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shankarsgs
Contributor

This is part II of the series following the explanation of the components and their internals. Read SAP BI: Key aspects of designing fault-tolerance BO system – Part I

CMS and BO Services

CMS and BO Services is the core of the BO platform and consists of the CMS and all its related services.  It is usually installed as single node cluster or group of nodes in the same cluster.

Infrastructure

BO Servers usually require more memory and processing based on the services that are running in them. The servers are created with this in mind and usually has high speed memory. Servers are usually kept in same rack or close rack if all of them are physical servers

Checklist

  • Capacity like memory, processor are sufficient for running the servers.

Network

The servers are on the same network and can communicate with each other. The necessary ports are opened by firewall and high speed network connection are provided because each of the services needed to communicate between the servers.

Checklist

  • Firewall exceptions are added to enable communication between the servers

Operating System

All the necessary pre-requisite software like .NET framework, etc. are installed before performing the BO installation. Operating system level tweaks like disabling the Volume shadow service, editing the registry in case of Windows or using Tuned profiles in case of Linux are performed to ensure smooth operation with the BO system.

Checklist

  • Necessary pre-requisite is performed before the BO installation

BI Platform

BI Platform installation is proceeded with the necessary services. There are two main things that are done as post configuration. The BI Sizing and the APS splitting. This helps the BO system to do scaling in the node. One of the recommended practise is to install/start only the services that are needed and turn off the remaining services.

Checklist

  1. BI Sizing and APS Splitting are performed
  2. Services are started and running

Web Application

The web application contains the web files for the BO. It can be installed along with the Built-in Tomcat or other Web Application containers. This hosts the Launchpad App and the CMC app and also servers the application with OpenDoc in the browser.

Infrastructure

The Web Server has high memory to support the increase number of connections and the sockets. It is usually sized based on the number of users and the web server that is used.

Checklist

  • Memory capacity of the server is as per the sizing of the web server

Network

Web requests are load balanced using a HTTP load balancer which then forwards the request to the web servers. Firewall rules are enabled to allow the traffic in the load balancer to the web server. The load balancer should be configured with the necessary setting to allow the session management for the BO server.

Checklist

  • Firewall exception is added and port is open on the Load balancer
  • Requests are routed to the Web server from the Load balancer
  • Session are managed properly by the web server

Web Server

The Web server is configured as a cluster. The session and storage are maintained between them so that if one of the web server is down, the other handles the request of the same. Additional configuration like the request size and the port configuration are done.

Checklist

  • Firewall exception is added and port is open on the Load balancer
  • Requests are routed to the Web server from the Load balancer
  • Session are managed properly by the web server

BI Platform

SSO and other configuration like application name, Authentication, etc. are configured in the BI Platform configuration files. These depend on the implementation type and are done on the need basis and the application is deployed using WDeploy tool.

Checklist

  • BI Application configuration are performed
  • Applications are deployed using WDeploy

Conclusion

Every implementation is unique, but the above remains the basic concept for all of it. I hope this gives a very brief idea of what is going on inside the hood of a typical BI system. A well planned implementation often focus on the above before doing the actual implementation.

Happy Implementation!!

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