Implementing Essbase 11.x: The Installation and Design

After determining what your purpose for your Essbase install and what hardware or other software needs you may have, then you can now begin to work on the installation of Essbase and design considerations. In this post I will go through the installation process of Essbase as well as give you some ideas for design or build considerations.

First, let’s talk about the installation of Essbase. If you already have a license agreement with Oracle for Essbase 11 or if you are going to use it as a trial license you can download the software in two places. You can find the downloads at Oracle Technology Network: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/bi/performance-management/index.html or you can also find the downloads at Oracle E-delivery: http://edelivery.oracle.com/ under the Product Pack, Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System, instead of the old Hyperion Performance Management and BI Product Pack area. Here are the items that you will need to download:
• Start Here: Installation Documents and Readmes (optional)
• Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management System Installer
• Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management System Foundation Services (4 Files)
• Oracle Essbase Client
• Oracle Essbase Server
• Oracle Hyperion Provider Services (optional)

After downloading these files you will need to complete a few pre-installation tasks. First, uncompress all the downloaded files into a common directory. Then you will need to create database repositories/catalogs in your Oracle Database, IBM DB2, or Microsoft SQL Server. The following components will require a repository for your Essbase installation:
• Shared Services
• Essbase Administration Services
• Essbase Integration Services
• Essbase Studio

Now you can run the installTool.cmd / installTool.sh file to begin installation. Select the products you wish to install by tier or individually. After completing the installation you will then need to configure the product. Make sure to configure Shared Services first before the other components then you can configure the rest of the tools and register them with Shared Services.

If you would like to see a very detailed installation process of Essbase 11, I would recommend checking out my friend, Tim Tow’s blog post: http://timtows-hyperion-blog.blogspot.com/2008/09/essbase-1111-installation-tutorial.html. Tim did an excellent job of documenting his Essbase 11.1.1 installation.

Now when we begin to discuss the design or build of your Essbase environment I would highly recommend having a design session(s) to determine where your data will be coming from and user requirments. Once you have all the information from your design session(s) we will then need to talk about which tools you want to use to help you build your Essbase applications. There are many different ways to build your Essbase application or better known as a cube. The three most popular methods for building Essbase cubes are using Essbase Load Rules, Essbase Integration Services, or the new Essbase Studio. The other options include using an ETL tool or an API. Let’s take some time to look at these different options.

Essbase Load Rules are created within Essbase Administration Services (EAS). The data and metadata is sourced from flat files, spreadsheets or relational databases (using SQL Interface). Typically, one Load Rule is created for each dimension build and data load, but these can be combined to a single Rule. This method for building Essbase cubes is extremely flexible.

Essbase Integration Services (EIS) provides a GUI, drag and drop environment for creating Essbase cubes. Data and metadata are sourced from relational database, usually in a star or snowflake schema. Using EIS enables drill-through to detail and hybrid storage functionality.

Essbase Studio is a new tool and is only available in the 11 release. Essbase Studio consolidates the cube construction activities of Essbase Integration Services (EIS) & Essbase Administration Services (EAS). The new tool also unifies the deployment and management of the cube factory. Studio allows modeling of many sources including RDBMS, Flat files, EPM Architect Dimensions and OBIEE. It enables reuse at a granular level for hierarchies, metrics, dimension, and elements. Lineage tracking is also available with Essbase Studio which allows you to understand the impacts of change to items associated with the construction of your cube. In addition you will find improved drill-through capabilities with Studio. Essbase Studio is a great tool and a welcome addition to the Essbase suite, just remember that this is the first release of the tool.

Additional options for building your Essbase cubes are using an ETL tool or APIs. Oracle Data Integrator, Informatica, or DIM are examples of ETL tools to use. Essbase comes with a full set of APIs to allow you to customize your cube builds to fit your needs.

So you can choose which tool works best for you and your environment to design and build your Essbase application. Remember that you don’t have to limit yourself to only one method you can use multiple tools to build your Essbase environment.

Check out the next blog post in this series to learn about whether to use Block Storage, Aggregate Storage, XOLAP or a Hybrid to design your Essbase cubes.

Implementing Essbase 11.x: The Start...

There is much that goes into and many considerations for an install or implementation of Essbase 11x. Because of this I have decided to start a series of blog posts on this topic. There are some obvious questions that you need to ask yourself to help you plan your install. So this post is dedicated to a couple of those upfront questions you need to ask: “What are you installing Essbase for?” and “What hardware and software options are best for you?”

First things first, what are you installing Essbase for?

The answer to this question makes a big difference in planning your install. Some of you are installing Essbase at a large corporate level with hundreds of users and want to leverage the best OLAP tool for forecasting, budgeting, planning, reporting and analysis. Maybe you are installing Essbase for your workgroup because funding and staff numbers are down but the workload is higher than ever although you still need to get more done with less. So Essbase can help your team become more efficient and still get the job done right. Or are you that consultant or closet techie just planning to install Essbase on your laptop to play around with it and be able to say you have the latest and greatest version installed. The larger your installation is and the more people it will affect then the more planning and discovery you should be doing before beginning your Essbase implementation.

Depending on your answer to the first question will affect your plan for installing Essbase as well as how you should be answering the next question: “What hardware and software options are best for you?”

There are many different options here for you to choose from so I will never be able to cover them all but I will go over a few important things to consider.

• Hardware: Make sure that you have the right hardware for the right application. Your performance will suffer greatly if you do not have the appropriate hardware for your install. In other words make sure (double and triple check) you purchase or are using hardware that can handle the load of work you will be putting on it. Be sure to check the Oracle documentation for hardware requirements

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12825_01/epm.111/epm_install_start_here/frameset.htm?launch.html and supported platforms: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/bi/hyperion-supported-platforms.html.

• Windows, Linux, etc. : I’m not going to pick sides on this one. No matter who you talk to they have a good reason why they use one operating system over another. The only thing to keep in mind here is that even though Essbase works on both Windows and Linux there are still many other Hyperion applications that require a Windows server. So if you plan to install other Hyperion components on the same server as Essbase make sure it is compatible with your operating system.

• 32-bit vs. 64-bit: 64-bit is the way that many are going currently for better performance but keep in mind that some applications are not supported in 64-bit yet. Again reference the above mentioned Oracle documentation for compatibility.

• VMware: There are many pros but also some cons to VM. VM is a great tool and I would recommend leveraging it if you are able. It allows you to have multiple OS environments on the same computer and allows for easier maintenance, high availability and quick disaster recovery. If you are looking for a good solution for a testing environment VM is definately a great solution. Now with all of these great things there are some drawbacks to VM also. The first being that it is very resource intensive. So if you are using VM you need to go big. Make sure that your hardware is capable of handling these intensive needs. (I had to get a new laptop with 4GB of RAM and Dual Core Processor to handle some of our demo Hyperion images and this is for ONE user try keeping up with a few hundred users). Also there is a bit of a learning curve to VM. Configuring the image is somewhat of an art so it might take you a couple tries before you get the settings right. There is a lot of information on VM on the web so check it out.

Tune in for the next blog post as I will chat about the actual installation process and some design considerations.