For those who may be unaware, SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0 are going out of patch support as of 12/31/2015. This means that 2015 needs to be the year for that migration you’ve been putting off (see related article, State of the SAP BusinessObjects Upgrade, December 2014). Before reading, you may want to review an earlier blog by my colleague, Benjamin Asbeck, who wrote a great intro to the Upgrade Management Tool (UMT) back in 2012 (see related article, Fun with the SAP BI4 Upgrade Management Tool). Today we will be revisiting the tool to review some updates and other best practices.
Heap-ier!
The UMT now comes standard with an 8GB Java heap. This helps with some of the bigger migration jobs you will be running (like that pesky Users and User Groups folder). As a caveat, make sure the server that is running the UMT can support the newer,bigger heap size. Personally I noticed that with the 8GB I was able to run jobs around 25k objects. I did not test running any jobs bigger than that, but you may need to adjust depending on the size of your jobs and if you notice crashing.
As a reminder, on Windows, to change this value, Right Click -> Properties on the UMT executable file.
In the “Target:” field, adjust the -Xmx value to what you need.
Still Need to Consider Redirecting the Temp Directory
Depending on how your servers are built, you may need to consider redirecting the temp directory. The UMT will take a lot of temp space, especially for your bigger migration jobs. If your C:\ drive is only 4-5GB free, it will definitely not be enough. To be safe, you want a temporary directory on a drive that has roughly 20GB free. This will allow the UMT to run smoothly. If this means creating a temporary directory on your server, consider doing so. It will save lots of headaches, especially as you are 6 hours into a migration job only to have it fail due to disk space…
As a reminder, on Windows, to change this value, Right Click -> Properties on the UMT executable file.
In the “Target:” field, add Djava.io.tmpdir=”TEMP_LOCATION” (example: Djava.io.tmpdir=”e:\temp”)
Windows vs. Linux: Depends on type of Upgrade
Personally, I am always a fan of command line over GUI. As someone who now doesn’t even own a Windows device (Work laptop is a Mac, Personal laptop is Fedora Linux), you would think I would tell you to use the Linux command line, right? Unfortunately, when deciding Windows vs Linux for your Upgrade, the preference for one or the other isn’t even the deciding factor. The deciding factor is if you will do an Incremental or Full Upgrade. I usually suggest running incremental upgrades for several reasons: smaller jobs, quicker to address issues, faster runtimes, and an overall cleaner migration experience. The Linux version of this tool does not allow for an incremental upgrade. If you are Linux only and want an incremental upgrade, you will need a separate windows machine.
UMT on Windows: Make Sure to Check Options
If your platform servers are on Windows, you probably have what you need. If your platform servers are all on Linux, listen up! You can still run an incremental upgrade from a separate windows machine! All you need are the Windows executable files from the Software Download Center. You can run the installer and choose a custom install to only get the tools you need. You’d think you’d only need the Upgrade Management Administrator tools, but you’d think wrong. Without the Connectivity Processing Services you will have several issues and things will fail. It is very important to get these services before starting any migration jobs. This is explained in SAP KB 1743789. (SAP Service Marketplace logon required).
Running via Command Line
If you decide that you have to use the Linux command line, here’s how to get it running. It’s a pretty big command, however, I would not copy/paste, as the quotes (“) don’t seem to copy properly into the terminal. In my examples, the <INSTALL_BASE> directory is located at /opt/sap, it may be different on your install. Just make note that you will need to adjust to match your environment.
Before running this command you need to change the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH for the user that owns the installation. On our system, the user that owns the installation is biadmin. You will need to add <INSTALL_BASE>/sap_bobj/enterprise_xi40/linux_x64 to LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
- su – biadmin
- env | grep LD_LIBRARY_PATH
LD_LIBRAY_PATH=/oracle/client/lib - export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/oracle/client/lib:/opt/sap/sap_bobj/enterprise_xi40/linux_x64
- cd /opt/sap/sap_bobj/enterprise_xi40/java/apps/upgradeManagementTool/jars
- /opt/sap/sap_bobj/enterprise_xi40/linux_x86/jre/bin/java -Xmx4g -Djava.library.path=”/opt/sap/sap_bobj/enterprise_xi40/java/apps/upgradeManagementTool/jars/” -jar upgrademanagementtool.jar -mode livetolive -source OldServer.FQDN.com:6400
-sourceusername “Administrator”-sourcepassword “Password” -destination NewServer.FQDN.com:6400 -destinationusername “Administrator” -desinationpassword “Password” -logfile “/tmp/UMTLog.csv”
Note: The upgrade guide says to use the option –Djava.library.path=”<BINDIR>”. According to the upgrade guide, <BINDIR> is located here: <INSTALL_BASE>/sap_bobj/enterprise_xi40/<PLATFORM>. I was NEVER able to get the UMT running by using the <BINDIR> specified in the upgrade guide. I switched the –Djava.library.path to where the Upgrade Management Tool .jar file was located and I was able to get it to run.
Final Thoughts
2015 needs to be the year you migrate. There are just over 9 month until 3.1 and 4.0 go out of support. It’s time to make upgrading your out-of-date systems a priority. Do you have a 2015 migration looming? Are you unsure of where to start? Contact us at EV Technologies, to help get you started so that you can make 2015 the year of the migration!
Related Information
- SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.1 SP5 Upgrade Guide
- SAP KB 1743789 – Error “The constraint failed for the object named ‘<connection-name>’ with id number…” while upgrading universes using Upgrade Management Tool
- SAP KB 1640894 – How to: Linux/Unix Upgrade Management Tool command line
- Fun with the BI4 Upgrade Management Tool
- State of the SAP BusinessObjects Upgrade, December 2014
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