BI 4.x server migration from 2008 to 2016 and how to get the content to new server from old server

Note: This is not an in-pace upgrade of the server OS. Completely new servers with new names.

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Use case: IT decided to upgrade all of the BO servers  from 2008 servers  to 2016 servers.  So we had to migrate to new BO servers.

Main intention of this blog post is not about how to install BO. Main focus on this blog post is how to move the content from BO 2008 SERVERS to 2016 servers.

Steps :

Prerequisites to go live:

1. Build a new server 2016 system with BO version same as what you have in Server 2008.
2. If the CMS DB is Oracle, make sure to install oracle client 12c on server 2016 servers.
3. Install BO. Prepare the BO system.

How to move the content in Bulk to new servers:

Initially I decided to move the content using Promotion Management Wizard tool (PMW) thick client which is introduced with 4.2 SP5. I would not recommend  to use this tool , if you are migrating large amount of content. This tool did not work for us migrating about 60k users/groups (All  are enterprise users) and about 30k reports and universes.  But it works great in our QA environment which did not have that much content.

Tool got hung at the summary page and calculating dependencies for long time and also promoting the content. We wasted close to 24 hours. Tool is doing something by looking at the CPU and Memory usage, but no logs are generated to see what exactly is going on even though I enabled high level traces. So I strongly suggest not to use PMW tool for larger promotions. I tried to split the job to smaller chunks, users separate, still issue exists.

Note: 4.2 SP5 version of the tool has issue migrating top level security, Application security and dependencies etc. So avoid using SP5 version of PMW. Suggest to use 4.2 SP6 and above. You can migrate the content with higher version even though your source and destination BO versions 4.2 SP5 and below.

Since PMW tool did not work, I opted for CMS DB schema pointing to new servers. Below are the steps I followed . This process is similar to DR exercise if the server names are different for source and destination.

Note: There are many blogs talked about how to setup DR , but I found, some of the key pieces missing . I thought I will put together all the steps we did, so the process will go smoothly.

1. Stop SIA and Tomcat in source and destination environment
2. Take cold Backup CMS DB schema and File store (Source DB schema and Source FRS)
3. Create a new blank CMS schema for Destination environment
4. Open CCM on destination environment (2016 servers)
5. Right click on SIA and properties. Click on Tab “Configuration”.
6. 
7. Click on “Specify”. Select “Copy Data from another data source”
8. 
9. 
10. Select specify “Get data from” and enter source CMS DB credentials
11. “Copy to the following data source” and browse and enter the Destination schema which was created in Step#3 . This copy process long time about an 1 hour to copy source to destination depending on how big your CMS DB.
12. Change the cluster name to new name, different from Source environment.
13. If the CMS DB is in oracle DB, login to PL/SQL developer or any SQL tool, run the below command to clean up all the old system server references

delete from cms_infoobjects7 where parentid=16 or parentid=59;

Commit;

14. Now we have to cleanup SIA in the destination environment manually.

15. Open services in Windows environment . Look for SIA in the services list, open the properties and get the service name.

16. Open command prompt. Run below command.

a. sc delete “Service name” got from services \SIA properties

b. delete all the bootstrap and dbinfo files in “D:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\win64_x64” related to SIA.
(Otherwise SIA will not be created.)

17. Repeat the same steps 14-16 in all the nodes in BO, Lumira and explorer nodes.

18. If explorer installed in a separate node , CCM will not be there in the application shortcuts. Browse to “D:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\win64_x64” look for svcmgr.exe , take a shortcut and place it on the desktop.

19. On each node, perform below steps to add new SIA.

20. On the CCM, click on “Add node”

21.

21. Add Node name, SIA port (6410), select “Add node with default servers”

22.

23. Select “Start a new temporary CMS”

24.

25. Enter “New CMS port” as 6400

26. Click on Specify “ Enter the destination Environment CMS DB schema”

27. It will create new SIA with default servers.

28. Start the SIA to make sure CMS and other servers are added.

29. Make sure new SIA is pointing to new cluster, not to the source environment cluster and also make sure there are no remote servers SIA entries of the source system

30. Repeat the same steps 20-29 in all the nodes BO, explorer and Lumira

31. Start the all the services and point FRS to backup copy of FRS

 Now your 2016 system has all the data of source system. Ready to go live with necessary testing is done.

Note: Make sure your source environment is down until all the steps are complete  until                             Step#29