1. ASCP Hardware Sizing
Oracle VCP PMO

2. <Course name> <Lesson number> - 2
Purpose:
This document provides an overview of ASCP hardware sizing tool, sizing inputs, and calculations & assumptions used in hardware sizing. It is intended solely to derive a rough estimate of hardware requirements for an ASCP implementation.  
Disclaimer:
This document in any form, software or printed matter, contains proprietary information that is the exclusive property of Oracle. Your access to and use of this confidential material is subject to the terms and conditions of your Oracle Software License and Service Agreement, which has been executed and with which you agree to comply. This document and information contained herein may not be disclosed, copied, reproduced or distributed to anyone outside Oracle without prior written consent of Oracle. This document is not part of your license agreement nor can it be incorporated into any contractual agreement with Oracle or its subsidiaries or affiliates.
This document is for informational purposes only and is intended solely to assist you in planning for the hardware required for ASCP implementation and Oracle is not responsible for the inaccuracies caused by data or by the tool to come up with the estimates. The analysis represents an estimate based on generally observed performance and research. Estimate results are not to be adopted as a guarantee, but as one input from the system to be validated by a robust testing program.
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<Course name> <Lesson number> - 2

3. Supported Configurations
Sizing Tool Overview
Sizing Inputs
Explanation of Sizing Inputs with Examples
Sizing Calculations & Recommendations

4. Supported Configurations
One Machine Architecture
EBS and Planning Server on one machine

5. Supported Configurations
Two Machine Architecture
ASCP Database + concurrent manager node
EBS Server
Planning Server

6. Supported Configurations
Three Machine Architecture
ASCP Concurrent Manager (4 CPU cores, x GB RAM)
VCP Database Server
(4 CPU cores, 8-10 GB RAM)
EBS Server
Planning Server

7. Sizing Tool Overview
Sizing tool is intended to create a rough estimate of hardware requirements for Oracle’s ASCP Product
The output includes
Recommendation for RAM memory.
Recommendation for number of CPU Cores needed
Disk Space
The sizing output represents and estimate of the hardware requirements and architecture within the limits of design “best practice”. The results are to be used as guidance. Analytical iterations are required, considering the functional model, data used to generate a more accurate output. These iterations should be tasks on the critical path of the implementation plan. Oracle is not responsible for the inaccuracies caused by data or by the tool to come up with the estimates
Sizing and the resulting architecture design should be reviewed as the project matures. Early in the project, requirements and estimates are more uncertain than they will be in later lifecycle phases. There are many variables that can affect performance in the system used to deploy ASCP. Throughout the project lifecycle iterations of testing are required to confirm the performance suggested by the inputs, system components and user loads. Data used for testing should be a close approximation of the real production data as possible.

8. ASCP Sizing Inputs 1. Customer/Company Name
2. Requestor’s address
3. Industry Segment
4. # of Daily Buckets in Plan Horizon
5. # of Weekly Buckets in Plan Horizon
6. # of Period Buckets in Plan Horizon
7. ASCP Plan Type
8. Number of Inventory Organizations
9. Items enabled in each inventory organization
10. Number of Demand lines in entire Plan Horizon
11. Average Order modifiers across all the organizations
12. Average Demand Quantity
13. Average number of levels in Bill of Material
14. Average number of components in an end assembly
15. Average number of operations
16. Number of resources

9. Explanation of Sizing Inputs
Customer Name
Provide the name of the Customer/Division for which sizing is being done
address
Provide the address of the requestor. Sizing results will be posted to this address.
Industry Segment
Choose the industry segment of the customer, HiTech, Retail, CPG, Etc. The sizing tool has a list of values.

10. Explanation of Sizing Inputs Cont’d…
ASCP Plan Type
Specify the planning type for ASCP plan (The sizing tool has a list of values). Based on the project objectives and goals, select the correct ASCP plan type. ASCP can run :
Unconstrained
Constrained
Optimized
Constrained with decision rules
For the constrained plan with decision rules or the optimized plan, the sizing tool will generate an exception “Invalid No. of Daily Buckets “ if, daily buckets > 90 or the total buckets > This is a warning to the requestor the plan may be excessively constrained. Please contact to continue.

11. Explanation of Sizing Inputs Cont’d…
Source Application
Please provide the primary source of Planning data.
Note: If source ERP application is JDE-E1, then 20% additional disk space is needed at database server (i.e. disk space recommended by sizer + 20%). This additional disk space is needed to store data in temporary tables required by JDE-VCP integration.

12. Explanation of Sizing Inputs
Daily Buckets In Plan Horizon
Specify the number of daily buckets in the plan’s horizon.
The time buckets in Oracle ASCP are used to create plans that simultaneously provide long range aggregate planning and short term detail scheduling.
As the number of daily buckets gets greater, the time to calculate a plan will increase.
Note: To reduce the computational effort to calculate a plan, and to reduce the volume of plan output (for clarity), the horizon should be set only as large as is necessary to capture the critical detail.

13. Explanation of Sizing Inputs Cont’d…
Weekly Buckets in Plan Horizon
Specify the number of weekly buckets in the plan. In case of weekly buckets, the dates for supplies and demands are reported at the end of the last working day of the week. Weekly buckets can only start on the week beginning day from the manufacturing calendar. If the daily horizon does not end on the day before a week beginning day, the planning engine extends it to the next day before a week beginning day
Period Buckets in Plan Horizon
In ASCP period patterns are defined not months. For periods you need to choose 4/4/5 weekly pattern (i.e. first period is of 4 weeks) or the 5/4/4 weekly pattern as the quarterly calendar type.

14. Explanation of Sizing Inputs Cont’d…
Number of Inventory Organizations
Specify the number of inventory organizations to be included in the plan.
Items enabled in each Inventory Organization
Average active items for planning in an inventory organization
Specify the average number of MRP Planned Items across all Inventory Orgs. For example:
If Organization1 has N1 planned items and Organization 2 has N2 planned items you need to provide the simple average of the two ((N1 + N2)/2).

15. Explanation of Sizing Inputs Cont’d… Items enabled in each Inventory Organization
Note:
ASCP does not plan the items having the MRP planning code “Not Planned”. We should only plan for items which are critical to our supply chain, and mark all other items as “Not Planned”. This will help reduce the plan size and increase performance.
There is a validation check in the sizer that will throw and exception if the number of item-organization combinations (number of inventory organizations * items enabled in each organization) exceeds one million. The exception is, “'Invalid Item Org Count.”. The sizing tool will not give an output. If the entries are correct and > 1 Million, then contact to continue.

16. Explanation of Sizing Inputs Cont’d…
Number of Demand lines in entire Plan Horizon
Specify the total number of independent demand lines (forecast + sales orders) in entire planning horizon. If the specific numbers are not available early in the implementation, you can derive the number using history from the execution system. Add additional buffer for growth. If the number of demand lines is more than 1 million, an exception will be raised “Invalid Demand Line Count”. Contact to continue.
Average Order modifiers across all the organizations
Provide an input of average lot sizes (considering order modifiers such as minimum order quantity, fixed order quantity etc). This can be a approximate number. This input along with average demand quantity helps in determining the number of supplies created by planning engine.

17. Explanation of Sizing Inputs Cont’d…
Average Demand Quantity
Provide the average quantity per demand line. This is (sum of demand quantity in all demand lines/number of demand lines).
Average number of levels in the Bill of Material
Across all end item products what is the typical depth (or number of levels) in the BOM. If you leave it null, it is considered as 0.
Average number of the components in an end assembly
Provide the average number of components needed (at all levels) to make the final assembly.

18. Explanation of Sizing Inputs Cont’d…
Average no. of operations
Specify the average number of planned operations in Finished good’s routing. Please note that, there could be multiple routings with varying operations, you need to provide an average of those operations in a routing.
No. of resources
If you are planning bottleneck resources through bottleneck resource group in the ASCP plan, then specify only number of bottleneck resources else specify all the resources.

19. Sizing Calculations and Recommendations
Please note that the memory recommendation provided is for one ASCP plan only. If ASCP plans will not be run in parallel, size for largest ASCP plan.
Please note that the sizing recommendations for number of CPU cores and memory (RAM) applies to concurrent manager node (in case the database server will be on a separate machine). ASCP plan runs in memory so it is very important to correctly size the RAM.
If Database is on a separate machine than concurrent manager, then an additional 4 CPU cores with 8-10 GB of RAM is needed for that machine. Separate database server is recommended in case, database is heavily loaded with other processes (apart from VCP processes) and utilizing most of the CPU time.
The disk space suggested is only for ASCP. The estimate is sufficient to hold ODS data and few plans (~5).

20. Sizing Calculations and Recommendations
Minimal Required CPU Clock speed ranges from 2.5 – 3 GHz
Recommendation is to use 64-bit operating system for both Memory based snapshot and Memory based Planner. 32-bit operating system may not scale as data volumes increases.
The current 64-bit platforms supported by Oracle Advanced Planning products are SUN Solaris, HP-UX and AIX 5.3 and above. Linux 64 bit is also supported from release onwards. Please refer to Metalink note for detailed instructions.
If multiple products are running (e.g. ASCP and Demantra) on same machine, the total sizing will be sum of the sizing recommendations as provided by respective sizer tool.

21. Sizing Calculations and Recommendations
In case of exceptions raised by sizer as described in earlier section or for any query related to ASCP hardware sizing, please contact PMO team at