Monday, June 13, 2016

Pre-requistes of Hyperion EPM V11.1.2.4

1. Pre-Installation Checklist

1. Work Area

· Internet Access – Outside firewall (Disable firewall for the working folder – e.g. installers and oracle folder.
At beginning, we will have only installers folder, disable firewall for this folder.)

· Computer within EPM Servers network

2. Third party licenses

E.g. web server licenses, Java

3. Software

Check all installers are downloaded from oracle edelivery

4. Required documents

Check if all the required documents are downloaded from oracle edelivery

5. Preparing the Hardware

· Confirm your plan of deployment architecture – whether single server or distributed environment for EPM

· Plan which components to be installed on which servers if we are going for distributed environment.

· Confirm whether computers meet hardware system requirements. Check following matrix.

· Resolve Firewall problem
Open a restricted range of ports in your firewalls for client to server or server to server communication.

· Disable antivirus
Exclude the EPM Oracle home directory from automatic antivirus scans and scan this directory only at scheduled times.

2. Preparing Environment

Preparing ports

This section contains information about default port numbers for EPM System products.

Necessary ports should be enabled on EPM Environment servers. Firewall should be disabled at these ports for communication between servers or between servers and clients.

EPM Module	Default Port Number	Default SSL Port
Weblogic Administration Server	7001
Oracle Enterprise Manager Java Web Application Port	7001
SOA Server Port	8001
Foundation Services Web Application	28080	28043
Oracle HTTP Server	19000
IIS	80	443
Provider services (SmartView)	13080	13083
Essbase Administration Services	10080	10083


Essbase Agent	1423
Essbase server applications (ESSSVR)	32768–33768
Essbase SSL Agent	6423
OPMN (Oracle Process Manager and Notification Server) Local Port	6711
OPMN (Oracle Process Manager and Notification Server) Remote Port	6712
Essbase Studio Listen Port	5300
Essbase Studio remote Port	12080
Reporting and Analysis Framework Agent	6860
Reporting and Analysis Framework Agent RMI	6861
Reporting and Analysis Framework Services	6800–6805
Financial Reporting Web Application	8200	8243
Financial Reporting Default Service Ports	8205-8228
Reporting and Analysis Framework Web Application	45000	45043
Web Analysis Web Application	16000	16043
Financial Management Java Web Application Port	7363	7365
Financial Management Server port	9091	9092
FM Datasource Start Port	10001	10020
Planning Java Web Application Ports	8300	8343
Planning RMI Server Port	11333

Disable UAC on all servers

UAC must remain disabled in order for EPM System server components to function properly.

UAC can be enabled on end-user client desktops.
In Windows 2008 environments, disable User Access Control (UAC) on each server in the deployment.

Control Panel à System and Security

Synchronize clocks

The clock on each server must be synchronized to within one second difference.

Resolving Host Names

The canonical host name of each server must be the same when accessed from within the server and from other servers in the deployment.

You can modify hosts file located at following location C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

epmsys_hostname.bat

An archive of the utility (epmsys_hostname.zip) is available in the directory where you unzip the assembly for EPM System Installer.

Disabling Anti-virus Software

Antivirus software can cause performance issues with EPM System products if, each time you access any resource on the server, the antivirus software tries to open and scan the object. To prevent these issues, exclude the EPM Oracle home directory from automatic antivirus scans and scan this directory only at scheduled times.

Excluding the EPM Oracle home directory from automatic antivirus scans

Scan EPM Oracle home directory only at scheduled times.

Preparing User Account

· Do not use the Administrator user to install and configure. Run EPM System Installer and EPM System Configurator as a user with administrator rights.

· When you upgrade, apply a maintenance release, or patch this server, use the same user account that was used to install and configure the earlier release.

Check disk space and RAM

Client System Disk Space and RAM

The recommended RAM requirement for all clients is 1 GB.
The installation program checks for twice the required disk space, based on your product installation choices.

Server Disk Space and RAM

1. Preparing Database

Oracle Database Client

Unlike previous versions of Hyperion EPM system till V11.1.2.2, Oracle Database client comes bundled along with Hyperion EPM v11.1.2.4 installers.

Under Foundation services, we have 32 bit Oracle DB client and 64 bit Oracle DB client.

We can either use the bundled client or we can install DB client separately. In that case we need to uncheck Oracle client under Foundation services.

If we are installing DB client separately, we need to refer following points.

Separate DB client

Install the full Oracle Database client on the following machines before you start your installation of EPM System products:

· Performance Management Architect Dimension server

· Financial Management application server

· FDM Application Server and any machine that has FDM Workbench

· Strategic Finance

For v11.1.2.4 installation, we need to install DB client. Following are some bullet points to be highlighted.

· We need to install Oracle DB client (Both 32 bit and 64 bit) on HFM and FDM server if we are using distributed environment.
Reason – HFM is 32 bit application and for running all processes properly, we need both 32 as well as 64 bit DB client.

· For Foundation server, we can install only 64 bit client. 32 bit client can be skipped.

· While installing client, 32 bit DB client is first installed followed by 64 bit client installation.

Oracle Database

The database must be created using Unicode Transformation Format UTF-8 encoding (character set).

Database Privileges

The following privileges must be granted to the owners of the database schemas:

l CREATE SESSION

l CREATE VIEW

l CREATE TYPE

l CREATE TABLE

l CREATE CLUSTER

l CREATE TRIGGER

l CREATE SEQUENCE

l CREATE INDEXTYPE

l CREATE PROCEDURE

l CREATE ANY SYNONYM

l DROP ANY SYNONYM

l UNLIMITED TABLESPACE

Clean uninstall of EPM V11.1.2.4

1. Begin with uninstall

All Hyperion folks know it clearly that dealing with Hyperion setup will require knowledge about uninstalling Hyperion suite completely.

As it is pending from a long time after we started with Hyperion v11.1.2.4, here are basic steps to follow to uninstall Hyperion EPM V11.1.2.4

Uninstall using same admin credentials with which we have installed Hyperion EPM V11.1.2.4

2. Uninstall related software

EPM uninstaller uninstalls JRE which comes with EPM installer. It is used for installation and configuration of any Hyperion products. The same JRE is used to uninstall related non-Hyperion software components like weblogic, OHS. So, if we proceed for EPM V11.1.2.4 uninstall, we cannot uninstall related software components by proper procedure and so we might end up in option of deleting folders and cleaning related stuff.

Thus, it is very important to follow following steps before uninstalling EPM V11.1.2.4.

Uninstall Weblogic

Run WL Uninstaller separately

Uninstall OHS

Run OHS Uninstaller separately

Uninstall Oracle Application Developer

Run Oracle Application Developer uninstaller separately

Once we uninstall above products, check if the respective directory is removed from MIDDLEWARE_HOME.

3. Uninstall Oracle EPM V11.1.2.4

Uninstall EPM System V11.1.2.4

Stop all Hyperion and Oracle services

Uninstall Hyperion EPM system by running "uninstall.bat" located at "MIDDLEWARE_HOME\EPMSystem11R1\uninstall"

Once the uninstall is complete, the directory "MIDDLEWARE_HOME\EPMSystem11R1" should be removed.

4. Post uninstallation tasks

Check shortcuts

Shortcuts should be removed.

Check from Start--> All Programs, all related shortcuts should have been removed.

Windows Registry

Check under Windows registry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > Software and HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software whether the Brio > Hyperion > Oracle keys have been removed correctly.

Search registry and remove all the keys with keyword "Hyperion" or "Brio" or "Oracle"

With Oracle keyword, there will be keys for Oracle client which is installed as pre-requisite of EPM System.

Environment Variables

Following environment variables are created while installing hyperion EPM system and should be removed after uninstalling EPM system.

ARBORPATH

EPM_ORACLE_HOME

ESSBASEPATH

HYPERION_HOME

To confirm removal of environment variable, first check if the variable is still present.

If the environment variable is still present, delete it as below.

PATH variable

Check the PATH variable and delete any portions that need to be removed.

Manual File Deletion

Manually check the file system to see if any files or folders have been left behind. If any of these are left behind, they need to be removed manually.

Ensure that <system drive>\Documents and Settings\<install_user>\.oracle.instance file has been deleted.

Ensure that .oracle.products file in Middleware_Home\EPMSystem11R1 has been deleted.

Remove any files left in the existing HYPERION_HOME if this location is to be re-used.

Delete any BEA folder on the file system.

Delete or rename installer records in C:\Program Files\common files\InstallShield\* if no other programs installed by this tool remain.

Check for Oracle EPM related entries in the inventory.xml file located in C:\Program Files\Oracle\Inventory\ContentsXML and remove these entries from the file.

Clean up any remaining Hyperion-related files and directories under the user's install home. E.g. "D:\Oracle\Middleware"

Registry keys deletion

Registry keys which should be deleted:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\wow6432node\oracle\

Delete any additional 'dds_proxy' settings in the registry.

Delete any additional 'arborpath' entries in the registry.

Delete any additional 'hyperion' entries in the registry.

Reboot the system

Please reboot the server after all the steps in the uninstallation have been performed.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Hyperion Planning Application Shell

1. Hyperion Planning Application

Once Hyperion Planning is installed and configured properly, we should move to creating Planning application with following steps.

Planning Group in Shared Services

Application groups are the place holders for the applications which we create. Its intent within Shared Services is to organize registered applications and make Shared Services aware of applications for user/group provisioning. If an application is not registered with Shared Services, it cannot assign users or groups to it.

The created Applications might be Essbase application, Planning application or even HFM, which is in the suite of Oracle Enterprise performance management.

To simplify, application groups are like folders, we can have a folder named 'Planning' which is exclusively meant only for Planning applications i.e. a new application group with the name 'Planning'. So we can create a new folder, that is a new application group with the name 'Planning' and select Planning as the application group for each Planning Application.

Before creating application, we need to have application group – Planning in Shared services.

http://nlwsl870.ddns.slb.atosorigin-asp.com/interop/index.jsp

Planning Application Creation

1. Pre-requisites

DB Schema

We require Oracle DB schema with appropriate privileges of DBA.

We have already got DB schema – “SBOX_PAWS_PLN2” created on DB QPAWS.

Hyperion Planning Related Services

Ensure that all the services of Hyperion Planning are up and running.

User with required roles

We need to assign "Application creator" and "Dimension editor" roles for a user to create a Planning application.

In our case, we are going to use 'admin' as the user, who already has these provisions.

To cross verify whether the user 'admin' has the roles of 'Application Creator' and 'Dimension Editor'.

http://nlwsl870.ddns.slb.atosorigin-asp.com/interop/index.jsp

Native Directory à Users à Right click Admin à Provision

Expand Shared Services under Selected Roles. As we could see, the admin user is already an Administrator along with having the needed Dimension Editor and Application Creator roles assigned to him.

2. Application Shell

Before creating application, we require application shell to be present.

To create Hyperion Planning application, go to Planning wizard.

http://PlanningWebServer:8300/HyperionPlanning/AppWizard.jsp

But in my current project, I am using default port i.e. 80 for Planning wizard. Thus I am accessing wizard using following URL

http://PlanningWebServer/HyperionPlanning/AppWizard.jsp

http://nlwsl870.ddns.slb.atosorigin-asp.com/HyperionPlanning/AppWizard.jsp

Once we login to Planning Wizard, we will be at following screen.

Manage Data Source

Click on Manage Data source

Click on create Data source à Enter following details.

Once the database and essbase connections are validated, click on Finish.

Application shell creation

When we click on Create à It takes us to create application screen.

In the very first tab of Select, we need to provide the following information:

· Data Source: It's a drop down, where we need to select the Relational data source. In our case, we had already created a data source by name 'TEST_PAWS’, which we should be able see. As it's the only data source we had created so far, we see only one and it is selected by default.

· Application: Here, we can use our own creativity to name our first Planning application. We'll stick to name as PAWS.

· Application Description: As it's understood, it's the description of the Planning Application. We can use any description we wish.

· Shared Services Project: We know by now that Shared Services is used for user management and we will use the Application Group 'Planning' created as a part of pre requisite earlier.

· Instance: Leave this set to the default. We have not created any instance. The default Planning instance is created as a part of Planning Configuration using EPM Configuration after installation.

· Calculation Module: In a Planning application, we need to incorporate the logic for allocation computation, revenue calculation, expense calculation, balance sheet computation, and so on. We employ either calculation manager or business rules for that. These are simple calculation scripts that we write to take care of the business logic. Calculation manager is a new addition to EPM architecture. Let's stick to the old one, business rules.

Select data source we have just created – PAWS

Enter application name à PAWS

Select shared services project à Planning

Instance àDefault

Application Type à General

Calculation Mode à Business Rules

Calendar

Next à Enter Calendar details

The Calendar tab is responsible for two standard dimensions;

· Year

· Period

Year dimension would have the Fiscal Years and Period dimension would have the base time periods. Examples of period are quarters, months, and even days.

· 12 months: This is the most commonly used period. Selecting this option creates both quarters and months (12) in the Period dimension. As planning and budgeting activity of a typical organization would involve both quarters and months. This is the most prevalently used.

· Quarters: By selecting this option, our Period dimension will have only quarters: such as Quarter1, Quarter 2, and so on, without month members.

· Custom: To cater to more varied requirements, we can customize the periods further by selecting Weeks or Daily. Hence 'Custom' gives us the freedom to select either Weeks or Daily.

When you select 'Custom', you need to select two options as per the requirement

°°Prefix: We need to either type 'Week' or 'Day' here.

°°Periods per year: How many weeks or days can be determined by what number is given here. This field determines how many custom members need to be created for a single calendar year. For example if we are creating weekly base time periods, the periods per year will be set equal to 52 as there are approximately 52 weeks in an year.

These two are not editable unless we select the Custom option.

On the right-hand side of the following image, we have to enter information for starting fiscal year, month, and also the total number of years. This information will determine our Year dimension.

Weekly distribution – distribution of weeks among 3 months in a quarter.

E.g. 5-4-4 weekly distribution = the first month of a quarter has five weeks, the second month has four weeks as does the third month. The same pattern of five weeks for the first month, and four weeks for second and third months would repeat for the rest of the quarters too.

The total number of years is also important, which directly reflects how many years of plan the organization would prefer or number of years whose data the Planning Application will hold.

Total number of years can be changed by adding more years even after application creation. It should be noted that Start Year can never be changed after application creation.

Select Next to see Currencies tab:

Currencies

In this section, we are going to set the default currency and we will decide if the Planning Application is going to support multiple currencies and select the options appropriately.

The settings of default currency and 'Support multiple currencies' cannot be revoked after application creation. We need to think carefully before making a selection.

Plan Types

A plan type is a kind of a Planning model; technically, it's an Essbase cube.

Each Hyperion Application creates a corresponding Essbase Application. For each of the selected plan types an Essbase database is created. The names of the Essbase Application and databases are the same as those of Hyperion Planning Application and plan types.

When we create a Planning Application, we select and name the plan types to be created as part of the application.

We can have as many as three plan types in an application in addition to the plan types required for the separately licensed Planning modules.

Finish

Once the application is created successfully, logoff from planning wizard.