“ALL About” How To Boost Dynamics NAV Server

Hi Guys,
another post of “ALL About” Series, in this case, some people have asked me about NAV configuration and how to configure NAV Server for better performance (Boosting

NAV..);  also in Microsoft Forum there are several posts about this topic, i searched and collected a variety of useful information for a correct NAV Server configuration.

Documents and Posts
“Great White Paper” about typical questions around the number of users or tenants, hardware requirements, scaling, and upgrading
-> “…How to have a great configuration and “How-to Boost NAV”!!
“This white paper provides detailed insight into the concepts and principles that support performance testing in Microsoft Dynamics NAV”.
By outlining some sample goals from the start, it explains how you can use load testing to optimize your application and hardware to meet the customer and user requirements – addressing typical questions around the number of users or tenants, hardware requirements, scaling, and upgrading”

Microsoft Dynamics NAV Performance Testing – White Paper
http://www.archerpoint.com/sites/default/files/docs/ms-dynamics-nav-peformance-testing-wp.pdf

NAV Server Configuration Best Practices (from Whitepaper)
1) Number of Microsoft Dynamics NAV Service Tiers
When a client connects to Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server, the load balancer will select a server and keep the connection open throughout the lifetime of the client.

This means that setting up more servers behind a load balancer will increase the capacity of the cluster of Microsoft Dynamics NAV Service tiers.

2) Server Memory
Each Microsoft Dynamics NAV Service tier needs 500Mb of memory to run.
On top of that, the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Service tier needs memory for each active session, even if they are idle.
The more pages the user have opened, the more memory gets allocated, but a good starting point for doing sizing calculations is around 10Mb per active session.
Idle sessions are not terminated if they are running the Windows client.
Server CPU (cores and speed) Faster CPU will get things done faster, and more cores can run more things in parallel.
Idle sessions on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Service tier don’t use any CPU power, except for generic housekeeping, which shouldn’t be counted.

3) Server CPU (cores and speed)
Faster CPU will get things done faster, and more cores can run more things in parallel.
Idle sessions on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Service tier don’t use any CPU power, except for generic housekeeping, which shouldn’t be counted.
Active sessions will use CPU power depending on what they do, but it is hard to generalize how much.
For example, CPU power is used whenever the user is performing a task that requires the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Service tier to run some business logic or perform some UI logic or setup server pages.
If the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Service tier does a lot of IO (SQL calls or client callbacks), then the CPU will be waiting for response and thus be loaded less.

4) Data Cache Size
This is a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server setting, which located in CustomSettings.config file. Sets the data cache size. This is an abstract value with contextual meaning on the type of the item being cached.
<add key=”DataCacheSize” value=”9″ />
The number you specify in DataCacheSize setting determines how much memory is used for caching data.
The actual amount of memory (in MB) allocated is 2n, where n is the value of the DataCacheSize setting:
Value Memor y 9 (default) 512Mb 10 1Gb 11 2Gb 12 4Gb 13 8Gb 14 16Gb 15 32Gb …
When running a single tenant system the default value of 9 is probably good.
When running a multi-tenant system, the data cache is shared between all tenants.
Set to 0 to disable cache.

5) Metadata Provider Cache Size
This is a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server setting, which located in CustomSettings.config file.
Sets the Metadata Provider cache size (in number in objects cached).
Set to 0 to disable cache.
<add key=”MetadataProviderCacheSize” value=”150″ />
You can monitor the number of objects in the metadata cache by monitoring the following performance counter on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Service tier.
There is really NO REASON not to set this to a high value (like 10000) if you are not pressed on memory on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server.

6) Max Concurrent Calls
This is a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server setting, which is located in CustomSettings.config file.
Maximum number of concurrent client calls that can be active on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server.
To disable this setting set the value to “MaxValue”.
<add key=”MaxConcurrentCalls” value=”40″ />
The number specified here determines how many concurrent calls the Service Tier is able to handle. The more cores in your server, the higher this value can be.

GitHub organization for performance testing Microsoft Dynamics NAV
GitHub You will find a couple of projects on GitHub, which contains some sample code on how to do performance tests.
The GitHub organization is used to store the sample repositories and is available here:
https://github.com/NAVPERF

Others nice links
Optimizing SQL Server Performance with Microsoft Dynamics NAV
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/optimizing-sql-server-performance-with-microsoft-dynamics-nav

Blog about Performance
https://navperformance.wordpress.com/

Performance Tuning Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 RTC and NAV 2013
http://www.archerpoint.com/blog/Posts/performance-tuning-microsoft-dynamics-nav-2009-and-nav-2013

Videos
How Do I: Run NAV Performance Tests Using Visual Studio in Microsoft Dynamics NAV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG-y8DsXqaQ

Some my old posts here:
Monitoring Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 Server Using “Performance Counters”
https://robertostefanettinavblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/monitoring-microsoft-dynamics-nav-2015-server-using-performance-counters/

NAV 2015 TRACKING SESSIONS, USERS ACTIVITY, CHANGE LOG
https://robertostefanettinavblog.wordpress.com/2015/06/09/nav-2015-tracking-sessions-users-activity-change-log/