Hyperion 11.2.15

I know I am late to the game of publishing an article on the Hyperion 11.2.15 upgrade. I started on it when it first was released. I have worked on with both RHEL 8 and Windows.

Summary: Hyperion 11.2.15 was very similar to the other 11.2. installs. There were some pitfalls and the documentation could have been better, but overall I would give it a B+. Finding the downloads took a little bit of work and the documentation wasn't the clearest. The parts about the RCU for Essbase was not clear and the part that LCM wouldn't work from a prior version such as 11.2 is not correct. It worked fantastic.

After 15+ years of John French praising Linux to me, we embarked on a new install of 11.2.15 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. Some items to note. The RHEL packages that are needed are different than what was needed for RHEL 7. So please review the install guide and the link to the get correct packages. Also the ulimit has changed from prior versions, so bump that up to 8192.

Download

Downloading of the software at first was a little challenging to find. AJ Martelino published a document that was extremely helpful. Search for 11.2.15.0.000 and "Yes" put in all those decimals and zeroes. Thank you AJ. Your 11.2.15 blogs and articles were fantastic and extremely helpful.

Install

After the download, launch the installTool.sh and select the products. Make sure to select what you need the first time. Installation was much faster on Linux that Windows 2019. Installation on both seemed to go fast, but wait...... When the install progress got to 97% it seemed to hang. Just be patient. With Windows, VERY patient. It stayed at 97% for almost an hour updating the Oracle inventory. On Linux that wait was about 25 minutes.

RCU

As with 11.2, you must runt he RCU for each server. In this example we had only one heavy duty Linux server. Windows it was 3.

11.2.15 now comes with Essbase 21C. So the RCU comes into play here. But wait. Don't run the RCU for Essbase. This is a little confusing. Make sure to create a repository for both the products and Essbase.

So when you run the RCU make sure to "UNCHECK" Essbase. Run the RCU just like you would for all other products. When it is time to configure the RCUSchema.properties here was the confusing part for me. Enter the sysDBApassword, sysDBA user, schema prefix, but for the DB URL for Essbase and schemaPrefix for Essbase, this is something you enter manually. Make sure the prefix for Essbase is a new prefix and not what you selected for the other ones. For example, use ESSRCU. DO NOT run the RCU and select Essbase. When you run the configuration of Essbase server, it uses the information in the RCUSchema.Properties file for config and then encrypts the password. It took a few attempts at this along with talking it out with AJ, but finally figured it out. You know it worked, when you configure Essbase Server and it configures successfully.

If using SQL Server make sure you have the correct Collate (Collate_Latin1_General_CS_AS_ and turn on Read committed Snapshot for Essbase. This is different than the Collate for the other products. Make sure to check the guide.

Configuration

Configuration is pretty much the same as it was in the past. For Essbase, there is no longer EAS, APS, Sample apps etc. during configuration. As per the documents and also with experience, please make sure you configure Foundation first.

One thing to NOTE. Please be careful of special characters during configuration. I can never remember what special characters are accepted and what aren't. So I keep it simple with AlphaNumeric. I do know you can use the $ or # so those are two you can keep.

Migration

In the Oracle documents it "indirectly" states that you cannot use LCM to migrate to the new 11.2.15 version. This is not true. Our implementation included, Foundation, Essbase, Planning, Calc Manager and Repots. We used LCM from the older 11.2.12 version to import into 11.2.15. It worked fantastic. We did encounter an issue with Reports. We rectified that with creating a data source and then using a File-->Export and the zip of the reports. We then imported them. We also then were able to use LCM to import reports. Strange, but this got it working.

Migration was relatively smooth. We took LCM exports of Security, All Planning artifacts, Calc Manager and Reports. Aside from the few issues with Reports all imported without any issues. Then we Refreshed the database for Planning. The Essbase Jet Web interface opened without any issues.

Two big items that relate to Essbase 21C with 11.2.15. The first is that the default Aliases are not pushed to Essbase when you do the Database Refresh. To fix this, please see Doc ID 2960879.1 from Oracle support site. Second, exporting data to a relational database via a Calc Script has been deprecated. For many clients this is a big issue for those using data warehouses. As a workaround you can use SQL Loader with custom scripting.

Performance Tuning is the same as with previous versions. You need to modify the heap sizes with Windows or the setCustomParamsXXXX.sh for each product in Linux. Also note that EAS is not installed by default, so you can't modify index caches for Essbase, or the Environment that was the Essbase.cfg. Any changes should be done via the Essbase jet web interface.

Data Migration

The data migration went very smoothly. Take Level 0 exports and load and aggregate. As for HFM, Oracle won't admit it, but the HFM Copy App worked fine. There was some modifications with custom scripts and exporting to relational database tables. This is due to certain features that were removed with 21C.

That part was made extremely easy with the help of Tom Vasterling. For those who need an expert with the Essbase/Planning applications, SQL,Batch Scripts, Cronjobs and other scripting or data analysis, he is one I would highly recommend.

Additional Thank you's are in order for the following who helped make these implementations successful: AJ Martelino for your expert articles and advice. Jeff Henkel, who always answered any question I had, and his technical knowledge of Linux and 21C. Lastly Terry Harber at Oracle support, who seems to know everything about Hyperion, for his help.

Any questions please feel free to message.