Going to the IBM Cloud

Ideas and tips for enhancing your TM1 application
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tomok
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Going to the IBM Cloud

Post by tomok »

I haven’t seen this anywhere so since we recently went through a conversion to the IBM Cloud I thought I would put together a little writeup of what to expect if you also go to the IBM Cloud.

Here’s what you get for each instance (standard is one for PRD and one for DEV):
  • TM1 server with 64GB of RAM. If you need more you can request it but it costs more.
  • SAN drive with 1TB of space.
  • Your TM1 server has access to this SAN drive using a share called “s”. Your TM1 is installed here and is under a folder called “prod”. Under prod you will have a folder for each TM1 server instance you have installed. The base server you get is called “tm1” so there is a folder in this path called tm1 and your tm1s.cfg file is here. Under that are the folders “data” and “logs”, which should be self explanatory. The default service has IntegratedSecurity mode as 1. You can change to to 5 and use CAM if you want. To do that you have to work with IBM to link your AD to what they call “Federated Security” which works like CAM. To log into TM1 with this you have to enter your Federated ID (your IBM ID) and password and then that talks to your AD and let’s you in if they match.
  • RDP access to another server that has Architect and Perspectives on it. You are allowed to map a drive to the “s” share from above in order to get access to your logs, modify the tm1s.cfg and copy files into or out of the data folder. This RDP access has one login for each Admin license you have, each with a different password. Also, there is a separate RDP for each instance (DEV, PRD, etc.).
  • FTP access to the “s” share on the SAN so you can copy files back and forth to/from the cloud.
  • Access to a tool called Cognos Command Center (CCC) which can automate the copying of files to/from the Cloud as well as run TM1 chores. This tool requires a server on your end for the client piece of this.
  • Access to a “Secure Gateway” server in the Cloud that provides secure communications between your ODBC sources and the Cloud. This tool also requires a server on your end for the client piece.
  • A “Welcome Kit” PDF document that has all your IDs. The RDP IDs, the TM1 Server Admin password, and the fileshare (for the SAN) password.
So that’s the basic setup. Here are a few facts/gotchas/interesting points you need to consider with the IBM Cloud (in no apparent order):
  • You cannot setup your own TM1 services. If you want another service (and there are no restrictions on how many you can have other than RAM limitations) you have to create a ticket with IBM Support and they will create it for you. This will result in another folder on the “s” share for your new service and you will also get a new welcome kit PDF with the Admin password for your new service.
  • The Federated/AD security setup (IntegratedSecurity mode 5) only allows the synching of user IDs. You cannot link groups which means you still have to have local groups in TM1 and manually assign users to those. To add new users you have to “invite” them via PAW. The user gets an email with a link where they can accept the invitation and they will become a user after first login. During this invitation you specify whether they should have access to PRD, DEV or both.
  • Your users will no longer be able to have Architect/Perspectives. Only the admins with RDP access to the IBM server will be able to use those. Users will have to switch to PAX or use TM1Web.
  • Your ODBC access through the secure gateway will likely be a heck of a lot slower than when you were on-premise. It’s impossible to say exactly how much slower because there are so many factors involved. In our case the throughput was about a 1/4th of what it was on-premise. Loads that took 15 minutes from Oracle took over an hour. IBM Support was zero help on this. We ended up switching all our major loads to running off flat files. We created jobs that dumped the records from the Oracle tables into a flat file and used Cognos Command Center to FTP it up to the Cloud and kick off the TI process to load it. Huge improvement in performance.
  • Migrating from on-premise to the Cloud was pretty seamless except for user specific views and subsets. The folder setup for that is different in Planning Analytics than it was in TM1 10.2.2 AND you don’t know exactly what the folder name will be until the user logs in to TM1 for the first time. For this reason we were not able to migrate the user views and subsets in one process. We had to migrate every single person separately. A royal PITA.
  • When you migrate your Data folder to the Cloud don’t forget to migrate your Log folder as well if you want to be able to query those old transactions from TM1.
  • You can map the “s” share from your DEV server on your PRD RDP instance and vice versa. However, it is a little different as you have to use the IP address in the mapping when you are going cross-instance. This is real convenient for promoting changes from DEV to PRD.
  • You lose the capability to change settings in TM1Web yourself. All those keys you can add/alter to make TM1Web perform differently have to be done via a ticket to IBM Support
Last edited by tomok on Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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PavoGa
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Re: Going to the IBM Cloud

Post by PavoGa »

Good stuff. Thanks.
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Re: Going to the IBM Cloud

Post by Paul Segal »

Yes, appreciated.
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Re: Going to the IBM Cloud

Post by EvgenyT »

Great summary, thanks.

Just to add, you also have to use non-interactive account if you want to leverage CCS or do REST API calls to your server from a 3rd party software (its in the welcome kit)
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Re: Going to the IBM Cloud

Post by Bakkone »

I want to recommend everyone to order 1-2 instances called temp, test or whatever and have turn them off as soon as you get access to the system. Its just very convenient to have them around.

Also note that the cloud team will upgrade the Workspace part of your environment at their own discretion. If you however want to upgrade the server/tm1web part. You will have to request this from the support team. My experience is that they are able to deliver on this within a few days and are very flexible in regards to when during the day. But it will require some downtime.
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