BI4.1 Admin Best Practices – Part 2 Monitoring- ASUG Webcast

[TammyPowlas]

john.mrozek of the SAP Strategic Engagements team provided this webcast on BI Admin Best Practices & troubleshooting to ASUG.  Surveys of ASUG members showed this was the top requested webcast.  Note that so much material was covered in this webcast I have to split it up in different parts.

Part one covered the system configuration wizard BI4.1 Admin Best Practices – System Configuration Wizard - ASUG Webcast, Part 1

This blog covers Monitoring and some general suggestions.  This will be in multiple parts.

Monitoring

John said he is amazed at how many people do not implement monitoring.  When you first look at it, it appears intimidating but if you read manuals you will understand how to do it.

Figure 1: Source: SAP

John said this is like looking at the dashboard of your car; he said a good admin has this and monitors daily, with different alerts.  It should notify you if things are not good.  You should monitor daily

Figure 2: Source: SAP

Server health is in Figure 2.  The Server Status will tell you if failing or not.

Figure 3: Source: SAP

Look at setting in Figure 3 but if you forget to acknowledge and then it you get pinged unnecessarily on a Saturday.  He said you don’t want an annoying "seatbelt alert".

Figure 4: Source: SAP

By default is uses a Derby database which is OK if you have a small system.  The Derby database need to be manually refreshed.

He said to move to the audit database, as it is more robust for backup and failover.

General Suggestions

Figure 5: Source: SAP

When doing promotion management and you have recurring jobs and you move it over – look at object and calculate dependencies.  A schedule maybe brought over without its dependencies and you get some failed instances.

Figure 5 shows failed instances.   To work around this, disable adaptive job server when promote recurring job.

Figure 6: Source: SAP

Figure 6 shows something obvious but John said you would be amazed how many people are not doing this. He said to look at the admin guide and backup what is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 7: Source: SAP

Figure 7 shows Hot backup. What happened before this feature, you start the backup, and user is doing actions and now you have an inconsistent system.  This feature takes a snapshot in time for the backup.  Maximum duration is higher than the maximum number you have.

Figure 8: Source: SAP

John said Figure 8 seems obvious: people run out of database space.  You can have some corrupt records in database and lead to problems which are difficult to diagnose.  He suggested enable auto grow.  “Do not corrupt your database by running out of space”.

To be continued…

Subset of Question & Answer

Q: How does monitoring dashboard would affect the system performance?

A: 5 to 10% - not sure; depends on watches set up - suggest it up and test out

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Q: Is the Hot backup and HOT restore is recommended for BI 4.1? I remember that, from BI4.0 Hot backup is ok, but never heard about HOT Restore? Please advise?

A: Definitively recommended.

If you are an ASUG member, ASUG is having a webcast dedicated to BI4.1 Monitoring and Auditing on November 12 - register here.

Related Links:

BI4.1 System Configuration Wizard

BI4.1 System Configuration Wizard - Video

BI4.1 Admin Best Practices – System Configuration Wizard - ASUG Webcast, Part 1

Admin Guide