Is there a formula for calculating the correct size of Authorization cache for a 6.x policy server?

Products

• CA Single Sign On Secure Proxy Server (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign On SOA Security Manager (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign-On

Issue/Introduction

Description:

We have never adjusted the cache before so it is now at the default of 10MB.

We want to know if there's a formula for calculating the correct size of AZ Cache in SiteMinder Policy Server 6.

Solution:

There is no formula for calculating the correct / best size of the AZ cache since every environment is different and the information stored in the AZ cache may be different.

However you can use OneView monitor in order to estimate a good size for your AZ cache.

SiteMinder One View Monitor does not provide a counter for this, however you can calculate it using the following parameters:

AzAcceptCount:

Number of successful authorization attempts.

AzRejectCount:

Number of rejected authorization attempts. These attempts were rejected because of insufficient access privileges.

CacheHitCount:

Number of hits on the authorization cache. Updated each time the cache answers true when an authorization process asks whether a user belongs to a policy.

One example would be the following formula:

CacheHitCount * 100 /(AzAcceptCount + AzRejectCount)

The outcome of the above example is a percentage, if the outcome is greater than 90% percent then that means that your AZ is enough other wise you may need to increase it.

Note:
This is only an example for calculating the AZ cache using One view monitor, but this is not supported by SiteMinder Support since Tuning and Performance is out of the scope of support.

Environment

Release:
Component: SMPLC