AEM Performance Optimization Workflow

Problem Statement:

AEM Workflows allow you to automate a series of steps that are performed on (one or more) pages and/or assets.

How can we make sure workflow won’t impact AEM performance (CPU or Heap memory) / throttle the system?

Introduction:

AEM Workflows allow you to automate a series of steps that are performed on (one or more) pages and/or assets.

For example, when publishing, an editor has to review the content – before a site administrator activates the page. A workflow that automates this example notifies each participant when it is time to perform their required work:

1. The author applies the workflow to the page.
2. The editor receives a work item that indicates that they are required to review the page content. When finished, they indicate that their work item is complete.
3. The site administrator then receives a work item that requests the activation of the page. When finished, they indicate that their work item is complete.

Typically:

• Content authors apply workflows to pages as well as participate in workflows.
• The workflows that you use are specific to the business processes of your organization.

ACS Commons Throttled Task Runner is built on Java management API for managing and monitoring the Java VM and can be used to pause tasks and terminate the tasks based on stats.

Throttled Task Runner (a managed thread pool) provides a convenient way to run many AEM-specific activities in bulk it basically checks for the Throttled Task Runner bean and gets current running stats of the actual work being done.

OSGi Configuration:

The Throttled Task Runner is OSGi configurable, but please note that changing configuration while work is being processed results in resetting the worker pool and can lose active work.

Max threads: Recommended not to exceed the number of CPU cores. Default 4.

Max CPU %: Used to throttle activity when CPU exceeds this amount. Range is 0..1; -1 means disable this check.

Max Heap %: Used to throttle activity when heap usage exceeds this amount. Range is 0..1; -1 means disable this check.

Cooldown time: Time to wait for CPU/MEM cooldown between throttle checks (in milliseconds)

Watchdog time: Maximum time allowed (in ms) per action before it is interrupted forcefully.

JMX MBeans

Throttled Task Runner MBean

This is the core worker pool. All action managers share the same task runner pool, at least in the current implementation. The task runner can be paused or halted entirely, throwing out any unfinished work.

How to use ACS Commons throttled task runner

Add the following dependency to your pom

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.adobe.acs</groupId>
    <artifactId>acs-aem-commons-bundle</artifactId>
    <version>5.0.4</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

Create a custom workflow and call the service as shown below:

inside the custom workflow process method check for the Low CPU and Low memory before starting your task to avoid performance impact on the system.

For all the bulk workflow executions on pages/assets, it’s recommended to use ACS commons bulk workflow.

For best practices on workflow please refer to the link