Tuesday 23 December 2014

EPM - Did you know? #1

I thought I would try something different over the festive period and as it is a time of sharing I am going to put together a series of very quick posts on EPM related information which you may not know..

I have created a list of topics and for each blog I will randomly pick one from the list, now they may be of no interest to you or you may find you already know them but I am sure some will find them useful, I am not sure how many I will get through as it is all time dependent but I am aiming for five.

Today the randomiser has chosen:

Did you know there is an undocumented tool that allows to change the data location for essbase databases?

The tool is command line driven and can change the location without the need to export/import or restructure the database.

It can be used to quickly change the data location on any database, it can be used in migrations where the drive structure is different between source and target and if done correctly can be part of an upgrade process from 9.3 onwards.

If you have ever worked with the essbase staging tool then you will know there is an archive file available in the EPM installation structure.


The tool can be found in the Migration folder and is used as part of the upgrade process for essbase.

If you extract the archive and look in the bin directory there is an executable file called essmove (available on both Windows/*nix)


As I said there is no documentation available but I found out about it by accident and then had a play around with it, it is called as part of the staging tool but can be used in isolation.

To be able to use the tool you first must set a number of environment variables but don’t worry there is a script already available in the Essbase server bin directory, look for the setEssbaseEnv script.

Once the script has been run then execute essmove and follow the onscreen questions though make sure the intended database has been stopped first.


In the above example the drive location for the ind/pag files has been moved from E to F.

The changes are applied to the databases kernel file (*.esm)


If you check in EAS or with Maxl you will see the location has been updated.


Before starting up the database make sure the index and data files have been copied to the new location.

The tool can be used against ASO databases in the same way.


In the above example the default tablespace location has been updated to F:\Essdata\App

The changes are applied to the metadata tablespace file.


If you check in EAS or by Maxl then you should see the location has been changed.


I have used the tool on many occasions and have found it invaluable, it is also possible to pass values into the tool so it be part of a scripted process.

So that completes the first did you know, I hope you found it useful.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.