Cache and performance issue in browsing SSAS cube using Excel for first time

Question

Hello Group Members,
I am facing a cache and performance issue for the first time, when I try to open a SSAS cube connection using Excel (using Data tab  -> From Other Sources --> From Analysis Services) after daily cube refresh. In end users
system (8 GB RAM), for the first time, it takes 10 minutes to open the cube. From next run onwards, its open up quickly within 10 secs.
We have daily ETL process running in high end servers. The configuration of dedicated SSAS cube server is 8 core, 64GB RAM. In total we have 4 cubes - out of which for 3 is full cube refresh and 1 is incremental refresh. We have seen after
daily cube refresh, it takes 10 odd minutes to open the cube in end users system. From next time onwards, it opens up really fast with 10 secs. After cube refresh, in server systems (16 GB RAM), it takes 2 odd minutes to open the cube.
Is there, any way we could reduce the time taken for first attempt ?
Best Regards, Arka Mitra.

Answer 1

Thanks Richard and Charlie,
We have implemented the solution/suggestions in our DEV environment and we have seen a definite improvement. We are waiting this to be deployed in UAT environment to note down the actual performance and time improvement while browsing the cube for the
first time after daily cube refresh.
Guys,
This is what we have done:
We have 4 cube databases and each cube db has 1-8 cubes.
1. We are doing daily cube refresh using SQL jobs as follows:
<Batch xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine">
<Parallel>
<Process xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:ddl2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine/2" xmlns:ddl2_2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine/2/2" xmlns:ddl100_100="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2008/engine/100/100" xmlns:ddl200="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2010/engine/200" xmlns:ddl200_200="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2010/engine/200/200">
<Object>
<DatabaseID>FINANCE CUBES</DatabaseID>
</Object>
<Type>ProcessFull</Type>
<WriteBackTableCreation>UseExisting</WriteBackTableCreation>
</Process>
</Parallel>
</Batch>
2. Next we are creating a separate SQL job (Cache Warming - Profitability Analysis) for cube cache warming for each single cube in each cube db like:
CREATE CACHE FOR [Profit Analysis] AS
{[Measures].members}
*[TIME].[FINANCIAL QUARTER].[FINANCIAL QUARTER]
3. Finally after each cube refresh step, we are creating a new step of type T-SQL where we are calling these individual steps:
EXEC dbo.sp_start_job N'Cache Warming - Profit Analysis';
GO
I will update the post after I receive the actual im[provement from UAT/ Production environment.
Best Regards, Arka Mitra.