Proactive management of complex systems like Hyperion infrastructure is the key to a successful and stable environment.

Many of our customers who have had concerns that they may be falling behind on the management of their environments have benefited greatly from our 'Full Infrastructure Review' service. This is because of the sheer value that the information generated by the review can provide. This information can uncover anything from poorly maintained systems impacting on performance to misconfigured components according to best practises.

How it works

1. We review your existing documentation and establish initial concerns if any.
2. A pre-scheduled workshop takes place with your technical and functional resources to discuss any immediate issues and for us to raise concerns that we may have with the initial document review if any.
3. We physically look at your Hyperion servers to review configuration settings and log files etc.
4. We finish up by compiling a report listing all the servers in scope with our observations and recommendations for each one if necessary.
5. You then decide how you wish to address the recommendations going forward by either implementing them yourself or allowing us to assist you further depending on complexity and risk.

Components in Scope

Items covered will include all versions of the following Hyperion components running on Microsoft Windows platforms only:

• Foundation Services
• Financial Management
• Financial Reporting
• Planning
• Essbase
• Smart View Excel Add-in
• Financial Data Quality Management and adapters
• Essbase Analytics Links
• Strategic Finance
• Web Analysis
• MS SQL or Oracle relational database systems

Although an infrastructure health check can be tailored to specific requirements, a typical engagement would review the following areas:

• Existing/Outstanding Errors (if any)
• Regular Maintenance Procedures
• System Architecture/Design
• System versions, patches and updates
• System Configuration Settings
• Performance Tuning and Optimisation
• Backup & Disaster Recovery Plan

The health check aims to cover all environments (Dev, Test, UAT, Prod) but does not involve the modification of any system settings. Therefore, no change control is required as there is zero impact on 'business as usual' activities. Any recommendations following the review will be documented with the proposed changes planned, approved and scheduled to take place at a convenient time.

System Architecture Design Review

This is a review of the design and server specification of the environment. Here we look at the distribution of components across the nodes as well as CPU and memory allocations. The use of virtualisation is also taken into consideration.

As well as server specifications, we also take into account the ability for the system to be scaled up later in the future in order to facilitate increased user capacity. This goes hand in hand with discussions regarding the businesses requirements and future road map.

Existing/Outstanding Errors

We will ask for a list of your existing records of present and past issues. We will also look at some of the system and application logs that are also known for capturing issues. This will allow us to identify any key areas of concern at an early stage and focus our attention where it is most required.

Regular Maintenance Procedures

Hyperion requires maintenance on a regular basis and will eventually degrade in performance and stability if proactive maintenance is not continued. We will investigate how well maintained the system is based on the particular components installed and the existing procedures followed.

System versions, patches and updates

Some issues may be known to the vendor and resolved by patches available for your version. Once we have reviewed your issue list, it may be possible to identify existing patches that may address these issues. We also check to make sure that all environments are set to the same level and provide a recommended plan to align them if required.

System Configuration

The Hyperion configuration settings are specific to the environment that it is deployed and integrated in. Therefore, it is common for some configuration settings to be applied in a way that does not allow the system to perform optimally or stably. This review can potentially uncover any such issue and result in the recommended corrective procedure.

Performance Tuning

This is to check if there is any potential to improve the overall performance of the system. There are options for performance tuning at all three layers of the architecture (web, app & DB).

Backup & DR Plan

This is to check the current backup plan and assess its ability to provide a successful restore of the environment either in its entirety or specific areas. We can also assess your existing DR capability firstly by reviewing your DR requirements and then checking the DR plan to make sure that it addresses these requirements.

Recommendation

Following the completion of this review, the results will be documented with a list of our findings of any issues and concerns that may have been discovered. It will also include recommendations for corrective procedures that have been known to resolve these issues. These will be presented in a format that will clearly distinguish the potential benefit and effort of each recommendation to make the decision easier to go ahead with each item or not.

Next Steps

Once the documentation has been circulated and reviewed, the customer can opt for either of the choices below;

1. Take the information and implement the recommend changes internally with no additional assistance from PureApps.
2. Request further assistance from PureApps in order to implement the recommendations.