Pre Installation Setup for Hyperion EPM V11.1.2.4

1.  General

Recently, when I was working with Norwegian courier services leader for installation and configuration of Hyperion EPM V11.1.2.4, I got chance to document my steps and hence finally got chance to share on blog.

As they always say,

“The will to win is worthless if you do not have the will to prepare.”

To begin with Hyperion EPM V11.1.2.4 installation and configuration, we should prepare our environment and resources well for it.

That’s my aim here, to provide steps for pre-installation setup for Hyperion EPM V11.1.2.4. 

2.  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.

3.  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

Server Preparations

Server Name Information

Web server(s) (could be more than one):

·         Name: _____________________________

·         IP: _________________________

Application server(s) (could be more than one):

·         Name: __________________________

·         IP: _____________________

Database server (information depending on Oracle DB or MS SQL):

·         Name: __________________________

·         IP: _____________________

·         SID/Instance/Port: _____________________

Operating System

Prepare each server for the installation:

Update server software as needed.

·         For each server in the deployment, apply Windows updates and reboot before starting with installation and configuration of Hyperion EPM System

·         Include service packs, hot fixes, fix packs, etc.

·         Always stay on the latest OS Service pack level

·         Install Internet Explorer (IE) on the servers,
For 11.1.2.4.x any version higher than IE 9

·         Disable unnecessary services.

·         Power option set to High Performance

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.   

Web Server

·         Make sure that a DNS (CName) name is ready for the load balancer (BIG IP)

·         Make sure that the load balancing solution is in place for the web server(s). (Server group 1)

·         The following products require IIS to be installed with ASP.NET and ASP support enabled before configuration of the EPM System product: (Server group 1)
Strategic Finance

Network Share

·         A network share for storing software for installation together with patches and used 3rd party components

·         A read/write network share needs to be created for RAF to store the Workspace objects (Server group 1)

o   Name on share: RAF

o   Network path/address to share: \\ServerName\D$\EPMQA\

·         A read/write network share needs to be created for LCM to store the application artifacts* (Server group 1)

o   Name on share: LCM

o   Network path/address to share: \\ServerNamel\D$\EPMQA\LCM

Start with 200 GB for all three products and make sure that the shared folder is locked down to install account to start with.

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.

·         Make sure that no password policy forces the user account to change password or expire.

Preparing External Directory Lookup Account

Prepare a service account for external authentication against the authentication provider of your choosing (MSAD or LDAP). This account allows the Shared Services component to make a browse level connection to your chosen authentication provider. The purpose of this is so that you can use accounts from your Authentication provider to log in to the Oracle Hyperion EPM

Products

·         Create a service account with browse level privileges for MSAD or other LDAP Provider

·         Ensure service account does not have any special characters

·         Ensure service accounts Distinguished Name (DN) is able to access MSAD or other LDAP Provider

·         Ensure that MSAD or other LDAP Provider port is known

·         Be familiar with the name of a Primary Domain Controller that has access to MSAD and the base DN

·         Have information ready to the consultant for where the users and groups is in the directory so that configuration to the correct OU can be done

·         Ensure that server can communicate with MSAD or other LDAP Provider

MSAD/LDAP information

·         Name of connection: ________________ (identifier we should user)

·         Server name: ____________________

·         Port number: _______________________

·         User ID: ___________________ (The user to log in to directory service)

·         Password: ____________________

·         Attribute for user ID : ____________________ (the username in EPM)

·         Base DN for lookup user: __________________________

·         Base DN for user folder: ___________________________

·         Base DN for group folder: __________________________

·         Filter for EPM users: _____________________

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

4.  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).

Make sure that the following attributes and settings are used for the Oracle database:

·         alter system set PROCESSES=1000 scope=spfile;

·         alter system set SESSIONS=2000 scope=spfile;

·         alter system set SESSION_CACHED_CURSORS=200 scope=spfile;

·         RESIZE 1000M;

·         AUTOEXTEND ON

·         NEXT 500M

·         MAXSIZE 5000M;

·         SEGMENT SPACE MANAGEMENT = AUTO

Product Specific

Oracle Hyperion Financial Management

·         alter system set OPEN_CURSORS=5000 scope=spfile;

Database Privileges

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

·         CREATE SESSION

·         CREATE VIEW

·         CREATE TYPE

·         CREATE TABLE

·         CREATE CLUSTER

·         CREATE TRIGGER

·         CREATE SEQUENCE

·         CREATE INDEXTYPE

·         CREATE PROCEDURE

·         CREATE ANY SYNONYM

·         DROP ANY SYNONYM

·         UNLIMITED TABLESPACE

Purpose of schema	QA	Initial Size (Auto Extend)
	DB Name (SID)
	Q_EPMDB
Shared Services	Q_PLN4	1 GB
Reporting and Analysis Framework	Q_RAF	1 GB
HFM schema	Q_HFM	30 GB
Calc Manager	Q_CALC	500 MB
Planning configuration	Q_PLN	100 MB
Planning application 1	Q_RP01	100 MB
Planning application 2	Q_DInput	100 MB
Planning application 3	Q_PLN3	100 MB
Planning application 4	Q_PLN2	100 MB
Essbase Administration Services	Q_EAS	100 MB
Essbase Server Studio	Q_ESS	100 MB
FDMEE	Q_FDMEE	30 GB
Strategic Finance	Q_SF	500 MB
Extra schema	Q_EX1	500 MB
Extra schema	Q_EX2	500 MB

2.  Web Application and Web Servers

Web Application Server

WebLogic Server

Oracle provides a limited-use license of WebLogic Server for use with EPM System products.

Web Server

Oracle HTTP Server

Bundled with EPM installer and can be installed during installation of foundation services.

IIS Server

None of the components except HSF require IIS as web server. So we require to install IIS.