Essbase 21c Integration with Shared Services - Environment Architecture Notes

Essbase 21c has the ability, in later versions, to integrate with Oracle EPM’s Shared Services Authentication. In Essbase v21.2.1 and later, you can use an existing Shared Services instance for Essbase integration. In a distributed environment, where Essbase 21c is on a dedicated server, what are some ways to fulfill the requirements for integration?

On your Essbase 21c server, it is assumed you have by now installed Fusion Middleware 12c Infrastructure, the suggested patches for FMW, Essbase 21.1 (Linux) or Essbase 21.3 (Windows), and applied the Essbase 21c patches to take you to 21.3 or later. In my example, I’ve patched in a Windows environment to 21.4.2. It is also assumed you have a working EPM 11.2.8+ installation on at least one other server.

As the configuration of Essbase 21c will ask you to specify the EPM installation location AND an EPM Oracle Instance location, we must establish these prior. There’s a few ways of making the necessary locations available to the Essbase 21c server. These are:

1.     Create a network share for your EPM Foundation server’s EPM install and instance locations available to be accessed by your 21c server’s OS. It could be a SMB share, read-only, or a Windows shared location mapped to a drive on the 21c server. The configuration step will not require modification of any files on the EPM Foundation server.

The downside here is availability of the share is required for Essbase 21c to start. If for some reason that share is not available - mount failure after a reboot, or Foundation server’s shares not sharing properly for instance - then you are left with a non-functioning Essbase server with little to show WHY the Essbase application server did not start.

2.     Copy the directory structure (Oracle/Middleware/EPMSystem11R1 and Oracle/Middleware/user_projects/Foundation1) from your EPM Foundation server to a location (NOT Oracle/Middleware, that’s being used already by FMW!) on your Essbase 21c server.

This is wasteful of space, and makes it difficult to apply needed patches or changes to your EPM environment as none of those files are registered to your Essbase 21c server’s Oracle Inventory!

3.     Install EPM Foundation Components: Foundation Services Java Web Applications, Static Content Files, and WebLogic Application Server. These must be installed to a different location than your Essbase 21c install - you don’t want to over-write your oracle_common or wlserver from your FMW installation. EPM and Essbase21c share a common technology stack - Fusion Middleware - but may operate using different versions and patch levels from each other. To avoid any confusion, keep them SEPERATED. Planning a brand-new installation, I would place Essbase21c and FMW installations in Oracle/Middleware, and EPM’s installation in EPM/Middleware.

Having two sets of tech stacked on the same server isn’t ideal, but from a support standpoint, it’s the best of the options above. Remember when you patch EPM, you’ll have to patch the instance that will now live on your Essbase 21c server!

Now your EPM install on the Essbase 21c server is completed. First, shut down your EPM environment’s services - Configtool will need to get a lock on the Shared Services database. The next step is to configure EPM on the Essbase 21c server. There is no need to run RCU for this step. Run the EPM/Middleware/EPMSystem11R1/common/config/11.2.0/configtool.bat (or .sh) utility. The goal is to create a working EPM Instance (we’ll call it Ess21), that will contain the configuration directory pointing to Shared Services’ database and have any additional files Essbase 21c requires to integrate with Shared Services. We will NOT be deploying a Shared Services Java Web application.

Remember to select ‘Connect to a previously configured Shared Services database’ so you don’t overwrite or clear the contents!

After giving it your database connection information for Shared Services, you’ll be asked which products to configure. You want NOTHING CHECKED except the ‘Hyperion Foundation’ box at the top!

Accomplish that by checking then unchecking the boxes beneath it.

This takes you to the summary screen:

This adds information about your Essbase 21c server to Shared Services so it can later register the Essbase product. It also creates the reg.properties file containing the Shared Services database connection information. Note that if you ever change database connection information for your Shared Services server, you will need to follow those same steps for this server’s instance as well!

Now you will run the Essbase 21c configuration utility, but only after first starting up Shared Services, this is a requirement per the documentation.

Run through the Essbase 21c configuration. Once you reach the ‘Identity Provider’ screen, you are prompted to check the box if you want to use EPM Shared Services Identity Provider’ (we do!), enter your EPM Oracle Home, and your EPM Instance (both are under my EPM directory NOT my Oracle directory!). If you want your Essbase server to have a name other than EssbaseCluster-1, enter that here.

If all went well, you’ll see this:

Logging into Shared Services, I now see my Essbase server is live!

I can create a user, Test, and provision it:

The EPM Registry has entries for the new Essbase server as well as Analytic Provider Services - I did not choose to deploy EAS Lite:

Note the version shows 11.1.2.0, this may be to retain compatibility with the EPM components.

I can sign in to the Essbase 21c server:

I have no Applications yet, I’ll import those later, but I can successfully log in. One thing I do NOT have is a ‘Security’ button at the top. Why? Because those functions have been taken over by Shared Services!

We hope this has helped. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to submit them to: support@iarchsolutions.com.