Cognos Planning 8.4.1 on Windows Server 2008 vs Windows Server 2003?

[jeffowentn]

Anyone have any knowledge or experience of issues with using Windows Server 2008 with the new Cognos Planning 8.4.1?  We are getting ready to start the upgrade and would like to use the latest and greatest Cognos and OS, if there are no major issues, particularly since the client rarely does upgrades - now's our one chance for a number of years.

[jeffowentn]

Anyone know if we can use Windows 2008 for EP Job Servers? 

Can we use R2 or do we have to use a 32-bit version of Windows 2008?

Is there any benefit to having more than 4Gb of RAM for this role, depending on what version of Windows 2008 we go with?

[ericlfg]

Hey Jeff,

I'm not aware of any deal breaking issues with 2K8 R2.  In fact, most clients that upgrade to 8.4.1 or 10.1 seem to be bringing the environment online with R2 servers.  You'll still want to ensure that you have roughly 2GB / processor for an EP job server, but as it's a 32bit application it will not take advantage of the additional address space available in 64 apps.  Additionally, thorough testing should be performed prior to go live to work out any issues that may not have been seen before within your environment leveraging your applications and processes...

Cheers!

[jeffowentn]

Eric - as always - great reply, and appreciate your help.

Some clarification, however.

So, there is no problem running a 32-bit app on 2008 R2?

Also, is there any advantage in having more than 4G of RAM on the server if we are only running a 32-bit app?  We are using this server as an EP Job Server.

[ericlfg]

Hey Jeff,

There is only one issue to be aware of that I've seen with R2 2K8 vs 2008 SP2.  Please see this defect:
https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1PM20589

This issue was identified in 8.4.1 and brought into 10.1 when it was being built as it's always built on the last code stream.  As the defect states, it only affects users that didn't do the install - so this might be a problem on a terminal machine.

As for the ram component, the basic calculation of 2gb per processor still applies.  Assuming your 4gb machine has 2 processors this is right in line.  If you intend to run anything else on this machine (which I wouldn't think would be a good idea), you may want to increase the amount of ram to give enough overhead when planning spins up a job.  32bit applications are limited to 2gb per process in a 32bit and 64 bit operating system.  There are some registry tweaks to increase this up to 3gb, but not supported by EP.

Hope this helps

[jeffowentn]

Eric,

It looks like 8.4.1 FP1 has addressed this issue, if I am reading this correctly.  If that is the case, we are getting ready to roll out FP3 for BI and FP2 for Planning, so this should not be an issue, right?

Also, I know we could not run with 2008 R2 on a server with Content Manager since we could not select Access Manager / Series 7 for authentication.  We had to move that machine to a dedicated BI App server to bypass that issue.  For this reason, should we consider only 2008 SP2 for any servers that will require authentication against Series 7 or for the Planning servers?  What about the Planning Job servers?

Thank you, as always, for your valuable feedback.

[ericlfg]

Hey Jeff,

The concern regarding the authentication source is valid and I have seen the same thing regarding 64 operating systems.  Off the top of my head, you may be able to get around that by ensuring that you install your CM as a 32 bit application.  There is a 64 bit CM install available and this may be the issue attempting to get a series7 namespace configured. 

So with my possible workaround of installing the CM in a 32 bit flavor, I don't know that you wouldn't be able to create a series7 namespace security component on an R2 server.  To be clear, you shouldn't be able to setup a security provider on an EP job server or Planning server that doesn't have the CM component installed, nor would you want to; other than possibly running it as a stanndby CM and disabling it as a job server if this scenario ever arose.

[jeffowentn]

Just to summarize my discussion with Eric, for the benefit of other users, we can use Win 2008 R2 on any of the servers in our environment as long as we only install 32-bit Cognos software (which really only applies to Content Manager since all else is only 32-bit).  We have to use the 32-bit software because we are still using Series 7 (Access Manager) authentication rather than Active Directory.  Hope this helps others out there.

Thanks, again, Eric, for all of your expertise!