Planning a deployment of Cognos 8

[djgizz]

Hi, new to the forum but it has answered a few of my questions already, but I have a few more if anyone can help?

I have been asked to design an implementation of Cognos BI 8 and wondered if any one can point me in the right direction of any documentation for scoping things like memory and cpu and disk configurations? I haven't had much luck looking as most of this information seems to be in the support.cognos.com site which I have no access to  :(.

Basically I need to design a system that will build about 15 cubes currently and will expand to about 35 - 40. At present it is just for BI but the planning module is looking to be introduced on to whatever hardware is purchased in the next 6 months or so.

From the info I have found it looks like it is 2 bibuses per processor core, each bibus uses between 1 & 2Gb ram, a JVM (which I guess will need to have 1024 of ram). The bit I am really sketchy on is what is the best disk configuration for building cubes, Am I right in thinking they are built on the app server? I am looking at a three tier implementation, web, app and db.

Can you cluster the BI App, I was wondering if I can build a physical and virtual, but only use the physical for processing unless it has a hardware fault and then we have some HA all be it less power in a virtual machine?

I was looking at 64bit Win2K3 Ent & SQL 2005 and 32bit Win2K3 Ent for the app server.

I am looking at a virtual machine for the web server, and two HP DL585's with four quad core processors. RAM and disk configuration still to be decided.

Any help and feedback would be very much appreciated.

[ducthcogtechie]

i would start with 16 gig memory and enough storage for twice the size of your cubes.
Store the cubes on each server. (for performance and fail over)

[djgizz]

Thanks dutchcogtechie,

Does anyone have any info on best disk configurations? For example should I install the app on the same disks as the OS? Should I have a seperate raid 5 for building the cubes? Is there any logging that goes on like in SQL and do I need to seperate set of spindles for that?

[SanderH]

Have you already read the Cognos Architecture and Planning guide?

http://support.cognos.com/supported/docs/en/cognos8_bi/8.1.1/crn_arch.pdf

[djgizz]

Have you already read the Cognos Architecture and Planning guide?

http://support.cognos.com/supported/docs/en/cognos8_bi/8.1.1/crn_arch.pdf

Like I said in my first post I don't have access to this area, and no I have not been able to find another copy of this pdf in an unsecured place  :-[. I think it is very short sighted of Cognos to deny access to all this very useful planning documentation to people that have not signed up with them for support.

[ducthcogtechie]

Before you hand over the cash for that cardboard box of software you can ask the Cognos sales rep or business partner for a sizing for your environment.
Is that an option?