Wednesday 11 April 2012

EPM 11.1.2.2 Installation

For the last four years I have written a blog about the installation of each release of EPM 11 and this year there is going to be no exception as 11.1.2.2 has recently been released.

This release is more than just a bunch of fixes as it brings in new products, a multitude of product enhancements and changes to installation and configuration which I will be covering today.

This blog is going to be around highlighting where there are changes from the previous release and not a detailed installation guide as there are a number of documents now available that help cover that area.

I apologise if the blog contains any inaccuracies as a lot of it is new and I may have misunderstood a few details.

First I think it is worth going through a number of the new features and changes that I have picked out of the documentation.

“IBM WebSphere 7.0.0.19+ is now supported as an application server.” – I know deployment to WebSphere has been on the cards for a while and it is now supported, the deployment is not through the EPM configurator and there is a script available to deploy the web apps, the full process to follow is available here.

FireFox 10.x+ and Internet Explorer 9 are now supported Web browsers. – A big leap for the support of FireFox as 11.1.2.1 supported 3.5+, though still not supported for FDM.  IE9 is not supported on XP SP3.

I think the browser versions are going to play a big part if you are implementing Planning or HFM as they use new ADF interfaces which are optimised for IE9 and Firefox 10

Microsoft Office 2010 64 bit is now supported.

“After completing an EPM System deployment, you can generate a deployment report that provides information about configured Web applications, Web servers, databases, and data directories used by EPM System. This report can help you troubleshoot issues that might arise in your deployment.” – I have already seen a presentation of this feature and I will provide an example after I have gone through the configuration.

“The Oracle Enterprise Manager “Fusion Middleware Control” is now installed and deployed with EPM System. You can use this tool to manage the WebLogic domain and all Java Web applications in EPM System out of the box.”  - This was available in previous releases by extending the WebLogic domain which I blogged about here and now you don’t even have to worry as it is all configured automatically.

“The EPM System Media pack on Oracle Software Delivery Cloud has been simplified. Software downloads have been merged together.” – I will go through this shortly.

“Installation of Oracle HTTP Server is now optional. If you choose not to install Oracle HTTP Server, for example in a development environment, Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management System Installer installs an embedded WebLogic HTTP Server as part of Oracle Hyperion Foundation Services that acts as a proxy server. In a production environment, Oracle recommends that you install Oracle HTTP Server for use with Oracle WebLogic Server or IBM HTTP Server for use with WebSphere. You can also install and manually configure Apache HTTP Server with WebLogic Server.” – Interesting to see that there are number of additional options available instead of just OHS and IIS

“Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) Client Installers are now provided for Oracle Essbase Client, Oracle Essbase Administration Services Console, Oracle Essbase Studio Console, and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management Client.” – It was possible to get EAS and Studio installers in a 11.1.2.1 patch but it looks like all the clients are finally available as standalone installers.

“Three new “rapid deployment” documents provide step-by-step instructions for building a typical Oracle Hyperion Planning, Financial Management, or Essbase development environment on a single server running Microsoft Windows.” – These documents were actually available in 11.1.2.1 but have now been updated for 11.1.2.2 and merged into the EPM documentation.

“A new Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System Standard Deployment Guide outlines the best-practice approach for deploying EPM System products. This approach is based on creating a base deployment of the products and then scaling out the services to handle the needed capacity.” – This was also available for 11.1.2.1 and has been brought up to date and merged into the standard documentation. Is there such thing as a standard deployment?

A new “ADF” Web application has been added for Financial Management. – Is this the start of FM moving away from being forced down the windows IIS route, once again I think the new ADF interface has been optimised for IE9 and Firefox 10 but I believe you are not forced to use it and can use the existing one.

FM Clusters are now managed centrally through the SS Registry  - “You can now manage Financial Management clusters from one machine. Cluster information is now stored in Oracle Hyperion Shared Services Registry rather than in the Windows registry.”

“The Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting Print Server is now part of the Financial Reporting Web application. You no longer have to install the Print Server as part of the Financial Reporting Studio installation, and you no longer need Microsoft Office on the Print Server.” – All change again in this release but I believe it is a milestone as at last it looks like the print server is not windows only and there is no need to install a PDF renderer such as GhostScript.

“You can now deploy EPM System Web applications to a single managed server (compact server) in Development, Test, and Production environments. This reduces the overall memory requirement of EPM System and reduces startup time.” – Compact deployment was available in 11.1.2.1 and I blogged about it here but it was only supported for development and was a manual configuration. I will cover this new feature in more detail in a future blog.

There are additional important considerations if you are upgrading to 11.1.2.2 and using planning.

“Oracle Hyperion Calculation Manager has replaced Oracle Hyperion Business Rules as the mechanism for designing and managing business rules, therefore, Business Rules is no longer released with EPM System Release 11.1.2.2” – Business Rules have finally bit the dust so if you are currently using them and planning to upgrade then it is worth investing time getting up to speed with Calc Manager.  I will cover the migration in the near future.

The documentation also states that the server hosting planning must have at least 16GB ram, I am interested to understand if this new release of planning really does require that amount of memory and how does that fit into the world of compact deployment.

There is also reference to having to upgrade your client browser to use the new version of Planning –

“The new, improved Planning user interface requires efficient browsers to handle interactivity provided through Web 2.0 like functionality. In our testing, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, and Firefox 3.x are not sufficient to handle such interactivity, and the responsiveness in these versions of browsers is not as fast as the user interface in the previous releases of Planning. For this reason, we strongly recommend that you upgrade your browser to Internet Explorer 9 or Firefox 10 to get responsiveness similar to what you experienced in previous releases.”

It looks like it still possible to use the existing 11.1.2.1 user interface by setting the property ORACLE_ADF_UI in planning to false.

There have been a number of enhancements with Shared Services -
•    Allows you to rename the default admin account during the deployment process. 
•    After deploying Foundation Services, you can deactivate the default EPM System Administrator account after provisioning another user with the Shared Services Administrator role.

I know the ability to change or rename the admin account has been raised a number of times in the past and it is good to see that Oracle have taken note.

LCM has been given an overhaul with many new features and changes -
•    Simplified User Interface
•    Simplified Migration Definition File
•    Simplified Migration Status Report
•    Automatic Application Shell Creation for Classic Applications
•    Shared Disk Location defined in the configurator
•    Support for ERPi
•    Additional FR artifacts – Annotations, User POV, Batch jobs
•    New replace option for Reporting and Analysis where only artifacts that have a newer last modified timestamp will be imported.

So you can see this release does bring in quite a few additions and changes and that is before even getting into the detail of all the product enhancements.

Anyway on to the installation and the first step is to download the assembles from edelivery, I am going to be installing on a single Windows 2008 R2 x64 machine using Oracle 11g as the repository.

The installation prerequisites are available here and the support matrix here


Straight away you will notice there is a change from the previous releases and many of the files have now been combined.

Parts 1-4 contain the common components and WebLogic, OPMN, Installer plus the core products, 5-7 contains the rest of the product assemblies.

Oracle HTTP Server is a separate download.

The standalone clients are available in one download.

So hopefully this will cause less confusion like in the past with a prime example being the additional contents download.

There are also additional product download available that sit outside of the EPM installer such as DRM, EAL, ODI.

So how do you know which files you require well the easy option is just to download them all or


You can click the README button


This will open a report that breaks down each of the license components such as “Essbase Plus” and provides a list of the files to download.


If you expand the Part 6 download you can see that it contains all the essbase related product assemblies.


The clients download includes every standalone client installer which does stand in at 1.6GB in total

Once the files have been downloaded, extract them to the same base location then the process for installation is like in previous versions so the installer is started by running installTool.cmd/sh as an administrator

If you are installing on a distributed environment make sure you read the information here


When the installer starts up it will run through all the prerequisite checks, this screen is slightly different than in previous versions and you don’t have a command window running in the background which you used to have to check to see if any of the checks had failed for such things as UAC.


If any of the checks failed these will now be displayed in an error panel window.


Additional prerequisite checks will also be displayed indicating whether they have passed or failed, these checks look to be the same as previous 11.1.2 releases, though I don’t see the check against OHS anymore which is probably because it used to say that it had passed the check even if it hadn’t.


Select the location for EPM installation.


As this is a new installation only one option is available.

The option to install components by tier has now been removed probably because it was a bit of a waste of time as most of the time choose components individually was selected.


Oracle HTTP Server is not checked by default as it is optional so if you intend of using it then it will need to be selected.

Now that many of the installation files are combined then the likely hood is you are going to be given the option to be able to install lots more products than with previous versions.


All the product components were installed successfully so it is on to the configuration.

Before configuring make sure you have met all the configuration prerequisites outlined here

If you plan on using Web Services with products like APS, FM, PCM then make sure you follow the steps on creating the required schemas using the repository creation utility.

If you are configuring on a distributed environment then make sure you read here


This screen has changed a little in previous versions there the options to create a new instance or modify an instance.


The first step like in previous version is to define the connection information to the Shared Services and Registry database.


As previously the options are available to select to configure all the products at once or individually, if you are going to use a separate schema/database for each product then you will need to configure the products individually.


There are now two additional options for Reporting and Analysis, these are not new in terms of configuration all that happened is the options have been expanded to allow to configure Framework Services and FR RMI ports separately (Configure Database is required if configuring Framework Services)

Besides that the options are pretty much the same as previous 11.1.2 releases so I am not going to go through each of the products and the configuration as there is enough documentation out there to understand the process.


There is a new option to set the LCM Export Import Location which could be on a shared disk, previously the location was fixed unless changes were made to update the path in the Shared Services registry.


As this is the first configuration a new domain is created and the admin server port and admin user details set.

Please note this user is the admin user for WebLogic and nothing to do with Shared Services, in the past there have been a number of posts on the Oracle forums where there has been confusion between the two sets of admin users.


By default “Deploy the web application to a single managed server” is selected, this is known as compact mode which was available in the previous version.

Compact mode is useful is you want to combine a number web applications under one managed server which would be sharing the same JVM and running on one port, this helps reduce the overall memory consumption and start up time though it is worth understanding that if the JVM crashes for any reason then you take out all the products running under that managed server.


If you deselect the option then the web applications will each be deployed to their own managed server and port.

It also looks possible to have a number of web applications to run under one managed server and then have the rest deployed to their own managed server.

I am deploying each of the web applications to their own managed server and will be covering compact deployment and scaling out in a future blog.

If you are deploying FM then you will notice that there is the new ADF web application that is deployed to the same managed server as the Web Services.

 If you are combining all the products into one database then you have the option to use the Shared Services database or configured them to a new schema/database.

If you are configuring a database/schema per product then you would choose first-time configure of database.


Here is another change which I outlined earlier in that you can define the admin account name to be used instead of it being fixed to admin, I am going to be daring and test out the new functionality so I changed it to EPMADMIN.


 Once all the products have been configured then like previously the Configure Web Server should be run.

Configure Web Server component has two additional options, as highlighted earlier it is possible to use the Embedded WebLogic HTTP Server and there is also the option “Setup Registry for manual web server configuration” if you want to manually configure the HTTP server then the relevant config files will be generated in
<MIDDLEWARE_HOME>\user_projects\<instancename>\httpConfig\autogenerated


If you select the embedded WebLogic HTTP server you will see that it is deployed to the foundation port 28080.

I am assuming this means you can access workspace and all the web applications through that port which I am sure has the possibility to cause no end of confusion.

There have not been many changes to the windows services created.


If you deployed any of the web applications to a single managed server a new windows service will be created called "Hyperion EPM Server - Web Application"

Hyperion Financial Management - Web Services has been renamed to Hyperion Financial Management – Web Tier

The print server service is no more and the majority of the service names still start with HyS9

Another nice new feature is the ability to generate a deployment report that lists

•    All logical Web applications and all Web servers that are configured
•    The Web application URL and domain name for each Web application deployment on a machine
•    All databases configured for EPM System
•    The data directories used by EPM System products


To generate the report


Open a command line window and navigate to
<MIDDLEWARE_HOME>/user_projects/<instancename>/bin

Run the command epmsys_registry report deployment


 This by default will generate the report at
<MIDDLEWARE_HOME>\user_projects\<instancename>\diagnostics\reports\deployment_report.html


If you start up the WebLogic admin server and go to http://adminservername:7001/em then you should be able to log into Enterprise Manager with no additional configuration required.

I think I am going to leave it there for today as I need to test out all the products, I will update if I find any serious issues.

Next time I will be testing out applying the maintenance release to an existing 11.1.2.1 environment.

31 comments:

  1. gr8 insight details regarding EPM 11.1.2.2 release John, appreciate your effort

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  2. Great post as usual, John. I tweeted about it... are you on twitter by any chance ?

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  3. Cheers Giacomo, I see your tweets via LinkedIn

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  4. Good One John, especially the summary of changes at the beginning

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  5. Thanks, your post is great! Two quick questions if you've time please. In 11.1.2.1 (Fusion) the users cannot manage their Workspace passwords. Has that been corrected in 11.1.2.2? Is it possible to migrate 9.3.3 objects when installing 11.1.2.2 as it is with 11.1.2.1?
    Thanks!

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  6. Hi John, thanks for the great account. As usual they are greatly helpful.
    I have a question, are you seeing any issues using a fresh installed 11.1.2.2 without OHS and IE9? In an upgraded instance with OHS, I find Fir3fox 3.5 works much better. In a fresh install without OHS, it wouldn't even render the login screen correctly in IE9, but works fine in Firefox 3.5. Wondering if there is a setting to change in IE9 that can fix this.
    Much appreciated!!
    Andy

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  7. Look at you John - Very well explained. Thank you

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  8. Very well explained... really helpful. Thanks John.

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  9. Hi Andy,

    I have noticed with a clean install and using the embedded http server then it didn't render the login screen correctly, is this the issue you are referring to?

    If it is does it look alright if you access it from the server and use localhost instead of the server name?

    Cheers

    John

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  10. Hi John,
    Yes, that is what I am seeing. Since the login screen is not rendering right, I cannot login, and hence cannot find out if anything else is broken.
    My clean install happens to be on Oracle Linux 6 machine, so I cannot try IE on the server there. The upgraded machine is Win 2k8 R2 64-bit. Let me see if I can come up with a Win 2k8/2k3 machine that I can try this from scratch. If you have also seen it, then it might not be a platform thing.
    I take it that you couldn't find any settings that could fix the issue?
    Thanks,
    Andy

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  11. Hi Andy,

    I was seeing lots of access problems using the embedded http server, I don't really have much faith in it so I just went back to using the OHS http server.

    Cheers

    John

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  12. Hi John,

    I downloaded and unzipped the Windows 2008/R2 (64-bit) files for a clean install. The install tool will not run. After double clicking on the installTool.cmd file, a Java Virtual Machine Launcher message is displayed that reads "Unable to access jar file D:\Downloads\V11.1.2.2\V31875-01\installTool.jar." This jar file doesn't seem to be in the zip file that I got from edelivery.oracle.com. Any ideas?

    Thanks,
    Mike

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  13. Mike,

    The installTool.jar is in Part 3 of the packaged files.
    Make sure you extract them all to the same base location.

    Cheers

    John

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  14. Perfect!

    Thanks,
    Mike

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  15. Hi John,

    Thanks for confirming rendering issues that I saw with the Embedded HTTP server. The login page now renders fine in IE9 after I installed and config'd with OHS.

    Andy

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  16. Thanks for this John. I recently did an EPM 11.1.2.2 install on Solaris 64 bit (Shared Services + Hyperion Interactive reports) and it looks good so far.

    Just had a quick question - The default application port picked by installer during configuration for SS, workspace and Reporting and Analysis is 9000, instead of 28080 for SS.

    The Oracle HTTP port is 19000. Is this a cause of concern to run applications on the same port? Will this have any impact on performance ?

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  17. @Roller
    The reason why it is port 9000 is because you have left the deploy to one managed server enabled instead of deploying each of the web application to their own managed server in the configuration.

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  18. Hi

    This ravi what are the requirements of 11.1.2.2.0.
    currently iam using 11.1.1.3 on 32-bit server 2003
    .net frame work 2.0
    sql server 2000

    please favor me...

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  19. Ravi,

    Have a read of the support matrix - http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/hyperion-supported-platforms-085957.html

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  20. Hi John,
    I noticed here that you configured all the products to use the same database schema. Have you got it to work with each product pointing to a different one? I have got it to work with all products pointing to the same one, but not with each product pointing to a different one. For example, with the different schema approach Reporting & Analysis doesn't create the tables in the repository schema it is configured with. Re-config doesn't help either.
    Wanted to see if it is just me.
    Thanks,
    Andy

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  21. Hi Andy,

    There shouldn't be a problem having a separate schema for each product, I have an instance running where they are separate.

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  22. Andy, when R&A doesn't creat tables correctly, it's because it thinks that you're adding a new node to an existing config. Go through your EPM registry and nuke all the R&A nodes, then rename the user_projects dir on the R&A box and try again.

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  23. John,
    Great post. Thanks. I was able to follow and install EPM 11.1.2.2 with HFM. I was wondering, if you have some suggestions on writing a script to stop and start in a distributed windows environment. Appreciate your input.

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  24. yeah john its very useful content,i installed 11.1.2.2 in distributed environment and i got clear vision about how the process would be and thorough this post

    thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts


    Satyajeet

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  25. I installed this version on a single machine, pretty much the same components what you mentioned here. Everything seems to go fine, as did not get any error or warning message while installing or configuring. The issue what I am facing is I do not see navigation option to go to calc manager or dim mgr or planning. I can go to planning or epma dim library by typing their URL directly though. Your help on this issue will be greatly appreciated.

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  26. Greetings John thanks for this excellent implementation scenario. I've cut my teeth on your blogs. Here and in OTN. Kind Regards, Franc

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  27. I was able to get a rapid deployment up and running on a single web logic instance with the exception of the R&A framework on ports 6800; when I log in it hangs and throws back the 6800 not listening plus the explorer button is not working. For the most part the installation was easy however troubleshooting this little issue is a big problem.

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  28. Great post John.
    While extracting the files in the same folder it asks " the file with the name already exists, do you want to replace it"
    Do we replace it in this case?
    Thanks Again.

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  29. Great Post. But I'm using LCM 11.1.2.2 to migrate an account dimension from Dimension Library DEv to Prod. I`ve changed some members of the hierarchy. When I did run the LCM with Replace checked, I got these renamed members as new members of Dim Library of Prod. In fact, LCM did a MERGE insted REplace that I`ve checked. Thats happening 3 times. Is it a bug?
    Any idea?

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  30. Hi all,
    Thank you for this useful piece of information.
    I've downloaded the following packages for windows Srv2008 R2 x64:
    - Hyp EPM Foundation Services 11.1.2.2 (packs 1 to 4)
    - Hyperion Interactive Reporting (file 1 and HTTP Srv)

    Extracted and installed.

    Is there any specific order to run the services? (I am able to open workspace)
    I want to run the migration utility (migrator.bat) and import reports from Hyp HPS v8.5 (bqy) but the problem is that the shortcut is in my start menu under EPM System -> Reporting and Analysis -> Run Migration utility, but when i press it, it can't find the migrator.bat (checked with explorer, and file is not there).
    Any ideas?

    Many thanks. (I already downloaded and did similar installation in Windows Server 2008 x32, and the file is not there as well)

    Thank. Tiago

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  31. It is a great blog and I have installed my host1 with these instructions. We wanted a host2 for high availability purpose so I followed the oracle installation document "scale the application tier" and installed the other host2 as a new instance scaling the database resulting in a active-active clustering. I have a load balance and Apache HTTP servers before the application layer.
    This is the flow...
    loadbalncer---> Apache1(just to proxy traffic) ----> host1(OHS+ FS+RA) .. I two sets of apache and host under the load balances to handle the traffic in case the host 1 die.

    Presently I don't see the OHS2 is not even sent any traffic also when host1 is dead host2 is also gone which doesn't seem to solve my purpose.

    Am I missing something any ideas will be appreciated....

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