Deploying OBIEE11g in the Enterprise (UKOUG 2012)

Deploying OBIEE 11g in the Enterprise
Mark Rittman, Technical Director, Rittman Mead
UKOUG Conference & Exhibition, Birmingham December 2012

T : +44 (0) 8446 697 995 E : enquiries@rittmanmead.com W: www.rittmanmead.com

About the Speaker

• Mark Rittman, Co-Founder of Rittman Mead
• Oracle ACE Director, specialising in Oracle BI&DW
• 14 Years Experience with Oracle Technology
• Regular columnist for Oracle Magazine
• Author of two Oracle Press Oracle BI books
• Oracle Business Intelligence Developers Guide
• Oracle Exalytics Revealed
• Writer for Rittman Mead Blog :
http://www.rittmanmead.com/blog
• Email : mark.rittman@rittmanmead.com
• Twitter : @markrittman


About Rittman Mead

• Oracle BI and DW platinum partner
• World leading specialist partner for technical excellence, solutions delivery and innovation in Oracle BI
• Approximately 50 consultants worldwide
• All expert in Oracle BI and DW
• Offices in US (Atlanta), Europe, Australia and India
• Skills in broad range of supporting Oracle tools:
‣ OBIEE
‣ OBIA
‣ ODIEE
‣ Essbase, Oracle OLAP
‣ GoldenGate
‣ Exadata
‣ Endeca


Oracle Business Intelligence 11g

• Oracle’s business intelligence platform, now at version 11.1.1.6.x
• Provides dashboards, reporting, ad-hoc analysis,
KPIs, mapping and other visualizations
• Runs standalone, or embedded in
applications, called from business processes
• Built around an enterprise semantic model
• Based on Siebel Analytics technology,
extended by Oracle since 1997


Oracle BI Applications

• Packaged version of OBIEE that includes a data warehouse, and ETL mappings,
from E-Business Suite, Siebel, SAP and Peoplesoft
• Covers areas such as Financial Analytics, HR Analytics, Sales Analytics etc
• Built on the same technology as OBIEE 11g, plus ETL and administration tools


Basic OBIEE 11g Product Architecture (Single Node Enterprise Install)

• A single install is a called an “Oracle BI Domain”
• Made up of Java components hosted in a WebLogic domain,
and Non-Java components in an Oracle Instance
• Initial install places all components on a single server,
with the system managed by Enterprise Manager
• Users access the system via a web browser (thin-client)
• Developers access via a browser (EM) and via
Windows desktop tools (BI Administrator)
• Typically one BI domain for DEV, one for TEST, one for PROD etc
• Used in conjunction with a database (for repository schemas)


Part of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g

• Oracle complete set of middleware servers and technologies
• Based around Java, SOA, Oracle WebLogic Server and non-Java technologies
• Foundation for Oracle’s applications and platforms such as Oracle Business Intelligence 11g


Deploying OBIEE 11g in the Enterprise

• Larger, “enterprise” customers may have additional requirements beyond the basic install
‣ Integrating with an external identity store such as Active Directory
‣ Implementing single sign-on, SSL or making parts of the BI system available externally
‣ Configuring the BI system for high-availability and/or failover
‣ Integrating with external monitoring and diagnostic tools, or with Oracle Enterprise Manager
‣ The ability to manage an estate of BI systems from a
central control panel, apply patching etc
• They may also want to integrate BI with their
existing “engineered systems” strategy


Integrating with External Identity Stores (OID, AD etc)

• OBIEE has a pluggable security system based around Oracle Fusion Middleware security
• Out of the box configuration stores users and groups in an embedded LDAP server
‣ Not designed for full production use, more to “get started”
• Usual strategy for enterprise customers is to connect OBIEE (via Fusion Middleware Security)
to a corporate LDAP server such as
‣ Microsoft Active Directory
‣ Oracle Internet Directory
• External directory can be “in addition” to the embedded
LDAP server, or completely replace it
• Multiple directories can be connected to OBIEE + FMW
for federated identity
• Often used in conjunction with SSO, SSL and other tools
‣ Oracle Access Manager
‣ Oracle Entitlements Server etc


How Does OBIEE 11g Connect to Active Directory, OID etc?

• Many Oracle and third-party security providers and directories are supported for OBIEE 11g
‣ See System Requirements and Supported Platforms for Oracle BI EE 11g on OTN
‣ Note - not all directories supported by FMW11g are supported by OBIEE - check the list
• Recommended approach is to use WebLogic
+ OPSS to connect to the directory
‣ Init Blocks are deprecated and are a fall-back
if WLS not possible
- Unsupported directory
- Requirement to support legacy
ID management i.e. EBS
• Configured through WebLogic Administration Console,
with AD & OID well documented


Configuring Single Sign-On and SSL for OBIEE 11g

• SSO and SSL are both configured through Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control
‣ Or can be scripted through WLST + Oracle BI Systems Management API
• A number of Oracle and third-party SSO systems are supported
• Configures the BI Presentation Server to accept pre-authorised creds. from the SSO provider


Externalizing OBIEE 11g Content Outside the Organization

• Most organizations deploy on their internal network, for internal users behind the firewall
• But some may wish to deploy OBIEE 11g for external users
‣ Make the BI system available for internal users, but on the road (via Web, via VPN etc)
‣ Make parts of it available to customers, or other external users
‣ Embed parts of it in other applications, e.g. Oracle WebCenter Portal
‣ Provide access via Oracle BI Mobile using Apple iPads, iPhones
• Security has to be a consideration though, in these scenarios


Deploying Compromisable Web Components in the Firewall DMZ

• When deploying OBIEE 11g content outside the organization, the key is to place all externally-facing
servers into firewall DMZs (firewall web tier, firewall app tier)
‣ Relies on adding an additional HTTP server (typically OHS, with WebGate and mod_wl_ohs)
‣ Typically deployed as a load-balancing pair (or more) with a hardware load balancer
‣ If HTTP server is then compromised (hacked) it doesn’t provide access to data, other systems etc
• OBIEE components then optionally placed into
a firewall App Tier
‣ Separates them from the databases
‣ Or can just be located in the regular
internal network, with everything else


Securing Oracle BI Mobile

• Oracle BI Mobile supports SSL for connections, VPN via IOS settings
• However some enterprises will still now allow applications such as these
‣ Need the applications to be sandboxed, secured separate from the mobile device
• Now supported with OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 and the Oracle BI Mobile Security Toolkit
‣ Sample code available on OTN for Apple iPad
‣ Lightweight SDK for integrating with MDM vendor of choice
• Prebuilt solutions from Good Technologies, Bitzer etc
‣ Makes it possible to deploy BI Mobile even with
very strict mobile app security rules


Configuring OBIEE 11g for High-Availability and Failover

• OBIEE 11g can be configured for HA and failover in several ways
‣ Vertical scaleout (adding components to the existing server) for BI Server etc redundancy
‣ Horizontal scaleout to add additional servers to the
WebLogic cluster (requires additional WLS EE license)
‣ Adding secondary BI Scheduler and
BI Cluster Controller components
‣ Adding failover and filesystem clustering to
protect WLS Administration Server and install/config files
• Can also extend to the underlying
databases (repository schemas)
‣ Dataguard (log shipping) and RAC
(more scale-out than HA, but can allow
rolling DB patching)
• How much HA do you need though, what sort of trade-off?


What Can Go Wrong within an OBIEE 11g Infrastructure?

• System components can fail on a single server
‣ Can protect by adding more components to the same
server, or to a separate server (active/active failover)
‣ BI Scheduler and BI Cluster Controller components
are active/passive, need to add secondary instances
• WebLogic managed servers can fail
‣ If horizontally scaled-out, WLS clustering should
take care of the fail, restarting if possible
• Java components within a managed server can fail
‣ Again, WLS should take care of these
• WebLogic administration server can fail
‣ Users can still log in if LDAP virtualization enabled,
and an external LDAP provider is configured


OBIEE 11g Enterprise Deployment Guide Infrastructure

• Adds additional redundancy and failover for
mission-critical BI systems
• Deploys HTTP servers in a DMZ for security
• Multiple redundant installs of
WLS administration server
• WLS installation and configuration files
on a cluster filesystem
• Use of VIPs, VHosts and other standard
abstraction / virtualization techniques
• Ultimate in resilience, but complex to set up and
configure (though possible, and documented)


Monitoring and Systems Maintenance

• OBIEE 11g by default comes with two web-based consoles
• Oracle WebLogic Administration Console manages WebLogic, including the LDAP server and WLS servers
• Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control manages Fusion Middleware, including
Oracle Business Intelligence 11g
‣ Some overlap in functionality
‣ Only manages a single BI domain
‣ No advanced alerting or other EM features


Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12cR2 BI Management Pack

• Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12cR2 is the “full” deployment of EM
• Monitors databases, application servers, many other infrastructure components
• Plug-ins for non-Oracle tools
• Now supports OBIEE, Essbase and BI Apps through
the BI Management Pack (extra license cost)
• Set alerts, monitor service levels,
monitor usage tracking etc
• Perform wider WLS / FMW activities such
as cloning domains, patching etc
• Also covers OBIA ETL elements, and
some Essbase metrics


Open-Source / Home-Grown Solutions : Nagios

• Free and/or open-source tools such as Nagios can be configured to monitor OBIEE functions
• Enterprise monitoring tools such as those by BMC can parse OBIEE’s ODL-format log files and raise alerts
• Other tools can monitor WebLogic
servers, restart them if needed
• Open-format logs plus standard
hooks into WLS and OPMN
functionality make most monitoring
possible with a bit of work


Oracle’s Hardware and Software Strategy : Engineered Systems

• Purpose-built engineered systems for large-scale data analysis
• Oracle Exadata for filtering and advanced analytics against large relational data sets
• Oracle Big Data Appliance supporting Oracle NoSQL, R and Apache Hadoop

Any Data,
Any Source Oracle Exadata Oracle Big Data Appliance


Oracle Exalytics : First In-Memory Engineered System for Analytics

• Relational, Multi-Dimensional and Unstructured data analysis available as a single engineered system
• Combination of in-memory hardware and optimized software versions
• Supports the Exadata and Big Data Appliance data management systems

Exalytics
Spans Relational, Multi-Dimensional, and Unstructured analysis,
In-Memory
combined with Financial & Operational PlanningIn-Memory Optimized HardwareIn-Memory Oracle BI, TimesTen, Essbase, and En
Machine
‣Tightly-Integrated with Exadata, and
Big Data Appliance
Tightly-Integrated with Exadata, and
Big Data Appliance


More Information

• Thank you for attending this presentation, and more information can be found at http://www.rittmanmead.com
• Contact us at info@rittmanmead.com or mark.rittman@rittmanmead.com
• Look out for our book, “Oracle Business Intelligence Developers Guide” out now!
• Follow-us on Twitter (@rittmanmead) or Facebook (facebook.com/rittmanmead)


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