TM1 Forum

Hi all,

I am a totally fresher of TM1 and just insterested in the excellent performance of anlayzing hurage data in OLAP.
Recently, we have some opportunities to know it and my manager is also insterested in. As a IT supporter,my question is what are the costs of upgrading and maintaining TM1?
According to my cognos experience, there are many things need to be considered in daily support such as cube refresh etc. expecially, Cognos upgrading is related with lots of things. What about TM1? What kind of process should to be followed in once upgrading for TM1?

thanks for your kindly suggestion.

Walt

walt wrote: I am a totally fresher of TM1 and just insterested in the excellent performance of anlayzing hurage data in OLAP.
Recently, we have some opportunities to know it and my manager is also insterested in. As a IT supporter,my question is what are the costs of upgrading and maintaining TM1?
According to my cognos experience, there are many things need to be considered in daily support such as cube refresh etc. expecially, Cognos upgrading is related with lots of things. What about TM1? What kind of process should to be followed in once upgrading for TM1?

thanks for your kindly suggestion.

That's a "how long is a piece of string" question.

The actual cost of buying TM1 is going to vary depending on:
- Whether you buy 32 or 64 bit;
- How many named user licences you need, and what kind of bargain you can drive on that;
- Whether you want to bundle in any extra sooftware like Web or EV, or even Cognos software.

The cost of the hardware will also depend. You'd need to get some idea of how much memory you need (then double it {insert only half-smiley icon at this point}) and what kind of processor you want. (32 bit? 64 bit? Unix O/S? Windows O/S?)

Will all of your users be able to connect directly to the server, or will you need a solution like Citrix? If it's the latter, extra costs will be involved. Is your network up to the traffic, or do you need to upgrade?

The cost of running TM1 as such isn't particularly high once you have it up and running mainly because it doesn't require a LOT of IT involvement. Maintenance will be a set percentage of the cost of your software purchase, but with things in a state of flux you'd need to talk to your IBM rep about the actual percentage.

Cube refreshing is another thing entirely; it's not an actual cost, but would depend on what your data sources are and how often you need to feed from them. The answer to that can be anything from monthly to every 15 minutes, depending on need.

Alan Kirk wrote:

walt wrote: I am a totally fresher of TM1 and just insterested in the excellent performance of anlayzing hurage data in OLAP.
Recently, we have some opportunities to know it and my manager is also insterested in. As a IT supporter,my question is what are the costs of upgrading and maintaining TM1?
According to my cognos experience, there are many things need to be considered in daily support such as cube refresh etc. expecially, Cognos upgrading is related with lots of things. What about TM1? What kind of process should to be followed in once upgrading for TM1?

thanks for your kindly suggestion.

That's a "how long is a piece of string" question.

The actual cost of buying TM1 is going to vary depending on:
- Whether you buy 32 or 64 bit;
- How many named user licences you need, and what kind of bargain you can drive on that;
- Whether you want to bundle in any extra sooftware like Web or EV, or even Cognos software.

The cost of the hardware will also depend. You'd need to get some idea of how much memory you need (then double it {insert only half-smiley icon at this point}) and what kind of processor you want. (32 bit? 64 bit? Unix O/S? Windows O/S?)

Will all of your users be able to connect directly to the server, or will you need a solution like Citrix? If it's the latter, extra costs will be involved. Is your network up to the traffic, or do you need to upgrade?

The cost of running TM1 as such isn't particularly high once you have it up and running mainly because it doesn't require a LOT of IT involvement. Maintenance will be a set percentage of the cost of your software purchase, but with things in a state of flux you'd need to talk to your IBM rep about the actual percentage.

Cube refreshing is another thing entirely; it's not an actual cost, but would depend on what your data sources are and how often you need to feed from them. The answer to that can be anything from monthly to every 15 minutes, depending on need.

Thanks for your quick reply. I think here has some misunderstanding about my questions.
Actually,the currect scenario is that we already have an old TM1 environment, but we need to upgrade to latest version. So i just want to know what is the standard process should to be followed for upgrading TM1 and what we should do during the upgrading process.

Thanks
Walt

Upgrade will cost you nothing up front (its included as part of the annual maintenance you pay).

What do you actually need to do to upgrade? Erm... I'd suggest taking a look at the upgrade notes as a 1st step, and possibly touching base with the person/people who peformed the orignal installation.

walt wrote: Thanks for your quick reply. I think here has some misunderstanding about my questions.
Actually,the currect scenario is that we already have an old TM1 environment, but we need to upgrade to latest version. So i just want to know what is the standard process should to be followed for upgrading TM1 and what we should do during the upgrading process.

As Belair22 said, the upgrade version is available for free PROVIDED THAT you've paid your maintenance fees. If you haven't you'll need to contact IBM and see what it will take to get you current.

As for the procedure, one thing that I'd strongly suggest is that you have a separate box to test the proposed new version on. And test, you will need to do. Test EVERYTHING. Test your rules, test your TI processes, test all of your interfaces, test your user loads if possible, test that your users can connect correctly, test, test, then test some more. In particular, test the memory requirements.

It also depends on how old the version that you're on is. I have no idea about that since you've given 9.4 as your version in your profile. Remember that 9.1 and 9.4 will require more memory than the versions which have gone before them, so if you're close to your memory limits you may need a new server as well and / or an upgrade to 64 bit.

Alan Kirk wrote:

walt wrote: Thanks for your quick reply. I think here has some misunderstanding about my questions.
Actually,the currect scenario is that we already have an old TM1 environment, but we need to upgrade to latest version. So i just want to know what is the standard process should to be followed for upgrading TM1 and what we should do during the upgrading process.

As Belair22 said, the upgrade version is available for free PROVIDED THAT you've paid your maintenance fees. If you haven't you'll need to contact IBM and see what it will take to get you current.

As for the procedure, one thing that I'd strongly suggest is that you have a separate box to test the proposed new version on. And test, you will need to do. Test EVERYTHING. Test your rules, test your TI processes, test all of your interfaces, test your user loads if possible, test that your users can connect correctly, test, test, then test some more. In particular, test the memory requirements.

It also depends on how old the version that you're on is. I have no idea about that since you've given 9.4 as your version in your profile. Remember that 9.1 and 9.4 will require more memory than the versions which have gone before them, so if you're close to your memory limits you may need a new server as well and / or an upgrade to 64 bit.

Really appreciate your response. The reason why i am asking this question is that the TM1 installation guide just mentioned the upgrading process as following:
TM1 9.4 does not support automatic upgrading from a previous version of TM1. If you are upgrading to TM1 9.4, you must back up your previous TM1 database, uninstall the previous version, install TM1 9.4, then restore your database.
1. Backing Up Your TM1 Data
• Save a copy of your existing <TM1_Install>\Custom\ data directory and sub-directories to a secure location.
• Save a copy of any TM1 configuration files you may want to retain, such as the Tm1admsrv.ini file located in the <TM1_Install>\bin\ directory.
• If installing TM1 Web, backup any custom TM1 Web server pages to a secure location. The default location of the directory containing TM1 Web server pages is C:\inetpub\wwwroot\TM1Web.

2. Restoring your TM1 Database
After installing TM1 9.4, complete these steps to restore your TM1 database
• Copy your existing TM1 server data directory to the new <TM1_Install>\Custom\ that is available after you install TM1 9.4.
• Restore your existing TM1 configuration files to the <TM1_Install>\bin\ directory.
• Restore your existing custom TM1 Web server pages to the directory containing TM1 Web server pages, usually C:\inetpub\wwwroot\TM1Web.

It looks so quite easy to do the migration or upgrade for TM1 from any previous version to 9.4.But as i have mentioned,as a supporter and a full fresher of TM1,i am absolutely afraid that some unplanned things will be occured during the upgrading process.
You just give me some ideas:
Test EVERYTHING. Test your rules, test your TI processes, test all of your interfaces, test your user loads if possible, test that your users can connect correctly, test, test, then test some more. In particular, test the memory requirements.

All what i want is a checklist which includes all of the pointes should be noticed and tested to make sure the migration would be absolutely successed.
Thanks again for your suggestions.

Walt

walt wrote: Really appreciate your response. The reason why i am asking this question is that the TM1 installation guide just mentioned the upgrading process as following:
TM1 9.4 does not support automatic upgrading from a previous version of TM1. If you are upgrading to TM1 9.4, you must back up your previous TM1 database, uninstall the previous version, install TM1 9.4, then restore your database.

I think that the main reason for this is that there's no way to back out after you do the upgrade. I'm sure I've seen this in some of the documentation (possibly the release notes) though it may not be in the installation guide. 9.4 uses Unicode, which isn't compatible with prior versions. If you need to step back to an earlier version, you won't be able to load your cubes once 9.4 has converted them. Consequently you need to keep an unconverted copy of them in case the 9.4 upgrade goes pear-shaped.

From the readme pdf for 9.4;

Opening Previous TM1 Databases in TM1 9.4
Older TM1 databases are automatically converted to Unicode the first time you run them with the
new TM1 9.4 server. After a database is converted, it is not backward-compatible and cannot be
opened with non-9.4 TM1 servers.
Be sure to backup your existing TM1 databases before using them with the TM1 9.4 release.

It means you cannot use 9.4 in a production environment, find a problem, then revert back to your previous version. Personally, i'd run a 9.4 and your existing installs side by side for a minimum of a month before commiting to 9.4. What ever loads, processes, changes etc are done in the current server, replicate the same in the 9.4 test area. Once doing that and covering everything you do, if you are satisfied that there are no issues then i'd think about migrating the production area to 9.4, but you have to be certain.