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IBM Cognos Technical Blog

June 17, 2011

IBM Cognos 10.1 eAssembly Numbers

Filed under: IBM Cognos,Installation — Blog Admin @ 8:39 pm
If you have ever downloaded the IBM Cognos products and cursed yourself for not renaming the eAssembly files with their corresponding names then you may find this list useful.

IBM Cognos 10.1 Business Intelligence
Parts and Platforms Details eImage
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Quick Start Guide 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Optional CZQ54ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Required CZS50ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Required CZS55ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC Multilingual Required CZS4QML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC Multilingual Required CZS4SML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX Itanium Multilingual Required CZS4PML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX Itanium Multilingual Required CZS4RML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 AIX Multilingual Required CZS4LML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 AIX Multilingual Required CZS4MML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris Multilingual Required CZS4ZML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris Multilingual Required CZS54ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 Linux x86 Multilingual Required CZS4XML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 Linux x86 Multilingual Required CZS53ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 Linux pSeries Multilingual Required CZS4VML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 Linux pSeries Multilingual Required CZS52ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 Linux on System z Multilingual Required CZS57ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 Linux on System z Multilingual Required CZS58ML
IBM Cognos Framework Manager 10.1.0 Windows English Required CZQ6MEN
IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Optional CZQ6KML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Samples 10.1.0 Multiplatform Multilingual Optional CZQ4UML
IBM Cognos Supplementary Languages Documentation 10.1.0 Multiplatform Multilingual Optional CZQ6UML
IBM Cognos Lifecycle Manager 10.1.0 Windows English Optional CZQ6NEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Metric Server 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Optional CZS51ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Metric Server 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC Multilingual Optional CZS4NML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Metric Server 10.1.0 HP-UX Itanium Multilingual Optional CZS4TML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Metric Server 10.1.0 AIX Multilingual Optional CZS3SML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Metric Server 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris Multilingual Optional CZS4YML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Metric Server 10.1.0 Linux x86 Multilingual Optional CZS4WML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Metric Server 10.1.0 Linux pSeries Multilingual Optional CZS4UML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Metric Modeling 10.1.0 Windows English Optional CZQ4TEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Optional CZQ6GML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC Multilingual Optional CZQ6BML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 HP-UX Itanium Multilingual Optional CZQ6AML
BM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 AIX Multilingual Optional CZQ6EML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris Multilingual Optional CZQ6FML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 Linux x86 Multilingual Optional CZQ6DML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 Linux pSeries Multilingual Optional CZQ6CML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 for Linux on System z Multilingual Optional CZQ96ML
IBM Cognos Virtual View Manager 10.1.0 Windows English Optional CZQ6TEN
IBM Cognos Virtual View Manager 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC English Optional CZQ6QEN
IBM Cognos Virtual View Manager 10.1.0 AIX English Optional CZQ6PEN
IBM Cognos Virtual View Manager 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris English Optional CZQ6SEN
IBM Cognos Virtual View Manager 10.1.0 Linux x86 English Optional CZQ6REN
IBM Cognos Virtual View Manager 10.1.0 Linux on System z English Optional CZQ9AEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Statistics 32-bit 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Optional CZQ69ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Statistics 64-bit 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Optional CZQ68ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Statistics 64-bit 10.1.0 Linux x86 Multilingual Optional CZQ66ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Statistics 64-bit 10.1.0 AIX Multilingual Optional CZQ64ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Statistics 64-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX Itanium Multilingual Optional CZQ65ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Statistics 64-bit 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris Multilingual Optional CZQ67ML
IBM Cognos Dynamic Query Analyzer 10.1.0 Windows English Optional CZQ63EN
IBM Cognos Dynamic Query Analyzer 10.1.0 Linux x86 English Optional CZQ62EN
IBM Cognos 10.1 Data Manager

Parts and Platforms Details eImage
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager Quick Start Guide 10.1.0 English Optional CZQ9UEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 32-bit 10.1.0 Windows English Required CZQ9KEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 64-bit 10.1.0 Windows English Required CZQ9S
EN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 32-bit 10.1.0 AIX English Required CZQ9EEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 64-bit 10.1.0 AIX English Required CZQ9LEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 32-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX Itanium English Required CZQ9FEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 64-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX Itanium English Required CZQ9MEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 32-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC English Required CZQ9GEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 64-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC English Required CZQ9NEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 32-bit 10.1.0 Linux pSeries English Required CZQ9HEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 64-bit 10.1.0 Linux pSeries English Required CZQ9PEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 32-bit 10.1.0 Linux x86 English Required CZQ9IEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 64-bit 10.1.0 Linux x86 English Required CZQ9QEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 32-bit 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris English Required CZQ9JEN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager 64-bit 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris English Required CZQ9REN
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Data Manager Connector for SAP R/3 32-bit and 64-bit 10.1.0 Windows English Optional CZQ9TEN


IBM Cognos 10.1 PowerPlay

Parts and Platforms Details eImage
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Quick Start Guide 10.1.0 Multilingual Optional CZQ9WML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Client 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Required CZQ9VML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Server 32-bit 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Required CZS5QML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Server 64-bit 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Required CZS5VML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Server 32-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC Multilingual Required CZS5MML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Server 64-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC Multilingual Required CZS5SML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Server 32-bit 10.1.0 AIX Multilingual Required CZS5LML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Server 64-bit 10.1.0 AIX Multilingual Required CZS5RML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Server 32-bit 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris Multilingual Required CZS5PML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Server 64-bit 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris Multilingual Required CZS5UML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Server 32-bit 10.1.0 Linux x86 Multilingual Required CZS5NML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence PowerPlay Server 64-bit 10.1.0 Linux x86 Multilingual Required CZS5TML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Required CZQ6GML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC Multilingual Required CZQ6BML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 AIX Multilingual Required CZQ6EML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris Multilingual Required CZQ6FML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.1.0 Linux x86 Multilingual Required CZQ6DML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Optional CZS50ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Optional CZS55ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC Multilingual Optional CZS4QML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 HP-UX PA-RISC Multilingual Optional CZS4SML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 AIX Multilingual Optional CZS4LML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 AIX Multilingual Optional CZS4MML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris Multilingual Optional CZS4ZML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 Oracle Solaris Multilingual Optional CZS54ML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 32-bit 10.1.0 Linux x86 Multilingual Optional CZS4XML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Server 64-bit 10.1.0 Linux x86 Multilingual Optional CZS53ML
IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual Optional CZQ6KML
IBM Cognos Supplementary Languages Documentation 10.1.0 Multiplatform Multilingual Optional CZQ6UML
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Samples 10.1.0 Multiplatform Multilingual Optional CZQ4UML
IBM Cognos Framework Manager 10.1.0 Windows English Optional CZQ6MEN


IBM Cognos Mobile

Parts and Platforms Details eImage
IBM Cognos Mobile Quick Start Guide 10.1.0 Multilingual Optional CZQ9BML
IBM Cognos Mobile 32-bit 10.1.0 Multiplatform Multilingual Required CZQ9CML
IBM Cognos Mobile 64-bit 10.1.0 Multiplatform Multilingual Required CZQ9DML



IBM Cognos 10.1 Planning

Parts and Platforms
Details
eImage
IBM Cognos Planning 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual eAssembly
N/A
CRCW3ML
IBM Cognos Planning Quick Start Guide 10.1.0 Multilingual
Optional
CZQ5YML
IBM Cognos Planning Client 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual
Required
CZQ5ZML
IBM Cognos Planning Server 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual
Required
CZS5AML
IBM Cognos Planning Administration 10.1.0 Windows Multilingual
Required
CZQ61ML
IBM Cognos Framework Manager 10.1.0 Windows English
Optional
CZQ6MEN
IBM Cognos Virtual View Manager 10.1.0 Windows English
Optional
CZQ6TEN

 

Configuring Failover for IBM Cognos 8.5.1 Controller

Over the last couple of months an unusually high number of customers (i.e. more than zero) have all been asking the same question… “can you tell us how to create a DR failover solution for IBM Cognos Controller?” – this is a question that got me scratching my head somewhat.

We already know that you can “split the COM+” components in Controller to separate out such functions as Consolidation, this isn’t so much fail-over as a crude form of load-balancing or load-sharing. But can you actually create a fail-over for IBM Cognos Controller?

One of the methods we considered initially, involved the use of Microsoft Clustering, this sounds viable in theory, however a phone call to IBM support suggested that this would not be supported.
After this blow a couple of more “realistic” options came to mind: -

  • Cold-Standby
  • DNS Alias
  • With one particular client we decided that they would utilise their test environment to trial one of the above. It was decided that the cold-standby method was not desirable as they did not want to have to power one server up manually and risk the possibility of both servers becoming available at once in the event that the other box was not shut down.

    What we did was to install two separate servers, each with their own IBM Cognos BI and Controller components.
    The BI server has to point at its own “real” server name or DNS name, if you use the same DNS alias for both servers within BI it causes problems within the Content Manager when the second server tries to register its dispatchers.
    The IBM Cognos Controller Configuration application however needs to be pointed to the DNS Alias, this way when the Controller client etc all look for the server, they are looking for the same thing each time.

    On the face of things, this seemed to work, basic testing showed that we could switch servers quite easily by altering the DNS alias record, however I still had an uneasy feeling about this as the COM+ components for Controller would still be running on each server at the same time.

    A week or so later, there had been a number of complaints about strange behaviour with Controller, the software was randomly unavailable or not responding. Each time a reboot of the active server seemed to solve the problems.
    We suggested that it may be worthwhile turning off the “standby” server for a week or so to see if things improved.

    After just over one week, there had been no problems, this pointed at a problem with having two identically configured Controller servers turned on at once.

    So it seems, for the time being at least, you cannot automatically, or even semi-automatically fail-over IBM Cognos Controller. We reverted to a cold-standby scenario which seems to be working well for now.

    If you have any different experiences, or if you have managed to make this work somewhere, please feel free to get in touch, I am sure there are many customers out there looking for a similar solution.

    TM1 9.5.1 and IBM Cognos BI 10.1 integration

    This week I had to advise a customer who has just purchased IBM Cognos 10.1 Business Intelligence on the best way to integrate their existing TM1 9.4 environment with the latest release of BI.

    My initial thought was that they were going to require an upgrade of their TM1 servers to 9.5.1, but to be sure I thought I would have a look around the internet and try to find some information to back me up. When I found very little I decided to have a chat with an IBM Cognos support rep, the person who provided the answer was very thorough and more than helpful:

    “Q:
    Is this integration possible between TM1 9.5.1 and IBM Cognos BI 10.1?

    A:
    Yes.

    Q:
    Can earlier versions of TM1 such as 9.4 be integrated with or reported from
    IBM Cognos BI 10.1?

    A:
    From a technical point of view, it is possible for TM1 Version 9.4.1 and
    9.5 being integrated or reported from IBM Cognos BI 10.1, see the IBM
    website listing the Software Environments supported by Cognos BI 10.1 ->

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27019126

    Cognos Business Intelligence 10.1 Software Environments

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27019126#olap

    which lists TM1 Version 9.4.1 and 9.5 as having status “Compatible” when
    used as an OLAP Datasource to BI.

    But we do NOT recommend such a configuration / environment as TM1
    Development has not tested and will not test TM1 Version 9.4.1 or 9.5
    against Cognos BI 10.1. Thus Cognos BI 10.1 is neither a Software
    Environment supported by TM1 Version 9.4.1 nor by TM1 Version 9.5.
    Thus you must upgrade to TM1 Version 9.5.1 if you intend to use Cognos BI 10.1.
    That is the reason why the TM1 Version 9.5.1 is the only version of TM1 for
    which interoperability with Cognos BI 10.1 hs been officially announced.
    That is also the very reason why only for TM1 Version 9.5.1 the TM1
    Portlets for Cognos BI 10.1 have been released.

    If you check the IBM website on the Software Enviroments supported by TM1
    Version 9.4.1 ->

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27014836
    Cognos TM1 9.4 MR1 Software Environments

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27014836#tm1_fragments
    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27014836#tm1_olap_bi

    you will notice that Cognos BI 10.1 is NOT listed as a Supported
    Environment, neither for the TM1 Fragments aka TM1 Portlets nor for using
    TM1 as an OLAP datasource to BI.

    If you check the IBM website on the Software Enviroments supported by TM1
    Version 9.5 ->

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27017362
    Cognos TM1 9.5 Software Environments

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27017362#tm1_fragments

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27017362#tm1_olap_bi

    you will notice that Cognos BI 10.1 is NOT listed as a Supported
    Environment, neither for the TM1 Fragments aka TM1 Portlets nor for using
    TM1 as an OLAP datasource to BI.

    If you check the IBM website on the Software Enviroments supported by TM1
    Version 9.5.1 ->

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27018895
    Cognos TM1 9.5.1 Software Environments

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27018895#portlets

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27018895#olap

    you will notice that Cognos BI 10.1 is listed as a Supported Environment.

    A personal recommendation:

    To my knowledge, within the next 4 to 8 weeks TM1 Version 9.5.2 will be
    released. Shortly after the release of TM1 9.5.2 the Fixpack 1 (FP1) for
    Cognos BI 10.1 will be released. The BI integration between TM1 Version
    9.5.2 and Cognos 10.1 FP1 has been greatly improved compared to the
    previous BI integration between TM1 Version 9.5.1 and Cognos BI 10.1 in
    terms of performance, stability and user experience.

    Thus I recommend to start now with TM1 Version 9.5.1 and Cognos BI 10.1,
    but prepare to perform an upgrade to TM1 Version 9.5.2 and Cognos 10.1 FP1
    in the near future.”

    So, I believe that this information is very much worth sharing with anyone out there looking for information on how to integrate TM1 with IBM Cognos 10 Business Intelligence 10.1 – sometimes its just nice to have the answers in one place in nice plain english!

    May 20, 2010

    Headache Installing TM1 9.5 Perspectives Client on your PC

    Filed under: IBM Cognos,TM1 Excel Addin,TM1 Install error,TM1 Perspectives — Blog Admin @ 9:15 pm

    I have had a right ball-ache today trying to get TM1 Perspectives and Architect onto an XP workstation computer.

    What should have been a very straight forward installation was complicated by what turned out to be a “dirty PC”.

    There is not really any need to cover the actual installation of Perspectives or Architect here as its a very basic Windows Installer, but when it goes wrong it does so seemingly quietly.

    The first error message that I encountered was as follows:

    The wizard was interrupted before IBM Cognos TM1 could be completely installed.
    Your system has not been modified.To complete installation at another time, please run wizard again.

    This was quite frustrating, I run the installer several times, I rebooted the computer and installed Windows and Office updates.  Nothing seemed to make a difference.
    Looking in the Windows Event log didn’t offer up any useful clues either.  So I decided to embark on a bit of detective work.

    In the %temp% folder I found a log file called IBM_TM1Install.log – a rather large file which surely would contain the answer SOMEWHERE!?!

    To my relief it did, a useful error:

    The TM1 installation was unable to create a backup copy of the previous TM1 Web files on your computer. To continue, do one of the following: Stop any Windows services or programs that may be locking the TM1 Web files. Or, select a different installation directory for the new TM1 Web files.

    Well, it would have been a useful error, had I actually had TM1 Web or in fact ANY previous version of ANY TM1 software installed.  The trouble is, I had never installed anything to do with TM1 on this particular computer.

    This led me to take a punt and assume that it had found some sort of Cognos related files somewhere on the system.  First thing to check “Program Files”, nothing there.
    So next I checked the registry.  Bingo!  There was a Cognos entry under HKLM\Software and HKCU\Software.  Further investigation showed that these were related to a previous installation of the Cognos Planning client.  As they were no longer needed I deleted them and tried the installation of TM1 again.

    Great news, this time it worked a treat.  And then it broke again.  At least it had the decency to offer me a new error to play with.

    Error 1609: An error occurred while applying security settings. ASPNET is not a valid user group. This could be a problem with the package, or a problem connecting to a domain controller on the network. Check your network connection and click Retry, or Cancel.

    Oh lovely, an error that could mean anything.  It didn’t take much googling to find an answer though.  The installer is expecting to find ASP.NET, or rather an ASP.NET account.  I was quite pleased at finding this information as it seemed to be an easy fix… if it worked.

    Create the following:

    User Name: ASPNET
    Full Name: ASP.NET Machine Account
    Description: Account for running ASP.NET applications
    Password: [whatever you decide]


    set: User cannot change password and Password never expires.

     I hit the retry button, it worked!

    Ok, so thats not really a very dramatic ending but thats what pleased me the most.  After spending around 3 hours messing around with it, it finally installed.

    May 19, 2010

    Installing Excel Link (Excel Addin) for IBM Cognos 8 Controller 8.5

    As I seem to have had nothing much to say for well over a month its about time I found something to write about.  In my desperation to fill blog-inches I thought I would resort to a brief run-through of the required steps for installing the IBM Cognos Controller Excel-Addin.

    These steps seem to work fairly well and so may be useful to some of you at least.  The application installation does require that you have local Administrator rights, this is unfortunate for a web-based application but for the time being is also unavoidable.

    Some pre-requisites first


    You will need Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 with SP1 (or SP2)
    Of course… Local Administrator Rights.

    Installing the Excel Link client


    The client installation its self is easy, simply navigate to the following URL on your environment:

          http://SERVERNAME/cognos8/controllerbin/ControllerClient.msi

    Follow through any steps in the installation wizard as required.

    Enabling the Controller .NET Configuration


    Now, open the command prompt and navigate to the following directory:

           %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727

    Then type in the following command all on one line:

           caspol -q -m -ag “All_Code” -url http://SERVERNAME/* FullTrust -name “Controller_SERVERNAME” -d “Controller_SERVERNAME”

    Setting the correct version of .NET for Excel


    We need to set Excel to use the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, this is achieved by creating a file called EXCEL.EXE.config on the workstation PC.

    Navigate using Windows Explorer to the folder where your Office installation is located, typically:

           c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11

    With Notepad create a new text file called EXCEL.EXE.config, the contents should be as below:





    Before you run Excel to test the add-in

    I have found that this does not always work correctly if you skip out this step, so now, navigate to Cognos Connection at http://SERVERNAME/cognos8 – then click “Consolidate my Financial Information”.
    This will launch a further installer which will take you into the main Controller application.
    Once this is done the Excel Link components will work just as expected.

    April 15, 2010

    A few thoughts on using IBM Cognos 8 products on Virtual Servers

    Filed under: Cognos Planning,IBM Cognos,Virtual Server,Virtualisation,VMware — Blog Admin @ 6:27 pm

    With more and more customers using VMware lately it’s becoming a somewhat futile effort to keep on battling against the virtualisation march. So maybe it is time to stop fighting it and instead embrace the VMware onslaught. Rather than banging on about why you should not run IBM Cognos Planning software on VMware, lets just discuss its use in a more balanced way.

    Virtualisation has got its feet well under the table.  IT departments us virtualisation products not only for the consolidation of existing servers, but also for the deployment of new products in the server room.  The lure of greater ease of management, lower energy usage, savings in rack space and the opportunity to gain some new skills is proving too strong to resist.

    The virtualisation platforms are constantly evolving and improving brining “near-native” performance, which is a good thing.  Utilising those wasted CPU cycles can seem like a great idea.  And it is.  In most cases.
    As with any software product there are very good reasons virtualise your IBM Cognos servers, but there are also some instances where it should be avoided.

    IBM Cognos Planning on VMware?

    The IBM Cognos 8 Planning product set is made up of two core products.  IBM Cognos 8 Analyst and IBM Cognos 8 Contributor.  Analyst is frequently used stand-alone in smaller deployments, the server-side product requires very little server resource, though with the introduction of IBM Cognos 8 (not including the 8.1 release) customers now need to find a Web Server (usually IIS) and a database server (usually SQL Server) purely for the provision of authentication.

    In these cases VMware is a no-brainer.  Who wants to spend cold hard cash on a physical bit of kit that’s doing little more than logging users on and providing a shared folder?

    So Analyst only clients wanting to use VMware? Go ahead.  It’s perfect for you.  If you have Contributor, things suddenly get a little more interesting.  Contributor is the biggest problem when considering virtualisation, the reason for this is that the software is already designed to make the most of any CPU power you can throw at it.  Ok, so in most cases it’s not making use of these CPU’s for 24 hours a day, but it can certainly be running jobs for several hours at a time all at 100% CPU usage.

    This is not great for the other systems on your VMware host server. It also kind of defeats the purpose of using VMware if you are providing your Virtual Guest with a one-to-one CPU relationship to the host system.

    This brings me on to my second point.  A lot of mid-to-large sized installations of IBM Cognos Planning are built using multiple servers to provide the best possible performance and scalability.  This means separate Web, Admin, Job and Database servers.
    Many large clients have multiple Job Servers, each with 8 core CPU’s and 16 GB of RAM, and they are still heavily utilised thank you very much.  Putting all of these servers inside of VMware has been shown to degrade performance significantly as various servers which seem separate are infact on the same host and so cause job scheduling clashes.

    I want to stop sounding like a VM-basher.  I guess its a good time to point out that there are severaly customers who are now very happily running IBM Cognos Planning on VMware.  Some even have these multi-server installs.  There are a few reasons for this.

    • They have a small user base
    • They have small, uncomplex planning models
    • They don’t run many Job processes
    • They are keeping the number of competing virtual guests low

    Another reason may be that many of the more recent VMware based installations also have been completed using the most modern hardware available, the newer CPU’s are so powerful that processing these planning jobs takes much less time than it used to, so jobs that would previously have taken hours to complete now finish within minutes.  Whilst its still quicker to run on native hardware, the difference is starting to get a little harder to notice.

    Important considerations when running IBM Cognos 8 Planning on VMware

    Some things that we have found when working with customers running VMware platforms, from those who have succeeded and from those who have failed.

    • Keep the number of Virtual Guests low. When the Contributor jobs are running you don’t want the rest of your servers to suffer.
    • Do not throttle the CPU or Memory usage on the IBM Cognos Planning servers, on software designed to make the most out of the hardware available to it this really is defeating the object. It has caused many deployments on VMware to fail.
    • Consider targetting your use of virtualisation, be open to the fact that maybe not all servers should be virtualised. IBM Cognos 8 Planning Job Servers are likely to be better off on good, high-powered physical servers. Good targets for virtualisation are:
      • IBM Cognos 8 Gateway Server
      • IBM Cognos 8 BI servers (in some cases)
      • IBM Cognos 8 Planning Administration Server
      • Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Server (assuming they are dedicated for IBM Cognos use)
      • Citrix Servers (On a case by case basis)
    • Spread out the IBM Cognos Planning Job servers. By this we mean, keep them spread over as many physical hosts as possible, the end users may create job server clusters and use these to schedule their jobs, if their job servers are using the same physical hardware, attempts at job scheduling will fail as multiple jobs compete for CPU resources.

    Cognos Planning Development on VMware

    Where VMware pretty much always comes in to its own is in development environments, the ability to quickly bring up clean server builds that have been stored away on a hard drive somewhere is a huge advantage, you get the server operating system, database server and applications all installed and configured just the way you need them, archive the virtual machine off somewhere and start your development. Any time you need a clean set of servers again, you just dig out the archive and start again.

    In these environments where performance is not a prime concern, the use of a virtualisation product is likely to be a winner.

    Even IBM are now starting to ease up on their harsh tone on VMware, there is a general acceptance that customers want to run the software in this environment and so they are starting to be a bit more open to providing support for this.

    April 9, 2010

    Customising the deployment of IBM Cognos 8.4 Contributor Rich Client to users

    The new IBM Cognos Planning Contributor 8.4 Rich Client is a very nice bit of kit bringing several enhancements over the previous ActiveX based client, most of these are user orientated, nice pretty colours and enhanced functionality, but from a technical administrators perspective the most important change is that the “thin client” no longer requires the end-user to have administrator rights on their local machine to install it.

    This is achieved through a number of improvements:

    • The application now installs to the %userprofile%\Application Data\ folder which all users should have full control over.
    • Fewer registry entry changes are made, those which are made are done under HKEY_CURRENT_USER – again, all users should have rights to update this.
    • Finally, as the client is java based it registers no DLL files or COM components
    The downside of this however is that there have been a number of occasions where it is not desirable to install to the %userprofile% folders.
    One such occasion was witnessed at a client who used roaming profiles for their Windows users, because of the use of roaming profiles their accounts were limited to a maximum profile size of 150MB now, with the “thin client” weighing in at a not-so-thin 138MB this cause problems that prevented the newly inflated profile from being saved and so also prevented the user from logging off their workstations.
    Another client more recently reported that they had problems with the client not working properly on occasion, possibly caused by some users “cleaning” their user profile directories manually.  The required fix for this was to uninstall and reinstall the client each time they used it.
    Changing the installation paths.

    What we were asked was this… “How can we manually set the installation path” and “How can we deploy the installer so that its installed automatically for all users to customised path“.
    The first of these is quite simple.  IBM provide a manual installer for the Web Client.  This is found, most easily, with the Fix Pack installers where it is offered in a stand alone installer via Fix Pack Central.
    • FP1: C8_Plan_Client_8_4_Win32_FP001.tar.gz
    • FP2: C8_Plan_Client_8_4_Win32_FP002.tar.gz
    Once extracted, you are given an IBM Cognos installer wizard which can be run where the files are automatically installed to x:\Program Files\Cognos\c8
    This will of course require that Administrator rights are given to the users or that the install is run manually for them as it is writing files to a system area.
    The other option is to use the already provided .MSI packages that are used when a user visits the Contributor Web page.  They can be found on the Gateway Server in the following folder:
    • x:\Program Files\cognos\c8\webcontent\rcp_installs

    CognosRCP.msi must be installed first as this is the Client Framework.
    contributor.msi must be installed second, this is the Web Grid etc.

    When run manually neither MSI appears to offer any options, they simply run in the background and install to the %userprofile%\Application Data\ folders. However it appears that you can manipulate the install location using the command line, an example of what I managed to get working is below:

    • msiexec /i CognosRCP.msi TARGETDIR=”C:\Program Files\Cognos\c8″ ALLUSERS=”Yes”

    followed by

    • msiexec /i contributor.msi TARGETDIR=”C:\Program Files\Cognos\c8″ ALLUSERS=”Yes”



    In my testing this seems to have worked.  Installing to the correct folder under Program Files and also, crucially, working when accessing the Contributor grid.

    It is not always the products fault.

    Filed under: Uncategorized — Blog Admin @ 1:17 pm

    An important lesson was learned earlier this week, really its something I already knew, but it was useful to get a reminder of this.  It was also useful to remind the customer of the same.

    We got a call requesting help with an issue where Cognos Planning Analyst appeared to be behaving differently between the old server environment (IBM Cognos 8.4 RTM) and the new server environment (IBM Cognos 8.4 FP2) when running a d-link within Analyst.

    Now I already know that Analyst is not the most technical of products, so to hear of such strange problems (i.e. the d-link not recognising the source of an ODBC connection) is quite unusual and can be quite frustrating to deal with.  As is usual in such cases our client was convinced that the problem was within Analyst and attempts to convince him that the cause was unlikely to be with Analyst were seemingly difficult to push.

    After a little playing around looking at the source CSV files and comparing them with those from the old system we decided that on the face of it, the systems were identical.
    It appeared that the problem may have been to do with the actions the SQL code in the d-link source was trying to process.  It was manipulating the data prior to inserting it into Analyst.

    The first thing I tried was to remove the customised SQL code and use a straight forward select statement.  This worked straight away.  So the file was able to be read.  Though what I then found was that the data brought back was not in the expected format.

    Another look at the ODBC connection and a click of the “options” button exposed some additional settings where you can set the delimiter type, header cells and other formatting options for the text file.  Once these had been set we went back to Analyst and opened the d-link to find that it magically worked now.

    So this is an example of a problem that appeared to be the fault of the product which in fact ended up to be caused by incorrect settings on the ODBC connection.  One worth remembering I think.

    April 1, 2010

    SQL Server 2008 Native Client and IBM Cognos Contributor

    Filed under: Uncategorized — Blog Admin @ 1:18 pm

    An old problem reared its head again today, taking me back to the days not too long after SQL Server 2005 was released and the advice from Cognos was to use the new fangled SQL Server Native Client (SQLNCLI) for best performance within Contributor for both the connections within the Contributor Administration Console as well as the Contributor Website.

    The problem was that you were unable to create Publish Containers using the SQL Server Native Client, it failed miserably.  Instead your publish containers had to use the old SQLOLEDB provider.

    It took me a little while to work out why SQLNCLI wasn’t able to connect at all with my new IBM Cognos 8.4 FP2 on SQL Server 2008, what I finally discovered was that the provider name has changed to SQLNCLI10.  Ok, so following the old SQL Server 2005 with Planning logic I opted to change my datastore connections to use SQLNCLI10.

    Success!  The application created fine, the jobs all tested out fine except…. yep, thats right, the publish container won’t create again.  Now I don’t know why this is, or what changes in each release of the SQL Native Client, but once again we can’t create a publish container.  So once again we are forced to use SQLOLEDB for the Publish Containers and SQLNCLI10 – unless we should in fact avoid this altogether, for the application connections.

    March 23, 2010

    Remembering the importance of server reboot.

    Filed under: Contributor,IBM Cognos,Reboot,Server — Blog Admin @ 11:02 am

    Too often in a support situation people poke fun  and make sarcastic comments about the requests for screenshots and reboots to clear problems, seen as being either delaying tactics or lazy troubleshooting, so sometimes the humble server reboot is overlooked, as we try too hard to find another fix for the problems at hand.

    Earlier this week a client got in touch about a problem they encountered following some issues with their Cognos service account on their Windows 2003 servers.  Initially all of the Contributor applications were unavailable, each giving a message on the web page stating that:
    “The application definition is being updated on the server.  Please try again in a little while”
    Very polite, but not too helpful.  As far as we knew the application definition was in no need of being updated.  But try again in a little while we did.
    Four out of five applications did indeed become available but the last one refused.  So we viewed the error logs only to find there was no specific help there, we tried to GTP, Synchronise, GTP again, each time the GTP successful, unless a reconcile job was required, at which point the reconcile failed to complete even a single e.list item.
    “The application must be corrupted” we declared.  ”I suggest that you restore the database from a backup file”.  And so within 30 minutes a backup file from Friday night was restored and we tried again.
    “The application definition is being updated on the server.  Please try again in a little while” the server responded.
    By now time was getting on, nobody wanted to stay on the phone so we offered that it may be worthwhile getting the databases off-site to try some testing on our own servers, to limit the drain on the customers time of course.  And so we suggested the following:
    1. Try a reboot of all the servers if possible
    2. If the reboot is unsuccessful, please upload the backup files so we can try them ourselves
    An hour later we received an email saying the servers had been rebooted and the application was now working.  The customer quite rightly said it was a bit of a shame in a way, that we had not tried this earlier in the day.  Though I have to wonder if we had suggested rebooting the servers as a first stab at finding a fix for the solution if it would have been greeted so warmly.
    So maybe we should remember that rebooting the server is not always the lazy option, but simply a way of ensuring that all the cobwebs have been blown out before resorting to more thorough investigations.

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