EPM 11.1.2.2 Installation and Configuration - First Impressions Part 2

I know many of you have been waiting to see more details about the EPM 11.1.2.2 release. I have been really busy at work as my calendar is pretty much full of EPM upgrade projects... But here's the update I promised with details about:

• EPM Deployment Report
• Enterprise Manager
• The new HFM web interface and more

EPM Deployment Report

The deployment report is a handy new feature added into the epmsys_registry utility that allows you to output a compact collection of the EPM System installation details.

You create the report by running the epmsys_registry utility with parameters "report deployment":

cd /d d:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\bin
epmsys_registry report deployment

An HTML formatted report is saved to:
<Middleware_Home>\user_projects\epmsystem1\diagnostics\reports\deployment_report.html

Let's split the report into parts and see what kind of information it contains. As you can see each section has a heading and a friendly description text that tells what is documented here:

The Application Tier Components section lists all applications installed on each server. In addition to the server name (here it's the IP address of my VM) the operating system and memory capacity is also recorded. Also note the WebLogic managed server called EPMServer0 running on port 9000 which is the single JVM running web applications in the Compact Deployment mode.

The Data Directories section lists the filesystem paths containing application data and mentions that these directories need to reside on a shared file system in a clustered environment. And while talking about data directories I might note that the LCM import_export path can now be changed in EPM System Configurator when configuring Foundation Services. No need to mess with the HSS Registry properties when changing the path which is a nice touch.

Last part is called the Deployment History and it shows a step-by-step list of configuration tasks performed on the system. This data (among everything else shown in the report) is stored in the Shared Services Registry database.

Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control

Oracle Enterprise Manager is now automatically installed and configured during the WebLogic domain creation for the EPM System. EM was already bundled with EPM 11.1.2.1 but to actually use it you had to deploy the application yourself using WebLogic admin console.

With the EM Fusion Middleware Control you can administer and monitor WebLogic applications and OHS web servers installed on the EPM servers. To access the web interface you need to start the WebLogic Admin Server on the server where you first configured Foundation Services on using either of these methods:

• C:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\EPMSystem\bin\startWebLogic.cmd or the equivalent path and batch script on Unix or Linux
• On Windows: Start menu > Oracle WebLogic > User Projects > EPMSystem > Start Admin Server for WebLogic Server Domain

You will be presented with an overview of the EPMSystem domain:

From there you can access numerous statistics about the WebLogic managed servers and deployed applications. Oracle EM is not something I have used a lot before but it looks like the Fusion Middleware Control could be a useful tool for checking web application performance figures on a live system.

Managed server response and load graphs

Application sessions and request processing statistics

Oracle Middleware applications use a framework called DMS (Dynamic Monitoring Service) to exchange monitoring data, trace events and other diagnostic information between the components. This information can be displayed via web browser by accessing the DMS Spy servlet at http://servername:7001/dms . I need to educate myself in the mysteries of DMS (this would seem like a good starting point) but it looks like you could easily create a monitoring script that checks any of the gazillion WebLogic and Java metrics that are available via HTTP queries.

Online Help Files

This is a change that is not that visible but I thought you might want to know about it... The help system that is accessible in Workspace and from the Windows clients as well is now served from the Internet by default. This means that every time a user opens the Help function their browser will be fetching the content from docs.oracle.com. If you'd rather have the help content delivered locally you need to follow the steps described in the EPM Installation and Configuration Guide, section "Installing and Configuring Online Help" to download the files and to make the required changes in the OHS configuration files.


Phew, I think I will leave the HFM UI part for a later update as this post has grown long enough already... Feel free to share comments and insights about the new release in the comments or via email if you have already tried it!

Update: My post about the HFM user interface can be found here: http://hyperionfinn.blogspot.com/2012/04/hfm-11122-user-interface.html