This effort came out of an interest in seeing how long it would take to stand up a minimal environment for Hyperion EPM 11.1.1.3. Although, this is no longer the premier-supported version of Hyperion EPM, I thought it was a good place to start looking into deployment concerns and challenges, since it is the start of the 11g line. I started my experiment with two Virtualbox Windows XP instances: a 4 GB one for the database repository, shared services and Hyperion Financial Reports, and a 1 GB instance for Essbase. Full disclosure: the instances had been created previously, and Oracle Express Edition 11g was already installed on my database/SS server.
So, in total the effort took about 15 hours, including a couple false starts, restarts and rabbit holes. I came away with some tips for future:
- Make sure you are using a browser which is compatible with your version of Hyperion EPM. I spent an hour trying to figure out why Shared Services was not working, only to discover that 11.1.1.3 does not work with the latest Firefox or Chrome.
- Do not use server names that include hyphens – they break a lot of processes in the installation. I had to back out and restart because of this, after renaming my servers.
- Sequencing matters. Here is what I followed:
- Install and configure Foundation/Shared Services first,
- Install the various products (HFR, Essbase).
- Do a separate install for Essbase Administration Services, after Essbase is installed (including the server, client and EAS client).
- If you wish to install the EAS web client, make sure you have an app server installed first (Weblogic, Tomcat, etc).
This was a fun effort, I’m looking forward to deploying a few other apps in the instance, as well as bumping it up a version to the currently supported EPM 11.1.2.3 in future exercises.
View Duane Cato, PMP's profile
