Cognos 8.4.1 and virtual machines (VM's)?

[jeffowentn]

In the past, we've been told not to use VM's for Planning app servers and for Planning job servers.  Is this still the case?  If not, where can we use VM's in a multiple server environment?

Is there documentation from IBM's site that suggests this, since my infrastructure group is looking for doc's or they will insist I start moving everything to VM's.

Jeff

[ericlfg]

Hey Jeff,

My recommendation would be to keep any machine you expect to be running under heavy load (job processes, CM authentication processes, etc) out of VM.  Just in some testing that's been done, there appears to be about a 30% decrease in performance associated with these types of processes in VM due to the overhead with the Microsoft WoW (Windows on Windows) subsystems.

That being said, if you have no choice about having to convert some machines to VMs, you should be safe with: gateway only machines (running IIS), light user load Terminal machines serving up analyst / contributor admin pieces, application server (if no other choice, as most of the jobs here (gtp for example) are single threaded.

Obviously, some may have thoughts and reasons for and against what I've indicated.  However I would not bring a production environment out of Native machines and set it up in VM.  It's production and is likely more end user client / customer facing than a development or test environment would be.

I know I saw a document a while back pertaining to the scalability of Planning.  I believe it had one line regarding the use of VMs, but I know I haven't seen any extensive documentation, either for or against virtual machines.  Let me see if I have it and I'll reply back to this note with it.

Cheers

[RickC]

Moving to VM is now fully supported.

We have been using it for a couple years with 8.4 and it works great with significant improvements in efficiency.

[skinners666]

Worth reading this - http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10159

[ericlfg]

Worth reading this - http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10159

Nice reference.  I completely forgot I saw this back around the same time frame as 10.1 was released.  Certainly the biggest thing to take away from this proven practice document is the specific processor and configuration of the VM's running on the host machine(s).  In most cases, having 2x4 core VMs in comparison to one 8 core physical machine, improved performance.

Good luck, Jeff, whichever direction you go. :)

[jeffowentn]

Thanks for the feedback...I'll follow up if I have any questions...

[AussiePete2011]

Hi people,

Here's a link from IBM
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/cognos/infrastructure/operating_systems_and_hardware/page526.html?cmp=dwSMRT&cpb=dw&ct=dwgra&cr=twitter&ccy=zz&csr=cognosvirtuals

Cheers
Peter B

[ericlfg]

Thanks, Aussie. 

skinners666 linked to it just a few posts earlier, only it was linked from the VM site.

Cheers!

[AussiePete2011]

Hi Eric,

Damn! ;-) someone beat me to it... oh well. ;)
great minds and all that ..

Cheers
Peter B

[jeffowentn]

Thanks, everyone, for all the great feedback!  This is most helpful...

[ovo]

Has anyone who has followed this document got any real world validation and success stories?

[jeffowentn]

We've been using VM's for several different server roles in our PROD environment for a couple of months, now.  We will be looking at leveraging VM's further, as hardware is scheduled to be replaced.  The server roles currently using VM's are:

one of our gateway servers (the other will be converted to a VM by EOY
both of our planning web servers

[jeffowentn]

We are getting ready to test moving our Content Manager server and two of our three EP Job servers to VM's, in the next couple of weeks...I'll keep you posted...

[corey_hallisey]

Jeff, I'd love to hear about your virtualization experience and what sort of gotchas you ran into.

I'm about to start a virtualization on a 48-core job server farm.

Did you use VM cloning at all on your job servers?  or did you just do straight "P-to-V" (physical-to-virtual) conversion?

Thanks in advance for letting me know how it goes.

-Corey Hallisey, TransCanada Pipelines, Cognos Planning since 2004.

[jeffowentn]

Corey,

We've simply pulled the physical out of the mix, stand up a VM, and then re-install and configure the software on the VM.  So far, we have not had any problems.

In production, the following server roles have at least one, if not all servers, as a VM:

planning web server
gateway server
EP job servers

After we get out of this budget cycle, our primary CM server will be converted to a VM, as well.  As the physical machines are reaching EOL, we are moving everything to VM.

In QA, our gateway and both CM/BI servers are VM's.  The EP App/Job servers are physical, but that will change, too.

In DEV, only the EP App/Job servers are physical.  The gateway, BI, and CM servers are all VM. 

We have not done any cloning at all.  That's not to say it won't work.  We just have not tried it.  I hope this helps.  Let me know what else you need, or how else I can help.

Jeff