Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1.1 Hardware
Category
Note
Firmware
•  most modern hardware is a mixture of hardware and software. That
software is called firmware or microcode. you will find firmware
in everything from processors to host bus adaptors to network
switches. Firmware defects can cause very interesting issues, which
are more likely to manifest in newly released products. your
infrastructure teams should ensure the firmware is up to date in the
systems they support and patch the hardware as necessary before
installation and on an on-going basis.
Server hardware
•  having a basic understanding of server hardware will help you
speak intelligently to the teams that support the server
infrastructure and hopefully speed resolution time for hardware
issues.
•  The Windows Blue Screen of Death or a unix kernel Panic can
usually be traced to faulty components, such as memory, internal
hard disk, or poorly written device drivers (video and printers in the
case of Windows operating systems).
•  Experience handling hardware components using the proper
techniques, such as use of an antistatic wrist strap is critical. Static
damage to components can occur very easily when the incorrect
procedures are used to install memory, hard disks, video cards, or
even replacement motherboards. Damaged components may not
immediately cause issues and/or cause intermittent, hard to
diagnose issues.
Storage Subsystems:
•  Internal
•  Direct Attached
•  network Attached
•  Storage Area network
•  The most common issue with storage systems is performance-
related. you should be able to run benchmarking on the storage
systems and discuss times of high utilization and ask probing
questions about the storage architecture.
•  troubleshooting tools include: Iozone (All), iostat (unix), Atto's
Diskbenchmark (Windows), and Perfmon (Windows).
network
•  Load Balancers
•  Firewall
•  routers
•  Switches
•  Firewall issues are generally encountered during the installation
phase. Avoid basic architecture issues caused by your hyperion
relational server being distant (> 10 miles) from your other
hyperion application servers for a given environment.
•  troubleshooting tools include: telnet, Ping, and Wireshark.
Linux on  Intel ® hardware is becoming more and more accepted in corporate It
organizations.
Based on surveys on my blog and data, I have gathered over the past four years the
percentage basis of hyperion installations is depicted in table 1.3
1.3.4 Number of Environments
A good practice is to maintain at least two separate environments: Development
and Production. A Fortune 500 Essbase implementation almost always has at least
three environments: Development, Quality, and Production. Why do we have mul-
tiple environments? multiple environments support proper management of an
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