Migrating and moving Cognos Planning 8.4 to Cognos 10.1.1

[ArloUSA]

Hi Guys,

I'm hoping someone can help me or point me in the right direction here please!

Here's my scenario:

1) I have a new Cognos 10 BI installation with newly developed cubes / schedules all working fine.
2) I have a completely separate Cognos 8 + Planning installation with a number of Analyst applications and libraries.
3) I have a brand new Cognos 10 Planning server set up and configured with a separate content store and planning store.
4) The Cognos 8 and 10 content stores are completely separate.
5) The Analyst databases are stored on an old SQL Server which will be decommissioned, so the physical databases need to be moved to a new SQL Server.  I don't have any problem with this step as I am a SQL DBA.
6) I need to migrate the Cognos 8 Planning applications and libraries from the Cognos 8 installation to the Cognos 10 installation.

I have got this far:

1) I have run the Deployment Wizard in the Cognos 8 environment to export the libraries and applications and successfully created a deployment export folder.
2) I physically copied the C8 deployment export folder from the C8 deployments share to the C10 deployment share.
3) In the C10 Planning Contributor Administrator, I tried running the Deployment->Import function and pointed it at the folder I copied above in step 2.
4) The import gets stuck on a screen that says "Connecting to Analyst" and hangs.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Arlo.

[ericlfg]

Hey Arlo,

Is the new EP environment you're attempting to do the import into a 64 bit OS?  If so, it's likely that you:
1. Do not have a named account specified for the 2 IBM cognos services
2. You do have a named account on the IBM services, but this account did not do the install of the Cognos EP software.

The idea here is that you may be running into a known issue, whereby the account specified on the services did not do the install.  When the local anonymous system account tries to spin up the dyalog32.exe (analyst process) to get the libraries,  it errors behind the scenes due to being unable to locate specific registry keys.  So with this said:

1. Make sure you have a named account (usually a cognos service account) set on the 2 IBM cognos services.
2. Log onto the system as this named account and see if you can launch Analyst.  If it errors with the error described in the following TN, follow the steps to correct it:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21472649

The TN, at a high level, requires that you export 2 keys from the registry of the account that did the install and then you import these keys into the service account you have specified on the services.

Hope this helps.

[ArloUSA]

Hi Eric (?),

Thank you so much for the prompt and expert guidance.  I can confirm that the fix below (re registry keys) has gotten me past the "Connecting to Analyst" freeze screen.  As you are clearly a Cognos expert, could I please seek your opinion on the best approach to what I am trying to achieve.

How would you go about architecting the task I am undertaking.  I am learning on the fly here and some expert advice would be greatly appreciated.

This is a great forum and I am glad to be a newbie member of it :)

Thanks,
Arlo.

[ericlfg]

Hey Arlo,

Glad that fixed you up.

As for the migration processes, you are approaching it with the right process; by using the deployment wizard.  It's designed to move applications, macros, admin links, and libraris from one environment to another, within the same version, as well as upgrade older objects into newer versions.