Installing Cognos 10 alongside 8

[shof2k]

Hello,
Has anyone tried installing 10 alongside 8.4? 

I've been advised it should run in parallel and I'm hoping to test that in a few weeks but advice and comments are welcome.  I'll summarise my findings when I'm done.

[MFGF]

Hi,

Just use the same approach as you would if installing concurrent versions of Cognos 8 - ie use different port numbers, a different content store and make sure the virtual directories have different names (although they should do if you follow the install guide as IBM advises you to use 'ibmcognos' for C10 installations).

Cheers!

MF.

[josepherwin]

This is called Multiple version environment.

I believe all your user should start accessing through Cognos 10 portal, however some of your report may still be running on Cognos 8.

see here for further details: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/cbi/v10r1m0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.swg.im.cognos.crn_nf.10.1.0.doc/crn_nf_id957multiversion_nf.html

[shof2k]

As promised.  I now have a side by side configuration set up.  Overall it was straightforward with the following points to note:

1)  Make sure all the C8 and C10 ports are different.  This includes the dispatchers and the shutdown port.  Only the web port of 80 should be common. 
2)  There should be no JAVA_HOME variable set.  We had this as part of C8 Go Dashboard, but this causes C10 to try and use the C8 java.  https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21367461 explains.

I'm migrating content and will give an update later.

Regards,

[MFGF]

Thanks for the update.  Good luck with the migration! :)

[IceTea2]

I believe all your user should start accessing through Cognos 10 portal, however some of your report may still be running on Cognos 8.

see here for further details: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/cbi/v10r1m0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.swg.im.cognos.crn_nf.10.1.0.doc/crn_nf_id957multiversion_nf.html

I know that this is a new feature but i have no clue how i can to this / achieve this setting. Can anyone give me a hint?

[cognosfan]

I installed Cognos10 and Cognos8 in different locations and created different virtual directories on IIS7
I followed all instructions
Everything was OK until I tried to turn both of them to cognosisapi.dll instead of cognos.cgi
Only one gateway (cognos8 or cognos10) can work at  the moment.
Another gateway returns http 500 error
To switch from 8 to 10 or from 10 to 8 you can just rename ISAPI-mapping item in ISS and apply it.


I had to turn back cognos.cgi on one gateway

Have you met this gateway conflict ?

Thanks

[sir_jeroen]

Put them both in seperate IIS Application pools. Then it should work (if all other steps are correct)

[mmg_dave]

Hi All,

with the multi-version coexistence feature mentioned above, has anyone used this or seen it working? I havent been able to find any further documentation about it and have spoken to IBM and apparently the documentation is still being created. I'm really keen to try it out but was hoping to find some more info.

cheers,

Dave

[shof2k]

Put them both in seperate IIS Application pools. Then it should work (if all other steps are correct)

Ah, that worked a treat.  Both my environments are now running via isapi, thanks.

[sir_jeroen]

You're welcome

[pargol4]

As promised.  I now have a side by side configuration set up.  Overall it was straightforward with the following points to note:

1)  Make sure all the C8 and C10 ports are different.  This includes the dispatchers and the shutdown port.  Only the web port of 80 should be common. 
2)  There should be no JAVA_HOME variable set.  We had this as part of C8 Go Dashboard, but this causes C10 to try and use the C8 java.  https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21367461 explains.

I'm migrating content and will give an update later.

Regards,

I have a hard time believing that just by having the JAVA_HOME variable set would cause a problem.  I believe the problem is that you have JAVA_HOME set to your IBM Cognos-delivered Java version, which may not be compatible with IBM Cognos 10. 

Try installing the Sun Java Development Kit, which also includes a Java Runtime Environment, and set your JAVA_HOME variable to that.

I currently have 6 different versions(8.1.2, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.4.1, and 10.1) of Cognos installed and can run any combination(as long as my laptop doesn't burn up). 

As others have posted, you need to make sure you create separate Application Pools in IIS, and have each of them using different sets of ports.  Defaulting all of them to 80 is never a good idea.

You can also add separate Web Service Extensions, naming them inline with the IBM Cognos version, so as not to have the problem another poster mentioned about changing to isapi.

On another note, I do have Apache running as well.  I can switch between IIS and Apache pretty much at will.

[e3k]

i have a simmilar issue. which config file do i need to change for changing the ports??

my problem is that i run cognos inside jboss on a multihoming machine but cognos binds regardless to the bind settings of jboss to all interfaces which results in conflicts..

[blom0344]

We have many cases where 2  Cognos instances (8.4.x) are running on the same machine. This is no problem with a 4Gig server. We just installed Cognos 10 along an existing Cognos 8.4.1. instance.  Performance is quite a bit worse than usual. Does Cognos 10 require a lot more resources? Anyone any experience in this matter?

[Suraj]

We have many cases where 2  Cognos instances (8.4.x) are running on the same machine. This is no problem with a 4Gig server. We just installed Cognos 10 along an existing Cognos 8.4.1. instance.  Performance is quite a bit worse than usual. Does Cognos 10 require a lot more resources? Anyone any experience in this matter?

I have 4 instances in one machine.
2 for 8.4 (2nd instance of reporting services) and 2 for C10.
All are running great. Didn't see any performance issues.
It's on a 64-bit machine with 16gb RAM.
So far we are liking C10 better on the report runs due to slightly better performance.
Your issue could be due to CPU usage.

[butcher]

Hi everyone,

I'm new at this community and i'd like first to thank you people for all your help and advices.

We have installed Cognos 10.1.1 (64 bit version) with Interim Fix Pack 1 along aside with Cognos 8.4.1 FP2. Machine is 64-bit,  10GB RAM and with Intel dual 2.27 GHz processor. Although RAM usage is acceptable (around 3.5 - 4 GB) CPU usage is usually very high. One BibusTKServerMain.exe*32 is nearly always active and consumes 50% CPU and sometimes another BibusTKServerMain.exe*32 rises to the other 50%, so CPU stands on 100% and performance decreases very much.

We have checked both processes and are both from the Cognos 10 installation. We have killed both of then out from working hours and have rebooted the machine, but behaviour stays as stated before. Any clues on how to improve this performance?

Very thankful in advanced.

[shof2k]

...Intel dual 2.27 GHz processor. ...

Is your machine a dual core (2 graphs in task manager) machine?  Although I can't speak for the 64bit versions, the 32bit versions were always stressed with 2 core servers. We found that 4 was the minimum for any real world usage.

[butcher]

Exactly, the machine is dual core.

How could we make Cognos to use only one core or no more than 50% of the total usage of the CPU?

Thanks.

[shof2k]

Exactly, the machine is dual core.

How could we make Cognos to use only one core or no more than 50% of the total usage of the CPU?

Thanks.

I don't know of any way of restricting cognos, perhaps your windows people know of a way.

The solution we used was to get a bigger, 4 core server.

[MFGF]

The only way I know of restricting to a single core is virtualisation. I would suggest that CPU is your bottleneck here, and restricting a VM to a single core would exacerbate your performance problems. A more modern CPU is the only viable solution I think.

Regards,

MF.

[pricter]

I have installed 8.4.1 on a machine and 10.1.1.
I have create two virtual directories in the server.
They use different ports except the 80 in the cognos configuration
8.4.1 uses cgi and 10.1.1 uses isapi
My problem is that when I type the address of the 10.1.1 it brings me the 8.4 ?

Any idea how could I overcome this issue?