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    Ray Li

    Clustering BO Edge with MSCS

    Posted by Ray Li Jun 28, 2010

    Business Objects Edge doesn’t support distribute installation for cluster, which is different from Business Objects Enterprise. However, this doesn’t mean that the user cannot benefit from clustering ability with BO Edge. In this post I will share with you how to cluster BO Edge with Microsoft Configuring Service.

    Background

    One customer has purchased Business ObjectsEdge XI3.1 standard edition, and they want us to cluster it for High Availability (HA). That’s, when one machine crashes (to be more specific, whenthe WAS such as Tomcat or any server of BO Edge crashes, when the OS crashes orwhen the network is down), the other machine can be started to take the responsibility immediately and automatically.

    Well, this is very easy to do if they were using BO Enterprise. As you know, Business Objects Enterprise has clustering ability with itself by installing BOE on multiple machines and pointing to the same CMS, either for High Availability or for Load Balance. However, it’s not the case with BO Edge, as you cannot install it on different machines while pointing to the same CMS.

    Solution

    The solution is to install BO Edge on multiple machines separately, each has its own CMS name but pointing to the same database and FileStore, and then configuring them as a cluster using Microsoft Clustering Service (MSCS), a service of Microsoft Windows.

    From the end user’s perspective, they access InfoView or CMC through the cluster name. When using Designer or Web Intelligence Rich Client, they enter the cluster name as the CMS.

    Aside from MSCS, you can also use some other ways to achieve the same goal. For example, you can use some hardware such as F5 (http://www.f5.com/) or software such as Apache for load balance, which provides a virtual IP and dispatches user requests to any node based on its performance. In our case, MSCS is chosen just because the customer has purchased Microsoft Windows 2008 Server with MSCS.

    So briefly, we need configure MSCS to make multiple machines a cluster, install BO Edge on each of the machine (node),pointing different installations to the same CMS / Audit databases and Input /Output FileRepository, and register BO services to the cluster so that MSCS can listen to and control those services.

    Steps

    In the rest of this post, I’ll show youeach step we have went through in clustering BO Edge using MSCS. If you have the same requirement but run into some problem on any step, feel free to ask mefor more information.

    1.      Configure cluster for the machines with the same hardware & software configuration using MSCS.

    This step should be done by some Windows experts. After installation, you can check the nodes from Start - All Programs –Administrative Tools – Failover Cluster Management. For details about how to configure MSCS, refer to google or Microsoft website such as  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms952401.aspx.

    Briefly, the theory with MSCS is that, only the services on one node are running (active) at a time. All the other machines are also powered on but their services are stopped. When the currently active node encounters some problems and cannot serve, MSCS observers it (by listening to its “heart beat”) and automatically switches to another node. The services on that nodeare then started automatically. As a result, there may be some delay between the time when some services on the active node are down and the time when all services on another node are up. The delay is the sum of the time required bythe MSCS to find out that the active node is down and to start up all the services on another node.

    In our case, the OS is Windows 2008 Server R2, 64-bit, with4 * 2.4G CPU and 32G Physical Memory. The delay is 1 minute or so.

    2.      Install BO Edge on each machine one by one.

    In our case, 2 machines are used to install BO Edge forfail over. Whether BO is installed on the primary or the secondary node first doesn't matter. Before installation, disable the other nodes first, through Start– All Programs - Administrative Tools. It’s not required to shutdown that machine.

    During installation, the default SIA (Server Intelligence Agent) node name is the machine name (such as pedbbo01, pedbbo02) and you need change it to a general name so that it’s not specific to any node. For example, change it to CompanyBOEdge, which is HFBOE in ourcase.

    In our case, the CMS and the Audit databases are on Oracle11 server. So during installation, choose “Advanced” and select Oracle as your database. The properties for both the CMS and the Audit databases should be the same for BO Edge in both machines – that’s, CMS on two machines share the same Oracle table space, with the same user id (for example, B3OLPADM for CMS andB3OLPADT for Audit).

    After installation of one machine, don’t make any change through CMC or CCM. Go on to install BO Edge on each other node.

    Do not go on with the following steps until BO Edge has been successfully installed on all the nodes.

    3.      Update FileStore.

    For data consistency, both installations of BO Edge should share the same FileStore by pointing to the same folders for Input / OutputFile Repository Server. By the way, during installation, we have already configured the two installations of BO Edge to share the same table spaces for CMS and audit across both installations.

    To make the FileStores (both Input and Output) share the same path for the 2 machines, follow the steps below:

    a.      Copy folder FileStore of eithernode.

    b.      Paste it in a cluster disk (forexample, Z:/FileStore).

    c.      Update the path info of theInput and the Output FileRepositoryServer through CMC.

    You can then logon to CMC of the other node. You will find that the paths of the Input / OutputFileRepositoryServer has been automatically updated to the folder in thecluster disk.

    4.      Change startup type from Automaticto Manual for Tomcat and SIA in both machines.

    BO Edge contains 2 windows services, Tomcat and SIA. We change their startup types to Manual because with clustering using MSCS, only one node is up at a time and so it is with the BO services. As a result, we don’t want BO services to start up automatically on each node.

    5.      Register services of Tomcat and SIA to the cluster.

    Much time is spent in this step. The steps are illustrated below.

    a.      Create a Service for SIA

    First, right-click the cluster name in Failover Cluster Management and select “Configure a Service or Application”, as displayed in Figure1:

                    

    Figure 1. Create a Service for SIA

     

    In the “Select Service or Application” step, select “GenericService” in the wizard and click Next, as displayed in Figure 2:

     Figure 2. Select Generic Service as Service type

     

    Then you will see a list of Windows services of that machine, the same as you see when running “services.msc” from the command line.In this step, select SIA in the “Select Service” tab.

    In the “Client Access Point” step, enter a name for theservice to something like “HFBOE” and type a IP, which is an virtual IP addressfor the end user such as 10.70.1.113, as illustrated in Figure 3:

    Figure 3. Enter a virtual IP for client access

     

    In the “Select Storage” step , select the cluster disk “Z:”which has been configured in the first step.

     

    b.      Add Resources for Tomcat

    In the previous steps we have configured SIA as a Service. In BO Edge, service Tomcat should depend on SIA so in this step, we are to add Tomcat as a resource for service SIA. To do this, select the service you have just created and click “Add a resource” to the right, as demonstrated in Figure 4:

     Figure 4. Add a resource for Tomcat to SIA

     

    And select “Generic Service” in the context menu (forTomcat). No special configuration here.

    c.      Add Dependency

    In this step we are to define the dependency order. That’s,what resource should be ready before another can be started. In our case, the dependency order should be : Service name -> IP -> Cluster Disk -> SIA-> Tomcat, meaning that the IP service and the Cluster Disk should be ready before SIA can be started, and then Tomcat.

    In the following paragraphs of this section, we will show you what we did in our case to configure the dependencies and some other properties of each resource or service.

    For the ApacheTomcat, select the service HFBOE and then resource “Tomcat”, right-click it and switch to the Dependencies tab to make it depend on SIA, as displayed inFigure 5: 

    Figure 5. Resource Tomcat should  depend on SIA

     

    And its Policy tab should be similar to Figure 6 below:

     Figure 6. Policy tab of resource Tomcat

     

    For SIA, right-click it and switch to the General tab. Remember to check “Use Network Name forcomputer name”, as displayed in Figure 7:

     Figure 7. Select "Use Network name for computer name" for SIA

     

          You may google for the meaning of this option and why wecheck it here.

    In its Dependencies tab, make it depend on the service “HFBOE”and Cluster Disk “Z:”, as displayed in Figure 8:

     

    Figure 8. SIA should depend on the Cluster Disk and the service

     

    For your information, its “Advanced Policies” tab should be similar to what’s displayed in Figure 9 below: 

    Figure 9. Advanced policies for SIA 

    For the Cluster Disk, similarly, open its Properties tab and make it depend on the “HFBOE” service as displayed in Figure 10 below.

     

         Figure 10. Cluster Disk should depend on the service.

    And in its “Policies” tab, select “If resource fails, do not restart” which means that on failure of this resource(Cluster Disk), switch to the other node without trying to restart it in thesame node. This is very important during the configuration. You can refer to Figure11 to have a look:

     

    Figure 11. Do not restart Cluster Disk if it fails

     

    As to the “HFBOE” service itself, in its “Properties” tab, make it depend on the IP Address which is also a resource, as displayed in Figure 12:

     

    Figure 12. The service itself depends on resource IP Address

     

    Also please select both nodes as the Preferred Owners, as displayed in Figure 13:

     

    Figure 13. Select both nodes as Preferred owners for the service 

    After this step, the end user should be able to access the BI portals of InfoView and CMC, or the CMS through some client tools such as Designer, Query as a Web Service or Web Intelligence Rich Client, with the cluster name or the virtual ip as the CMS name. MSCS will redirect the user to the active node, of which the user is unaware. What’s more, when one machine crashes due to a power off or network problem, MSCS will automatically activate the other node and consequently start up Server Intelligent Agent and Tomcat of it.

    6.      Test HA

    Before testing, validate the configuration through “Validate a Configuration…” command as displayed inFigure 14:

     

    Figure 14. Validate the configuration before testing it

    When the validationpasses, there’re 3 ways to test HA:

    a.      Move service to the other node.

    In this way you manually move the BO Edge services (Tomcatand SIA) from one node to the other, to test whether they can be stopped and started automatically by MSCS.

    b.      Disconnect public cable

    This way is to simulate the scenario when a network problem has occurred to the currently active node. That’s, when the machine cannot be reached over the network. To test this, find the public cable of the active node and simply pull it out.

    If the configuration is OK, MSCS will detect this and switch to the other node automatically.

    c.      Power off

    This way is to simulate the scenario when the currently active machine crashes or has been shutdown accidentally. To test this, shutdown the active node and see if BO services can be started automatically on another node.

    If the configuration is OK, MSCS will detect the power off accident and switch to the other node automatically.

     

    Still have problem with BO Edge cluster? Feel free to email me at ray.li@byinsight.com. 

    Rectangle is an advanced UI component provided by SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius) in the category of “Arts and Backgrounds”. Generally speaking, you can use it to define canvas layout such as dividing it into several parts and defining the canvas border, as displayed in Figure 1 below.

    figure1 

    Figure 1. Use Rectangles to divide canvas and define borders.

    As you can see from this figure, two Rectangle components are used to divide the canvas into 2 parts for a Label and a Pie chart, and another Rectangle is used to define the canvas size.

     

    In this post I’d like to introduce another interesting usage of Rectangle, by configuring it as the background of your dashboard. In this way you can quickly make your design better-looking and more professional with the help of a simple Rectangle component, as illustrated below:

    figure2 

    Figure 2. A simple background represented by a Rectangle component.

     

    You may think that this can be easily achieved by using some Background component. However, you will soon find out that no Background component provided by SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius) itself can do the same thing. Traditionally, you may achieve this by first drawing such an image with some complex software such as PhotoShop, then placing an Image Component onto the canvas and importing the image, and finally resizing it to make it look like the background of yourdashboard. Compared to this, using a Rectangle is much easier to do and to maintain. 

    By the way, maybe you have noticed that Iam using “SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius)” instead of “Xcelsius”. The reasonis that SAP has just rebranded Xcelsius. This post applies to any Xcelsiusedition with Rectangle available, including SAP Crystal Presentation Design(for Xcelsius Present), SAP Crystal Dashboard Design, personal edition (forXcelsius Engage) and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboard Design (for XcelsiusEnterprise). In this post we will use SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius)to refer to the product. 

     

    Briefly, the steps to use a rectangle as your dashboard background are as follows.

    1.      Drag a Rectangle component from “Art and Backgrounds” category in Components view and drop it to the canvas. Resize it according to your needs so that it’s just large enough to hold all the UI components of your dashboard.

    2.      Click to open the Property panel of the Rectangle component.

    a)    Uncheck “Enable Border” so as not to display borders, as we will use it as the background.

    b)    The Fill type is “None” by default. In our case, select “Linear(gradient)” or “Radial(gradient)” from thedrop-down list.

                 More property items become available. For example, if “Linear(gradient)”          is                selected, the Property panel is as displayed below: 

                          figure3 

                Figure 3. Properties needed to use a Rectangle as a background.

     

           c)    Add more colors along “GradientPreview” and adjust them. How to do this           will              be illustrated later. 

    3.      Click “Fit Canvas to Components”to trim off the extra unwanted spaces. 

     

    Now let’s see what we can do in step 2 c). If “Linear(gradient)” is selected, the color of each division of the rectangleis changing linearly between every 2 color points, from the left to the right. By default there’re 2 color points in “Gradient Preview”, one at the leftmost and the other at therightmost, corresponding to the colors of the Rectangle component at the leftmost and the rightmost.

    To change the color of a certain color point, click the buttonbelow the color bar in Gradient Preview to select it, and then click the color picker to choose a different color. For example, to make the rectangle change from white to black, click the first color point and change it to white, as illustrated in Figure 4 below:

    figure4 Figure 4. Steps to change the color of one color point.

     

    To move a color point, click on the color point button and hold your mouse to drag it left or right to your desired position.

     

    To add more color points, click on the color bar below “Gradient Preview”, and specify its color through the color picker. For example, if you want the rectangle area to change linearly from white to black and then to white, from left to right, you can

      i)   First, click on the color bar to add a point, and click the color picker to adjust its color. In our case, click the middle of the color bar and set it to black.

      ii)  Second, click on the last color point on the color bar (on therightmost) and change its color to white.

      iii) Third, click on the second color point and drag it to the center.

    The Rectangle and its Property panel is now as displayed in Figure 5: 

    figure5 Figure 5. Linear gradient with 3 color points.

     

    Similarly, you can add as many color points as you wish and specify their colors. The rectangle is then divided by those points into several areas. The color of each area changes gradually and linearly from the color of the lefter color point to that of the righter one. For example, after adding two more color points to the rectangle and configure the colors, the rectangle now looks as displayed in Figure 6: figure6 Figure 6. Linear gradient with 2 more color points added.

     In this figure, the first and the last points are black, the center point is white, and the other 2 are of a different color, somewhat blue.

     

    When adding more points to the rectangle, you’d better make them symmetrical for a consistent look and feel. As you can see from figure 6, the 2nd and the 4th points are of almost equal distance from the center.

     

    You may have tried but failed to find a way to delete any existing color point. Well, I don’t know why, but you can move one color point to be overlapped with another and change the color accordingly, which has the same effect as deletingit. That color point is not actually deleted – you can still drag it out.

     

    You can also set rotation angle through the Rotation spinner so that the coloris not changing horizontally, the rotation angle of which is 0 degree. This is also a very interesting and attractive feature and I like it very much. For example, when setting Rotation angle to 45 degrees (by entering 45 in thespinner component), the rectangle will be like as displayed in Figure 7. You can compare it with figure 6 to see the effect of Rotation angle.

    figure7

    Figure  7. Linear gradient with a rotation degree of 45.

     

    If you want to make the white space in the center to be larger, you can add 1 or more color points to each side of the center point and set their colors to be the same as that of the center point,which is white. For example, you can add 2 more color points surrounding the center point and make them all of color white, as displayed in Figure 8:

    figure8 Figure 8. Adding more color points of the same color to make some space larger.

     

    If you want to adjust the width of each color space, you can move any of the color points under Gradient Preview to see the change.

     

    For each color point, you can adjust its Transparency level to make its color lighter or deeper. You may want to do this for a smooth transition from one color to another.

     

    That’s all for Linear(gradient). On the other hand, if you choose Radial(gradient), the color is not changing linearly from left to right (with a rotation angle of 0 or more), but radially from the center to the borders. Consequently, the color points you added to the color bar below Gradient Preview don’t map to the rectangle from left to the right, but from the center point to the border. That’s, the first color point, which is on the leftmost of the color bar, indicates the color not of the leftmost border of the rectangle but of its center. In addition, you may have already noticed that Rotation is not available for Radial(gradient).

    Figure 9 below shows an example ofRadial(gradient):

     figure9

    Figure 9. Radial gradient with 4 color points.

    As you can see in the canvas, the center area is black defined by the first color point. It gradually changes to yellow radially from the center, which is defined by the second color point. Then it changes again from yellow to red radially, which is in turn defined by the third colorpoint. Finally, it changes from red to white, as defined by the last color point.

     

    In this short post we have seen what we can do with a Rectangle component and how. Hope it’s helpful during your dashboard development using SAP BusinessObjects/Crystal Dashboard Design.