Running TM1 Web on a virtual server

[daveed]

Is anyone running TM1Web on a virtual machine, ideally in a production environment? If so, are there any issues to be a aware of?
Thanks
Dave.

[Steve Vincent]

Dave, we have one installed but currently not using it. I haven't seen web on a physical server so i cannot compare it, but the stuff we've briefly tried on it was so slow i could have evolved wings quicker. Our spreadhseets were far too big for it, but even browsing cubes was a painful process, certainly not good enough for our users to live with.

It may have improved since 9.0, but if you look at the various threads on web you'll see its not seen as particulary good...

[Alan Kirk]

Dave, we have one installed but currently not using it. I haven't seen web on a physical server so i cannot compare it, but the stuff we've briefly tried on it was so slow i could have evolved wings quicker. Our spreadhseets were far too big for it, but even browsing cubes was a painful process, certainly not good enough for our users to live with.

This differs from running it on a non-virtual server... how???

(No, it's not too bad (I speak only about speed here), provided it sticks to fairly small data sets. Unfortunately I can't speak to using it on a virtual server, but I'm not sure that that would be an enjoyable experience anyway. It's fairly finicky and probably won't provide a valid testbed for the real thing.)

[Martin Erlmoser]

could not encounter any differences between tm1web on virtual and tm1web on physical server.

[George Regateiro]

We have succesffully used both Web and TM1 in a VMWare environment without an issue (after we stopped being cheap). A few things that we realized with VM

1) There is a huge difference between running the WMWare server and having the data storage on the same box as opposed to seperate configurations. Go with the seperate if you can.

2) The VM environment seems to take up more RAM than a physical we have been giving all of our servers an extra 25% over a physical box


We have been able to get the performance differences down to almost nothing, but this was a horribly iterative process. Even the smallest cut corner in the hardware and setup seems to be magnified in the virtual environments. If you are going to do it you have to really commit to following their best practices or else you will not be please with the results.

[Eric]

George,

Can you give a few specifics for me to keep an eye out for? I have been fighting for years, but finally lost the battle. My IT department will be forcing us to use a VM environment in 3 months.

TIA

[George Regateiro]

I dont know if this will apply to your situation or not, but the biggest issues we had were:

1) The Hardware Groups lack of knowledge on VMWare played a big part. We were the learning curve for our harware group
2) They tried to be cheap and do it all on one box, storage and ESX Server, this did not go well since you had VMWare overhead and the individual boxes pulling the same resources.
3) (I dont set these up so I might have some of the specifics incorrect) When setting up a VM you can either use fixed hardrive space or dynamic. Say you want to have that server have 40 gig. You can either allocate all 40 at once or let it be allocated as the system grows. The static space is the best option for various reasons. We have an aversion (dont ask me why) to harddrive space so they did not want to do the static allocation.
4) We found that the VMs required slightly more memory then the actual physical boxes were taking up so you have to account for some additional RAM.
5) Since the TM1Web server is not constantly in motion we were able to see big performance gains by boosting the server priority. TM1Web works in bursts so we were allowed jump ahead of other servers that did prolonged processing.
6) Insist that you know what other servers you will be competing with. We found this to be huge. We did not ask during the initial move to virtual and it turned out we were sharing with the backup server which was a constant drain on the system.

I am sure there are alot more, but those are the major ones that I can think of right now.

[edward]

Hi,

has anyone seen this error in VM

Can someone please help me. I am currently installed tm1 9.5.1 on VM with win 2008 r2 64 bit. I managed to log on to the TM1 web and I was able to view the cubes. Once I click one of the websheets, I get an error

Cannont conenct to TM1 ExcelSercives: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it (server IP address and the port number)

The excel service is running and when I try to get the what ports are used port (netstat), I am able to find the port number assinged.

from the error log:

2011-04-06 11:40:21,619 [10] ERROR Applix.TM1.Web.WebControls.TM1WebUtils - <Cannot connect to TM1 ExcelServices : > not localized.
2011-04-06 11:40:21,619 [10] ERROR Applix.TM1.Web.WebControls.TM1WebApplication - Exception occurred while checking for xlsx support in ES
System.ApplicationException: Cannot connect to TM1 ExcelServices : No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it (server IP address and the port number)
at Applix.TM1.Web.WebControls.TM1WebUtils.ConnectToExcelServices()
at Applix.TM1.Web.WebControls.TM1WebApplication.get_isXLSXsupportedEX()
2011-04-06 11:40:28,151 [10] ERROR Applix.TM1.Web.WebControls.TM1WebUtils - <Cannot connect to TM1 ExcelServices : > not localized

Even with our Test VM 9.4.1 have the same error. You can view and run everything but not the websheets. Excel services are running ..stop and start no avail.

I am stuck and I have no resolution at the moment. Logged to IBm still haven't given me any solution.

thanks

Edward

[BigG]

has anyone seen this error in VM

only in your other post Edward

How did IBM response go with this?

[BigG]

Edward, Can you check this, may or may not help...these are settings we changed on IIS for Cognos Express (which includes TM1) for W2008 R2 64bit

1)IIS - Go to advanced settings - Application Pools
And change the value to True for Enable 32 bit application as shown below

2) in IIS- Select CognosCgi and edit feature permission
-Select “Execute” and click Ok

3) in IIS- Select IIS server and double click on “ISAPI and CGI Restrictions” - add allowed application cognoscgi

Note it took us two virtual servers to get Tm1 web working properly, the 1st server was corrupted so much after us trying to fix it that it was never going to work. A fresh server helped a heap...

[edward]

BigG

Change the account that uses TM1 Excel Services to have admin rights and it worked ...

IBM wasn't able to fix the issue.

thanks