Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Essbase 11.1.2.1 Installation Notes

I now have the Essbase 11.1.2.1 stack, including Essbase/Foundation Services/Provider Services/EAS/EIS on my new 64-bit Windows 7 laptop. My youngest son actually did the installation and, if I remember correctly, he only needed to configure the loopback adapter and turn off the UAC (User Access Control) in order for the components to install. He did run the install using the right mouse click 'Run as Administrator' option. The relational datastore on my machine is SQL Server.

I wanted to setup EIS on this new machine and build the sample cubes for our internal testing. A couple of months ago, I posted an article about a problem creating the EIS Sample database from the EIS menu. The same problem, which appears to be an XML parsing issue, still exists in 11.1.2.1. For my new laptop, however, I cheated and copied the TBC and TBC_MD relational databases from my old laptop. I was able to build sample cubes successfully.

My new laptop is a Dell Latitude 6520 with the fastest quad core chip currently offered by Dell. It has the maximum of 8 Gb of RAM and I opted for the 256 Gb SSD drive. This is a fast system and it really rocks! To give you an example, EAS launches in 4 seconds on this machine and Dodeca launches in about 1.5 seconds.

My QA team has also been pounding 11.1.2.1 very hard recently. They have setup a number of VMs internally and noted a couple of interesting things:
  1. When installing with Oracle database as your relational repository, the installation requires the Oracle database to use the UTF-8 character set. I had the QA team search the installation readme's and they found a reference to this in the 11.1.2 readme files. Apparently, the UTF-8 character set was not enforced during 11.1.2 installs.
  2. It appears that relational repository names can no longer contain underscores.  Correction: A reader commented that they had used underscores in both Oracle and SQL Server; I found my laptop also has an underscore in the repository name (in SQL Server).
I haven't personally seen these issues yet, but I thought I would alert everyone out there what my team is seeing you can prepare accordingly.

24 comments:

Judy Wasserman said...

So this install was on a totally fresh system???

We are about to embark on an upgrade of 11.1.1.3 to 11.1.2.1 in July.

I have been told that the install works best on a totally clean "new" server as compared to an uninstall\install of the new version.

Does anyone have some experience with the unistall\install method on a current system??

Judy Wasserman
The Camuto Group

Pablo said...

I would not uninstall/install. The best method would be to install on a fresh server and the migrate from the old server to the new.

Pablo said...

Tim, in deed UTF-8 is enforced on 11.1.2.1, but you can use underscores on relational schemas on both Oracle and MS-SQL databases. I've done 2 Oracle and 2 MS-SQL installs already and all schemas had underscores (i.e. hyp_hss, etc...)

Tim Tow said...

Actually, I took a look and found my laptop was configured with an underscore in the repository name. I have corrected the posting above.

Thanks!

Tim

Scott said...

Thanks for the information. We installed 11.1.2.1 using Shared Services security but ran into a weird issue when provisioning groups. Niether LCM roles nor filter access works when applied to groups. Using same roles on a user works fine. Were going back through the install now. How does your AuthenticationModule line look in Essbase.cfg? Has anyone run into this issue?

James said...

Hey Tim,
This is GREAT information and we thank you for it. I just completed my first install of 11.1.2.1 and really only ran into 2 issues.

The first issue was that my installation directory was C:\oracle install\... This obviously caused issues since the installtool does not like spaces in the directory name. Easy fix though.

The second issue that I ran into, and have not yet resolved, is that my workspace does not show a homepage and the home button is disabled. I looked around in the documentation and online blogs without any success. Has anyone had this problem? In my 11.1.1.3 environment, I have a homepage that shows recently opened apps and shortcuts. Is there a configuration step that I missed?

Thanks!

Tim Tow said...

Hmm.. I don't use workspace so I don't know about that one.. Anyone have any advice?

Tim

Mike said...

We are on 11.1.3 and runing into more issues with Mac OS and 64-bit PC's. I want to upgrade to 11.1.2.1 but not sure if this is recommended by the user community. Is 11.1.2.1 as stable as 11.1.3?

Tim Tow said...

I think Essbase 11.1.2.1 is easier to install thn the 11.1.1.x series on 64 bit Windows; I run it on my Win7 laptop..

As for the Mac, there is no support for Essbase on Mac OS.

Anonymous said...

I have a quick Hyperion Planning/Smartview functionality question: If I input data in SmartView by linking cells to cells in other Excel workbooks, does that data make it back into the application when I upload? Or do the values need be maintained in the SmartView workbook?
Any thoughts are appreciated.

Roger H Hicks said...

I am installing Hyperion Essbase 11.1.2.1 on my Laptop i have windowns 7 with 4 gb of ram and an 500 gb hard drive

once the install is completed i getting the following error

Configure web server failed

and my log are a followed

( Nov 6, 2011 12:16:12 PM ): ---- Hyperion Foundation Configuration......
( Nov 6, 2011 12:27:51 PM ): Fail [11 min 39 sec] [WEB] Configure Web Server

what are my next step too fix this issue

everything else Passed !!!!!

I just want to run essbase

how can i find the Admin server Name


but i got this error also

FAILED EAS: Essbase Server Validating Essbase Server connection to Nextlevel-PC
Error: Cannot connect to olap service. Cannot connect to Essbase Server at "Nextlevel-PC:1423". Network error [10061]: Unable to connect to [Nextlevel-PC:1423]. The client timed out waiting to connect to Essbase Agent using TCP/IP. Check your network connections. Also make sure that server and port values are correct
Recommended Action: Check Essbase Server is started.
FAILED EAS: Essbase Server Validating Essbase Server startup using MaxL command
Error: EPMVLD-01010: Cannot connect to Essbase Server using MaxL.
Recommended Action: Check Essbase Server is started.

Please advise

Tim Tow said...

These types of questions are best addressed to the OTN forums.

Tim

Fred said...

Great blogs by the way!

I know that you installed the EPM 32 bit 11.1.1.x on your Windows 7 X64. But in this case with 11.1.2.1 and its "smooth install", did you switch to using the EPM 64 bit?

I just tried the 32 bit and right away I could see that the InstallTool.cmd checks the environment variable PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE and sees that it is AMD64. Then it tries to get the Java from a directory that does not exist from the 32 bit extracts.

I did change it in the cmd, but then it just freezes on the splash screen as it seem to not find some things.

Note that I have successfully installed 11.1.2 on Windows 2008 R2 X64, so I am not new at this and was careful to extract everthing needed in the right order.

I don't see how you could have avoided this intial problem in InstallTool.cmd if you used EPM Win32. So I assume you switched to x64on your Windows 7 x64 - am I correct?

Fred said...

Further clarifications for 11.1.2.1

One should use the 64 bit EPM on Windows 7 x64. Tim also confirmed that is what he is using now - as opposed the 32-bit for 11.1.1.3

Also, if you are using SQL Server as the Shared Services and EAS Registry database(s), you must use the default instance.

Although you can get past the installation configuration dialog if you use and specify a static IP address for the instance (that is, it will create the tables for your database), it appears that the Oracle software later constructs the jdbc connection string incorrectly by dropping the ‘\instance’ – you can even see that in the ‘advanced’ settings of that configuration page. It is inconsistent.

It later fails the EPM System Diagnostics on the DB connection.

Tim Tow said...

Fred,

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I am glad you got everything running.

Tim

Unknown said...

Hello

I want to ask
I'm installing Hyperion 11.1.2.1 separately on 3 servers
server 1: with Oracle 11g
server 2: Foundation, Planning, Report
server 3: Essbase only

I had trouble in connecting server 3 to other servers
When I install server 2 it use name EPMSystem1 and when I install server 3 it use EPMSystem2, so server 3 cannot connect to server 1 and 3
And I still strunggling with this problem
Please help, thanks

Tim Tow said...

This type of question is best asked on the OTN forum or the Network54 board.

Tim

Anonymous said...

Hi Tim Tow,

Am going to up grade Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System from 11.1.1.1 to 11.1.2.1 and i didn't get any documents or any links.


So could you please support me for that and am new for Oracle EPM. So could you suggest me any document or any link.

Details
-------
Operating System:Oracle Enterprise Linux 4.6
Database:Oracle 10g

These are the details.

Tim Tow said...

I would start with the documentation at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/index.htm.

Tim

Amit Dutta Roy said...

Hi Tim,

I want to do an upgradation from version 9.3.3 to version 11.1.2.1.

I did not get any document on the same. Can you please send a document if you have any in sayamitin@gmail.com.

Thanks in advance!!

Amit Dutta Roy said...

I would like to upgrade from version 9.3.3 to version 11.1.2.1. I am not getting any document . Can you please send, if you have any in sayamitin@gmail.com

Tim Tow said...

I would look at the link at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/index.htm and, more specifically, look at the 'Deployment and Installation' tab.

Tim

Lucas Rehem de Azevedo said...

Hello tim,

I'm trying to install epm 11.1.2.1 on windows server 2008 r2 with sql server 2008 r2. But we are facing some errors while running rcu to create the DEV_EPM schema on SQL server. When we try to create the epm schema in RCU we connect in database and do all the steps, but when we click in "create" button the following errors appear:RCU-6130 and RCU-6131. If you see the log the error is like "unable to connect to the database", but I had already install obiee in the same database without problems. Any idea? Sorry for the long question and TY for the attetion

Tim Tow said...

In our experience, there are many issues that can cause problems with repository creation. One of the most frequent things we see if the use of a username and password that doesn't have the appropriate level of permission to create tables, etc. I don't know if this is the issue you are seeing though. I Googled your error messages and saw many, many posts on the subject and would suggest that you take a look to see if any of the issues you find there look/act like the issue you are seeing.

Tim