGNOR2 Public ADM
Night 44% - 90% 1%-1% 1%-1% 44%-90% 1%-1% 1%-1% 1%-9% 9%-90%
Day 10% - 35% 25% - 45% 10% - 45% 15% - 45% 25% - 45% 5% - 45% 5%-10% 5%-10%
During work hours, the resource sharing groups to which business users are attached to get allocated
higher percentage of system resources and the RSG used by the batch user ids get a higher percentage of
the system resources during the night. Once RSGs are defined, the resource allocation limits are altered
between work hours and night using the ALTER GROUP statement.
Even though we are looking at the system resource allocations to control the resource usage of various
user groups, the resource usage can also be restricted using the rowset limit, query timeout limit and
session timeout limit parameters. Setting these limits will help minimizing issues due to runaway queries
and bad queries entered by users which can run for ever holding on to the resources.
Once the resource sharing groups are allocated and all the users are attached to the correct groups, let’s
see how the resource allocation will happen when queries start arriving for execution during work hours.
Assuming that all the queries executed by the users are of the same priority and 2 queries one from
power user and one from normal user of DW1 and similarly 2 queries from DW2 users are entered into
the system the following will be the resource allocation for the 4 queries
 Minimum resource (under 100% system usage) which will be allocated to the queries from the
different RSGs are
o QUERY1 - RSGPOW1 – 25%
o QUERY2 - RSGNOR1 – 10%
o QUERY3 - RSGPOW2 – 25%
o QUERY4 - RSGNOR2 – 5%
 Given that 4 queries take up only 65% of the system resources, the queries will be allocated
remaining resources proportionally up to the resource maximum defined for the RSGs to which
the users running the queries are attached to. The following is the additional resource from the
remaining 35% (100%-65%) resource which will be allocated to each query
o QUERY1 - RSGPOW1 – (25*35)/65 = 14%
o QUERY2 - RSGNOR1 – (10*35)/65 = 4%
o QUERY3 - RSGPOW2 – (25*35)/65 = 14%
o QUERY4 - RSGNOR2 – (5*35)/65 = 3%
 So the total resource allocation for each query will be
o QUERY1 - RSGPOW1 – 25%+14% = 39%
o QUERY2 - RSGNOR1 – 10%+4% = 14%
o QUERY3 - RSGPOW2 – 25%+14% = 39%
o QUERY4 - RSGNOR2 – 5%+3% = 8%

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In the next scenario, let’s assume that there are 2 queries with same priority from users in the RSG -
RSGPOW2 and 1 query from all the other RSGs are executed in the system. In this case the following
will be the resource allocation percentages
o QUERY1 - RSGPOW1 – 25%
o QUERY2 - RSGNOR1 – 10%
o QUERY3 – RSGBAT1 – 10%
o QUERY4 - RSGPOW2 – 12.5%
o QUERY41-RSGPOW2 – 12.5%
o QUERY5 - RSGNOR2 – 5%
o QUERY6 - RSGBAT3 – 15%
o QUERY7 - PUBLIC – 5%
o QUERY8 - ADM – 5%
Note that the system is 100% utilized and the queries are allocated the resource minimum defined in the
RSG definition of the users executing the queries. Since there are two queries of equal priority executed
by the users in the same RSG (RSGPOW2), the resource allocated to the group 25% is equally split and
allocated to the two queries which is 12.5%.
In the third scenario, let’s assume that it is same as the second scenario except that the two queries from
the users in group are executed with different priorities critical and low. Netezza assigns a weight of
1,2,4,8 to the priorities low, normal, high and critical and uses it to allocate the resource proportionately.
As a result, the following will be the resource allocation percentages.
o QUERY1 - RSGPOW1 – 25%
o QUERY2 - RSGNOR1 – 10%
o QUERY3 – RSGBAT1 – 10%
o QUERY4 - RSGPOW2 – (8/(8+1))*25 = 22%
o QUERY41-RSGPOW2 – (1/(8+1))*25*=3%
o QUERY5 - RSGNOR2 – 5%
o QUERY6 - RSGBAT3 – 15%
o QUERY7 - PUBLIC – 5%
o QUERY8 - ADM – 5%
The key points to remember is that
 When the system is not fully utilized, queries will get more resources allocated to them
proportionally based on the RSG resource minimum parameter.
 When the system is fully utilized all the queries will be guaranteed the resource minimum defined
to the RSG to which it is belongs to.
 If more than one query from a RSG executed on a fully utilized system with equal priority, the
resource minimum defined for the RSG will be divided equally among the individual queries.

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 If more than one query from a RSG executed on a fully utilized system with different priorities,
the resource minimum defined for the RSG will be divided proportionally among the individual
queries.
Note that the default “Admin” user gets allocated 50% of the resources and it can’t be changed. What
that means is to minimize the “Admin” usage. To compensate for that, create a new resource sharing
group with all the required administrative privileges and add users who perform administration tasks to
this group.
Configuring Gate Keeper
With no changes to the default gate keeper configuration, all the queries from users are queued in a
single queue and scheduled if the total number of concurrent jobs running in the system is less than 48.
The Gate Keeper can be enabled to queue the queries into different queues and scheduled based on the
priority of the query instead of all queries being considered equal. To enable Gate Keeper along with the
GRA, the system registry host.schedAllowGKandGRA value need to be set to “yes” and it is by default
set to “no”. The following is a sample scheduling scenario in NZ, without gate keeper being enabled.
Host
Low
Low
High
Critical
SPUs
CPU
Memory
Disk
Gate Keeper
GRA+PQE
Scheduler
Snippet
Scheduler
User
Query
Note that all the user queries irrespective of their priorities flow through a single gate keeper queue
which means there can be situations where high priority queries may end up waiting for low priority
queries to complete if the number of concurrent jobs running on the system are higher than the limit.
Once gate keeper is enabled along with GRA, the gate keeper by default will use queues of depth 36, 4, 2
and 2 for jobs with critical, high, normal and low priority jobs respectively for scheduling. The following
is a sample scenario with GK enabled.
Host
C
C
C
C
SPUs
CPU
Memory
Disk
Gate Keeper Queues
GRA+PQE
Scheduler
Snippet
Scheduler
User
Query
H
H
H
H
N
N
L
L
C

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On a side note, if PQE is disabled, then all the queries will be considered normal and all the queries will
be queued in the “normal” queue even though gate keeper is enabled along with GRA. The reason is that
the PQE is the component which is required for NZ to identify the priority of jobs set by the users.
With multiple queues with varying depth to control jobs of different priorities, the higher priority jobs
will not get queued due to lower priority jobs. But at the same time since the default queue depth values
are pre-defined, there can be situations low priority jobs can get queued even though there are no higher
priority jobs are running in the system and the concurrent jobs running in the system didn’t reach the
limit. For e.g. if only two low priority jobs are running on the system and a third job arrived, NZ will
queue it until one of the jobs which is running in the system completes even if there are resources
available. It would be good to understand the current work load pattern in the system to see whether it
fits the default settings before enabling GK.
Configuring Gate Keeper Manually
If the default job categorization and queue depth of GK doesn’t fit the work load pattern observed, Gate
Keeper queues and queue depth can be configured manually. For e.g., if it is found that there are more
very short running queries of high priority than long running queries of high priority the GK queues can
be defined using the observed grouping of query execution timings and the volume in each group. The
following are the steps
 Disable PQE. What that means is that the priorities set by users for job executions will have no
effect and all the jobs executed will be considered normal. This will also eliminate the resource
allocation variations based on job priority by GRA which we saw earlier i.e. all the jobs from a
RSG will get allocated equal share of the resources available to the RSG.
 Define the job groups identified based on the execution times observed using the NZ registry
setting host.gkQueueThreshold. For e.g. setting host.gkQueueThreshold=m,n,o,-1 identifies
four groups of jobs which take less than m secs, less than n secs, less than o secs and > o secs to
execute where m<n<o. This setting will also create the four GK queues and the maximum
number of GK queues which can be defined is four.
 Set the queue depths for the job groups identified by using the NZ registry setting
host.gkMaxPerQueue. Following the example in the previous step, setting
host.gkMaxPerQueue=a,b,c,d will set the queue depth of “a” for job group identified to run < m
secs, queue depth of “b”,”c” and “d” for the remaining 3 job groups.
When manually configuring GK queues and depths, it is good to revisit whether SQB which deals with
short duration queries still need to be enabled. The following is a sample scenario after GK queues and
depths configured manually.

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Host SPUs
CPU
Memory
Disk
Gate Keeper Queues
GRA
Scheduler
Snippet
Scheduler
User
Query
< m < n < o > o
Summary
Work load management is key to efficiently utilize the NZ appliance and it need to be kept current with
changes in the work load patterns. There are many options available to configure WLM to maximum
resource utilization but it all starts with clearly understanding the usage pattern. Default options may be
good to start with but will not be the best.
bnair@asquareb.com
blog.asquareb.com
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