Lifecycle Management...From Scratch!

Lifecycle Mangement: Lifecycle Management provides a consistent way to migrate an application, a repository, or individual artifacts across product environments and operating systems.We can migrate application artifacts using Shared Services Console or Lifecycle Management Utility. Lets keep our focus on shared services console for LCM (about utility.bat in next post).The Lifecycle Management interface in Shared Services Console is consistent for all EPM System products that support Lifecycle Management but here i will try to keep it restricted to Planning.

Lifecycle Management provides these features:

·         Viewing applications and directories

·         Searching for artifacts

·         Migrating directly from one application to another

·         Migrating to and from the file system

·         Saving and loading migration definition files

·         Viewing selected artifacts

·         Auditing migrations

·         Viewing the status of migrations

·         Importing and exporting individual artifacts for quick changes on the file system

Migrating Scenarios:

1. When the source and destination appicaltions are registered with the different instance of Shared Services, i.e. when source and destination servers are on different environments,ex: you are migrating applications from Dev to Test, Test to Prod etc.

2. When the source and destination applications are registered with the same instance of Shared Services, Ex: Copy an application within an environment.

Things to be noted:

1. Always take a backup of the destination application before using LCM.

2. The source and destination environments must use the same release number. For example,if you use release 11.1.1.1 of Shared 

Services to export artifacts, you must import using release 11.1.1.1. Using different releases to export and import artifacts is 

not supported.

3. Lifecycle Management migration fails for artifacts and folders with the same name as a

Windows-reserved name; for example, CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, and so on.

4. We cannot migrate data using LCM.

5. Its just a logical backup cant be considered a complete backup.

Ex: Lets Migrate the App1 Planning Application from one environment to other: 

1. Log into Shared services, under Application Groups select the application which you want to migrate, once done select the artifacts, for ease of migration i clicked on select all.

2. When you click on define migration it will take you to the migration wizard,

3. Because I want to migrate my application to a different environment I need to take a file system back up of the App1 Application, there is no need to give the location, it will automatically be stored at the pre defined location(we can set this location as well, more in detail later). The default location is: Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\import_export\<userName>@Native Directory\<FileSystemBackupNameGivenAtTheTimeOfMigration> in this case it will be: Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\import_export\admin@Native Directory

4. Confirm the destination options and option summary, hit next,

5. You can save the migration definition file for future use, and click on Define Migration,

6. You can click on Launch Migration Status Report to check the status of the migration, it will take you to the following window,

7. Migration will take some time and this time depends on the size of the application, you can click on the refresh button to refresh the status of migration. After you see the completed status you can find the file system back up under the File System Folder under Application Group Management,

9. If you want to have a look at the folder which is created you can check at location specified above, if you are on distributed environment you will find this folder on the Foundation Services' Server

10. Here we are done with the export, now we need to copy this file system backup to our destination server (at Foundation Services' Server if its a distributed environment) at the exact same location. A point to be noted here is if you havent performed any LCM migration on the destination server then import_export folder will not be there, In other words import_export folder is not present by default, we need to manually create this folder if its not present at the destination server. 

11.  Lets go to our destination environment, because its a new environment there is no import_export folder under user_projects, same will be the case with shared services, you wont find any backup under FileSystem,

12. Now lets create a folder and copy the file system backup to destination server at the same location, now if we login to shared services again we will find this folder under File System,

13. Create a Shell Application on the destination server and make sure that the shell is exacly same as the source application, i.e. new shell should have the same starting year, number of years, period dimension type, plan types etc. (I assume that you can created a shell application with Name TgtApp1). Always create database for a new application before you migrate the application. Note: you can use Application Definition.xpad file to create the same base shell application location, as per our example: Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\import_export\admin@Native Directory\DevBkup09092011_11_28AM\resource\Configuration\Properties.

14. Now we need to perform an import on the destination server, this time select DevBackup0909201111_28AM under the file system, and select all artifacts, 

15. Now in Migration Wizard this File System backup will be your source and TgtApp1 will be your target application. You need to be very careful when you choose source and destination otherwise this will screw other applications if you chosen anything wrong.

16. Once done you can check Migration summary to ensure the complete migration. 

Congratulations !!! you have migrated your application.

Little Details:

Till version 11.1.1.x LCM runs a separate java process, now from version 11.1.2 it shares the same jvm with shared services so theoretically the chances of error is reduced because now there is no transfer of info from one to other.

The export gented using LCM is basically divied into two folders Info and resouce, Info contains two xml files, listing.xml and sourceInfo.xml. listing.xml contains information about the folders and resources which are present in the resouce folder. sourceInfo.xml contains the information about the Name, Product type,version, Application Group etc  of the source application.

.

 Here is the sample Source Info File

Resource folder contains  Configuration, Global Artifacts, Plan Type, Relational Data, Security folders (Its the same order in which we defined the migration). As mention earlier as well Application Definition.xpad can be used to create the exactly same target shell application, all the data load settings, user preferences and user variables are the part of this configuration folder.

Global Artifacts folder contains the information regarding spread patterns.

Plan Type folder contains sub folders for all the plantypes and each folder contains the information on Data Forms, Calc Scripts etc.

Relational Data folder contains information on Account Annotations, Cell Texts, Planning Units, Supporting Details etc.

At last security folder conatins information on Access Permissions for the users.

Logs: Lcm logs can be checked at Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\EPMSystem\servers\FoundationServices0\logs\SharedServices_LCM.log or at migration folder under Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\diagnostics\logs. Here is the sample of one of the migrations:

 As you can see it the order of exports goes as User Variables, preferences, data load settings, Application settings, definition etc and its imported in the same order.

If you want to copy applications with in same environment, then you need to create shell application on the same environment and during migration instead of using file system you can directly select source as you base application and target application as your newly created shell application. 

Few known issues and helpful docs realted to LCM:

Error Exporting Dimensions using LifeCycle Management: 'Access to 'C:\Temp\JobManagerAttachments denied' (Doc ID 1266015.1)

Security Migration using Lifecycle Management or Security Refresh for Planning Application Fails (Doc ID 1350212.1)

How to Migrate an EPMA Planning Application Using LCM (Doc ID 1202463.1)

Migration Failed: CLU Process Exited Without Updating MSR Report. (Doc ID 1316905.1)

Migrated using LCM Some Forms Give an Error: "The Data Form is invalid. Check Log For Details" (Doc ID 972825.1)

LCM Migration of Planning Artifacts "Unable to obtain a connection to Hyperion Essbase. If this problem persists, please contact your administrator" (Doc ID 1287375.1)

LCM Utility Fails with Error :"Failed To Update Entity Members" (Doc ID 1300777.1)

Cheers...!!!