The Oracle preferred method of having multiple environments is to have them installed on their own machines, either real or virtual. For many organisations this is simple enough, particularly if you run a good environments service which facilitates the easy set-up of virtual Windows or Linux boxes.
Where there are limited resources you can actually choose to run OBIEE 10g many times on the same box. This is particularly useful in development and test servers, but can also work in production.
I have blogged about this in the past, but not passed on too many details, so here is the full step by step on how to create more than one environment.
These instructions are for a Linux box, if you want to see a windows sample head over to Robin Moffats blog. I am also using the inbuilt oc4j web/application server.
Some of these environments can be used in a cluster, there is no SSO here but you can also configure that in the web layer if you need. Integration with LDAP is not effected.
Here I will use example of a Development environment (DEV), and therefore you will see that in the shared areas I have referenced a folder for DEV. You can easily place all config files and repositories in one share for all environments, but would place Production ones on their own.
STEPS
- Create users
- Set-up box
- Install a full set-up
- Re-assign the Ports
- Configure environment
- Test
- Install a second set-up
- Re-assign the Ports
- Configure environment
- Test
repeat step 7 to 10 until you have built all your envs.
I built 10 environments in total on each box.
CREATE USERS
I prefer to have specific user accounts for OBI. Create them with an appropriate name, such as obiee_1, obiee_2, etc. Make them all part of the same group, say obi.
Example Commands
Adding a group:
groupadd obiee
Add Users:
useradd obiee_1 passwd obiee_1 useradd -G obiee
(or you could try adduser)
SET-UP BOX
In order to manage your environments you need an install area, logs area, config files area and somewhere for the repositories. You will also need somewhere to for cluster files (mainly webcat). For clusters that use multiple boxes I like to use a common set of config files, which means placing the config files on a share that both machines point to.
My advice is to use the following:
/usr/obiee Installation folder /var/obiee_logs Logs folder /obiee_share/config config files /obiee_share/publish Webcat and RPD files
Once you have the top level folders in place then just add a sub folder for each environment. So for example, the env 1, which is used by obiee_1 has the following folders:
/usr/obiee/env_1 Installation folder /var/obiee_logs/env_1 Logs folder /obiee_share/DEV/config/env_1 config files /obiee_share/DEV/publish/env_1 Webcat and RPD files
Only obiee_1 has access to these folder (or if you prefer you can have the group have read only access)
The config folder has sub folders for each service:
/obiee_share/DEV/config/env_1/nq_server (or bi_server if you prefer) /obiee_share/DEV/config/env_1/saw_server /obiee_share/DEV/config/env_1/bip /obiee_share/DEV/config/env_1/web_server
Now the only thing to add some helpful environment settings, such as aliases and variables. These will help when moving around and finding files. Below are some example ones I have used.
alias l='ls -l' alias u='ps -u obiee_1' alias bi='cd /usr/obiee/env_1/OracleBI' alias cata='cd /obiee_share/publish/env_1/webcat'
The above can be added to a .profile (or similar) file.
INSTALL 1
Now we are ready to install the software, and I will assume that there is not an already running version installed. If there is, skip the install and just reconfigure it to use a different set of ports (see further below).
Make sure you have a suitable Java installed and decide how you are going to use java installs. You can choose to use the one install for all the Obiee environments or you can have a version of java installed for each obiee env.
Run the obiee set-up script
/setup.sh –console
When prompted for the install locations specify:
/usr/obiee/env_1/OrcleBI /usr/obiee/env_1/OrcleBIData
After the install check that your services are up and running (u shortcut).
RE-ASSIGN THE PORTS
Now we can update the ports to use numbers that are not going to clash with other obiee envs. Note that once you have updated ports you may have to update your firewall settings to external access (i.e. for online repository access).
Richard Halldearn came up with the idea of just adding one thousand to each port setting, and it seems to work great. So, we have installed environment 1, therefore we will add 1 x 1000 to each port number, for example 9703 becomes 10703. Below are the ports that relate to OBIEE, and the file they are in.
| 9700 | Monitor Controller port for Intra Cluster Communication with Cluster Controllers | NQClusterConfig.INI |
| 9701 | Monitor Server port for Intra Cluster Communication with clustered Analytics Server | OracleBI/server/Config/ NQClusterConfig.INI |
| 9703 | Remote procedure call port of Oracle BI Server, Outfacing port used for ODBC connections | NQSConfig.ini / odbc.ini / NQClusterConfig.ini |
| 9704 | Standard port for OC4J used for Web Browser access, in Catalog manager etc. | OracleBI/oc4j_bi/j2ee/home/config/instanceconfig.xml / default-web-site.xml |
| 9705 | standard port for BI Server scheduler | instanceconfig.xml |
| 9706 | Client controller part Clustering | NQClusterConfig.ini / odbc.ini |
| 9707 | Scheduler | instanceconfig.xml |
| 9708 | scheduler | instanceconfig.xml |
| 9710 | Listener Port for presentation services and ISAPI | instanceconfig.xml / isapiconfig.xml / web.xml |
| 9810 | Java Host port | instanceconfig. |
Configure Environment
The next step is to edit the config files for your settings – SSO, Usage tracking, memory, clusters, logging, tns entries, dns entries, etc
Test
Now you have updated the ports and config settings, and pointed at new config file locations it is time to test the first install. The one component that will be shared across the environments is the chart server, so make sure that is running properly at this stage.
Repeat!
You can leave the first installation up and running if you like while you create a second environment, as above but add 2000 to the port numbers.
Keeping repeating until all your environments are built.
You can cluster two together as well and they should work as if you clustered to separate machines (although clustering two machines would be better!).
Footnote
Oh, even though it works absolutely fine, Oracle probably don’t want to support your install with this set-up, so best to use in dev and test environments, and if you have it in prod then you may have to turn off all but one if you get an issue (even though it will not be related to the multi environments!)
@drian