PBCS March 2016 Update: FR Web Studio Is Almost Here

If you are a PBCS user, you should have gotten or will be getting an e-mail from Kash with the March release of PBCS. The headline to this release is the new Financial Reporting Web Studio. I’ll have a full post once the patch hits my PBCS test instance (very soon). In the meantime, have a look at the docs:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/fr-webstudio-2874377.pdf

While we were all expecting the new web-based FR studio, I didn’t realize they were overhauling the charting engine.  It’s about time!  Here’s another doc on that:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/fr-charting-2874649.pdf

One thing that I was hoping for but see no mention of…Attribute Dimensions.  I’m guessing we are waiting for a significant Smart View update for this to become a reality.  So we’ll continue waiting.  And just in case you haven’t gotten the e-mail yet or are just curious, here’s the actual release documentation from Oracle:

RCD_PBCS_March_2016


PowerShell and Hyperion: The Outline Load Utility

I was reminded recently that I promised to continue with PowerShell in my last PowerShell blog post, but that I hadn’t done it yet.  I may have gotten a little caught up in my home lab series.  So, if you were waiting and waiting for this, my apologies.

Now that we have a little bit of PowerShell working knowledge and we have it working with MaxL, let’s get serious about some of our other batch commands.  Today we’ll focus on the outline load utility for Planning.  If you’ve used this utility in your batch commands before, you can probably skip the first part of this blog post.  If not, let’s first talk about what the outline load utility is.  It may be the worst named utility that I’ve ever used.  The outline load utility doesn’t actually load an outline at all.  And to make matters worse…it’s not even just a meta-data tool.

The outline load utility allows us to load meta-data, numeric data, text-based data, build smart lists, and generally manage the back-end of Hyperion Planning from a batch script (or PowerShell).  Today we’ll focus on getting the utility working in PowerShell.  So where is this mythical utility?  You should be able to find it here:

<epm install drive>:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\Planning\planning1

You will actually find quite a few utilities in this directory.  There are utilities for imports, exports, running business rules.  This directory is why I will never wake up one day and say “I wish I had something to blog about.”  I’ll literally never run out of content with all of these hidden gems out there.  Here’s a sample:

OutlineLoad1

Next we need to decide what we want to do with the utility and give it a shot.  There are so many things that we can do with it, I’m going to stick with something really simple and use the 11.1.2.3.500 Sample Vision app for the demonstration.  This way you should all be able to reproduce what we are doing.

So let’s first log into our Vision sample app and take an export of the Product dimension.  Once inside our app, click on Administration then Import and Export and then Export Metadata to File.OutlineLoad2

Select our Product dimension from the list and click Run and we should have a great file to start playing with.  When prompted, just save the file away and we’ll come back for it later.

Now let’s get back to our Planning server and start up PowerShell.  Once we have our window open, let’s just change our directory and run the CMD file and see what happens:

OutlineLoad3

You should get something totally useful like this:

OutlineLoad4

Before we go any further, we need to go ahead and generate a password file for the load utility.  This will allow us to execute our PowerShell script without needing to enter a password each time.  To do this we just type in PasswordEncryption.cmd PasswordFile.pass.  It should prompt you for a password.  This will be the password to the username that we will eventually tell the load utility to use.  Enter your password, press enter, and the file we need should be produced.

OutlineLoad5

Now we are ready to load the file that we exported earlier from Workspace.  I placed my exported file directly into the planning1 folder with the utility for my first execution just to make things simple.  So first let’s look at the command, then we’ll pick it apart:

.\OutlineLoad.cmd -f:PasswordFile.pass /A:Vision /U:admin /I:admin_ExportedMetadata_Product.csv /D:Product /L:Product.log /X:Product.exc

ParameterDescriptionValue
-F:Specifies the password file that we just generated so that we don't need to enter a password.PasswordFile.pass
/ASpecifies the application that we are connecting to.Vision
/USpecifies the username that we are connecting with.admin
/ISpecifies the file that we will be importing.admin_ExportedMetadata_Product.csv
/DSpecifies the dimension that we will be loading.Product
/LSpecifies the file to log our results to.Product.log
/XSpecifies the file to write exceptions to.Product.exc

So what happens?

OutlineLoad6

Success!  And how about our log and exception files?

OutlineLoad7

Great…they are there.  Now let’s make this something worthy of PowerShell.  To do that, we’ll make everything into a variable.  I’ve created a folder on my Planning server to store my files and referenced that file in the following PowerShell script:

###############################################################################
#Created By:	Brian Marshall
#Created Date:	12/16/2015
#Purpose:		Sample PowerShell Script for HyperionEPM.com
###############################################################################

###############################################################################
#Variable Assignment
###############################################################################

$PlanningPath = "C:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\Planning\planning1"
$PlanningUsername = "admin"
$PlanningPasswordFile = "PasswordFile.pass"
$PlanningApp = "Vision"
$PlanningDim = "Product"
$PlanningDimFile = "admin_ExportedMetadata_Product.csv"

$PlanningWorkingFolder = "C:\Data\HyperionEPM\PowerShell"

###############################################################################
#Outline Load Utility Execution
###############################################################################

& $PlanningPath\OutlineLoad.cmd -f:$PlanningPath\$PlanningPasswordFile /A:$PlanningApp /U:$PlanningUsername /I:$PlanningWorkingFolder\$PlanningDimFile /D:$PlanningDim /L:$PlanningWorkingFolder\$PlanningDim.log /X:$PlanningWorkingFolder\$PlanningDim.exc

Along with the file above, I’ve placed the Product file that we exported from Workspace.  I’ve set the PlanningWorkingFolder variable to reflect the name of my folder and I should be ready to execute my new Product PowerShell script.  But wait…I don’t want to schedule this process to run on the Planning server and another process to run on the Essbase server.  I need them to run from the same place.  We’ll cover that exact need in our next post…stay tuned!


The EPM Week In Review: Week Ending February 27, 2016

This week was a little slow in the patch department, but plenty of great blogging going on.

Patches and Updates:

None!

Blog Posts:

This week I posted the final installment of the Building a Hyperion Home Lab series.

Michelle encourages us to actively participate in user groups.  I’m a huge fan of ODTUG and the local NtxHUG, so listen to Michelle and join in the fun!

Cameron walks us through the process of migrating to the cloud with PBCS.

Celvin has a new update to his NUMSys Web Edition utility.  I haven’t had a chance to play with this tool, but it looks pretty cool.

Tim is on his soapbox about crossjoins…and he’s right!  Please read his blog post to help make MDX a safer place for all of us.

Opal has been busy this week with not one, but two blog posts.  First she tells us how to get back our missing Smart View ribbon.  Next she shows us how to provide feedback to Oracle in both BICS and PBCS.  She claims that Oracle even reads the feedback…and responds!

Dmitry posted the first part of his step-by-step guide to EPMA integration with Essbase Studio using ODI.

Other News:

I also updated the site this week to include new pages for Quick Links, Presentations, and Latest Patches.

ODTUG has announced the Thursday Deep Dives sessions for KScope16.  See you in Chicago!


Latest Patches, Quick Links, and Presentations

I’ve been tinkering with the site lately and now I think most of the content should be ready to publish.  First, I had someone recently ask for a few of my older presentations, so I figured it was time to organize all of my old presentations and give them a final place to live.   So if anyone went to one of my presentations and wanted the slide deck or addendum, they should all be here going forward.

Presentations Page

As I was going through all of these presentations, I realized just how bad I used to be at PowerPoint (and still am) and how awful some of the Kscope templates have been over the years.  With that, I decided to move on to tweaking the Quick Links pages to move the environment links into a table and generally format things better.

Quick Links

Finally, I decided to add a new page that tells us first, what are the most recent patches and second, what are ALL of the patches 11.1.2.4.  So here it is…

Latest Patches

I managed to capture everything from 11.1.2.4, but I did not venture back to 11.1.2.3 or earlier.  So if you are looking that far back…I prioritized sleep over compiling that giant list.


Building a Hyperion Home Lab: Putting It All Together

Before we get started, here’s the entire series in case you need to look back (or ahead):

Now that we’ve made it through all of the different components, let’s summarize everything so that we can get a clear view of the total budget and what exactly it is that we get for the money we are spending.

Our final selections are summarized in a table below each of budget options, so I’ll try to just re-cap each option.

Desktop High Buget

For our high budget option, we are looking at higher end of consumer hardware.  We have a high end desktop Intel processor (4 cores and 8 threads), a feature-filled motherboard, 64 GB of RAM, 1 TB of SATA SSD storage, 512 GB of NVMe SSD storage, and 4 TB of back-up storage.  All of this leaves us with a total of $1,927.18.  Here are the details:

Intel Core i7 6700k$414.991$414.99Link
ASRock Z170M Extreme4$124.991$124.99Link
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 64GB$394.991$394.99Link
Fractal Design Define Mini$95.991$95.99Link
SeaSonic S12G S12G-550$79.991$79.99Link
Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB$329.991$329.99Link
Samsung 950 Pro 512 GB$326.251$326.25Link
HGST Deskstar NAS 4 TB$159.991$159.99Link
Total Desktop High Budget $1,927.18

Desktop Medium Budget

We have two options for our medium budget.  They both provide a upper-end Intel processor (4 cores, 4 threads), the same mid-range motherboard, 1 TB of SATA SSD storage, 256 GB of NVMe SSD storage, and 3 TB of back-up storage.  The difference between the two is memory.  Both offer up 32 GB of RAM, but the more expensive option two chooses to use two 16 GB modules instead of four 8 GB modules.  The price difference is relatively low with option one coming in at $1,248.91 and option two (which is again expandable to 64 GB in the future) coming in at $1,298.92.

Details for option 1:

Intel Core i7 6700$349.991$349.99Link
ASRock H170M Pro4$84.991$84.99Link
Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB)$64.992$129.98Link
Cooler Master N200$46.991$46.99Link
SeaSonic S12G S12G-550$79.991$79.99Link
SanDisk Ultra II 960 GB$249.991$249.99Link
Samsung 950 Pro 256 GB$181.991$181.99Link
HGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.991$124.99Link
Total Desktop Medium Budget Option 1 $1,248.91

Details for option 2:

Intel Core i7 6700$349.991$349.99Link
ASRock H170M Pro4$84.991$84.99Link
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB)$179.991$179.99Link
Cooler Master N200$46.991$46.99Link
SeaSonic S12G S12G-550$79.991$79.99Link
SanDisk Ultra II 960 GB$249.991$249.99Link
Samsung 950 Pro 256 GB$181.991$181.99Link
HGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.991$124.99Link
Total Desktop Medium Budget Option 2 $1,298.92

Desktop Low Budget

For our low budget desktop, we’ll stick with a single option.  This option provides a lower-end but still quad core processor, a lower-end motherboard, only 16 GB of RAM, and a single 3 TB hard drive.  The upside is that this can easily support an SSD and an upgrade to 32 GB of RAM for a moderate increase in price.  But, as optioned, we’re looking at $499.94.  I didn’t even plan on that being under $500…

Intel Core i5 6400$189.991$189.99Link
ASRock H110M-HDS$51.991$51.99Link
Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB)$64.991$64.99Link
Rosewill FBM-01$27.991$27.99Link
EVGA 100-W1-0430-KR 430W$39.991$39.99Link
HGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.991$124.99Link
Total Desktop Low Budget$499.94

Server High Budget

Now on to the fun stuff…servers.  Our high end server was intended for the audience that wants brand new hard ware on the latest server technology.  This gives us a pair of six-core processors (with 12 threads), 128 GB of DDR4 RAM, a fancy hot-swap case that supports 24 drives, 1 TB of SATA SSD storage, 400 GB of Enterprise-class NVMe SSD storage, and 4 TB of back-up storage.  All for the low, low price of $3,769.90.  The parts list in all of its glory:

Intel Xeon E5-2620 V3$429.992$859.98Link
Supermicro MBD-X10DAI-O$389.991$389.99Link
Crucial 64GB (4 x 16GB) Registered ECC DDR4$449.992$899.98Link
NORCO RPC-4224$429.991$429.99Link
SeaSonic G-750 SSR-750RM$119.991$119.99Link
Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB$329.991$329.99Link
Intel P3600 400 GB$579.991$579.99Link
HGST Deskstar NAS 4 TB$159.991$159.99Link
Total Server High Budget $3,769.90

Server Medium Budget

Ok…now that we have the insanely expensive option of the way, we can go back to reasonable.  So how do we get the performance of insanely expensive but the price of a desktop machine?  Head to Ebay for processors and RAM, and then get all new hardware for everything else.  What we end up with are two options.  Both options include a pair of eight-core processors (with 16 threads), a nice dual processor motherboard with quad-gigabit lan, 1 TB of SATA SSD storage, 400 GB of NVMe SSD storage, and 3 TB of back-up storage.

With option one, we have chosen to go with lower cost 8 GB modules for a total of 128 GB of RAM and a desktop case.  The total price for this option is $1,849.94.  For option two, we swap out the 8 GB modules for 16 GB modules and throw it into a 4U rackmount case.  The total price for this option is $2,721.94.

Details for option 1:

Intel Xeon E5-2670$150.002$300.00Link
ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16$309.991$309.99Link
Ebay 16 x 8GB DDR3$20.0016$320.00Link
Phanteks PH-ES614PC_BK$94.991$94.99Link
SeaSonic G-750 SSR-750RM$119.991$119.99Link
SanDisk Ultra II 960 GB$249.991$249.99Link
Intel 750 400 GB$329.991$329.99Link
HGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.991$124.99Link
Total Server Medium Budget Option 1 $1,849.94

Details for option 2:

Intel Xeon E5-2670$150.002$300.00Link
ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16$309.991$309.99Link
Ebay 16 x 16GB DDR3$75.0016 $1,200.00 Link
NORCO RPC-470$86.991$86.99Link
SeaSonic G-750 SSR-750RM$119.991$119.99Link
SanDisk Ultra II 960 GB$249.991$249.99Link
Intel 750 400 GB$329.991$329.99Link
HGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.991$124.99Link
Total Server Medium Budget Option 2 $2,721.94

Compared to the high server budget, either option is practically a steal.  For almost $2,000 less, we get the same memory capacity (albeit DDR3) and more processor cores (albeit a little slower and a little hotter).  So the question is…do you really need new an shiny that much?  Only you can decide.  I’ve built both (new and shiny, and Ebay Frankenstein), so I get it.  I have both sitting in my home lab and I can say I’m actually very happy with both systems.  With the options available now..I’m going with Ebay Frankenstein.

Server Low Budget

For our low budget server, we get a quad core single socket Xeon processor (with 4 threads), 32 GB of RAM (expandable to 64 GB for $229.98), 1 TB of SATA SSD storage, and 3 TB of back-up storage.  Not bad for $1,180.41.  The parts list:

Intel Xeon E3-1220 V5$218.481$218.48Link
Supermicro X11SSH-F-O$229.991$229.99Link
Samsung DDR4-2133 16GB$114.992$229.98Link
Cooler Master N200$46.991$46.99Link
SeaSonic S12G S12G-550$79.991$79.99Link
SanDisk Ultra II 960 GB$249.991$249.99Link
HGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.991$124.99Link
Total Server Low Budget $1,180.41

Tiny Server

Finally, and most tiny, we have our tiny sever option.  This server packs a huge punch in a little package and a decent cost.  We get a quad core processor (with 8 threads), 64 GB of RAM (expandable to 128 GB for $479), 1 TB of SATA SSD storage, and 3 TB of back-up storage.  Again, not bad for $1,504.94.  Check out the tiny parts list:

Intel Xeon D-1520$489.991$489.99Link
Supermicro MBD-X10SDV-4C-TLN2F-O$0.001$-Link
Supermicro 32GB DDR4$239.992$479.98Link
Supermicro CSE-721TQ-250B$159.991$159.99Link
SanDisk Ultra II 960 GB$249.991$249.99Link
HGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.991$124.99Link
Total Tiny Server Budget $1,504.94

So which server will you build?

I hope this series has been helpful for those of you really interested in a Hyperion Home Lab.  Now we can get back to Powershell and some of the great things I have planned for my home lab.


The EPM Week In Review: Week Ending February 20, 2016

Two weeks…two weeks in review.  Let’s see how long we can keep this up!

Patches and Updates:

The Essbase 11.1.2.4.007 patch has been released.  This comes with a server patch along with the various client patches.  There are a few interesting features including the QUERYRESULTLIMIT for preventing stupid ASO user tricks and a few other ASO related bugs.  Now if they can just release .008, which has a bug I need fixed…that would be great.

Financial Reporting 11.1.2.4.006 has been released.  Nothing too interesting here…just bug fixes.

Blog Posts:

This week I discussed storage for your Hyperion Home Lab.  I also posted about the Admin Console and created a new Quick Links page on the site.

Dave reminds us that our grace period for 11.1.2.3.700 is coming up soon here.

Harry let’s us know that he has released a new version of his cubeSavvy Utilities.  He lost me when he started speaking Russian…but hey I barely speak English.

Dmitry has an interesting write-up on Drill-Through performance in Essbase here.

Sarah gives us a nice lesson in UNIX and Windows Interoperability.

Tony shows off a very detailed guide to using DRM and PBCS.

For those in the cloud that can use Valid Intersections, Celvin shows us that they can be automated!

Other News:

ODTUG is now accepting applications for their Women in Technology Scholarship.  You can find out the details to the program here.  Applications are due in a little over a month on March 22, 2016.

As always (twice anyway), if I missed a great blog post or a patch release, let me know and I’ll either update this post or add it to next week’s post.  Have a great weekend everyone!


Random Tip: Using WebLogic Admin Server to Monitor Services

Happy Friday!  There’s nothing quite like needing to restart one or all of your EPM services.  First you have to shut it all down and make sure it’s actually down.  Then you have to start it up in the right order and then you have to make sure it’s actually up before you send users back in.  Lately, I’ve started using the WebLogic Admin Server to help me with this in my Home Lab.

Let me start by saying that I am NOT an infrastructure guy.  I work with a lot of infrastructure guys and have done a lot of personal installs in my home lab, but I’m an applications guy.  So…if someone on the infrastructure side says this is a horrible idea, I’ll let you take it up with them.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to how we use the Admin Server.  As a little bit of a background story, when your installation was completed, you were likely deployed to multiple servers.  My deployment is pretty distributed, so I have server for Planning, HFM, Essbase, Shared Services, etc.  Each time those servers are configured, they have to be registered with the Admin Server.  Once that is complete, the Admin Server doesn’t necessarily need to be running any more, so you may need to start it up.

To start the admin server, find Start Admin Server for Weblogic Server Domain shortcut in the Start Menu on your Foundation Server.  It should be named this on both 11.1.2.3 and 11.1.2.4.

WAS 01

Once you click on that shortcut, a command prompt should start up letting you know what’s going on.  Eventually, you should get a message saying that the server has changed to a RUNNING state:

WAS 02

Now we can go find the shortcut for the Admin Server Console in the start menu:

WAS 03

This should open up your browser to the Admin Console login screen:

WAS 04

Log in here using youe Weblogic Domain Admin account (typically epm_admin).  Once you get logged in, you should see this:

WAS 05

This is 11.1.2.3.500, so it may look moderately different on 11.1.2.4.  Let’s stop here for a general warning:

You can do all sorts of things in this console that could do something bad to your environment.  So be careful.  I just look around…I don’t change things!

Once you see the screen above, expand Environment and then click on Servers:

WAS 06

This should give you a list of all of your services, clusters, machine names, service states, and even the listening ports:

WAS 07

That’s neat and all, but why do I really care outside of seeing service health?  Well, when I restart, I’m impatient, but i don’t really want to try out Workspace until I’m sure everything is up.  So I end up waiting longer than I need to most of the time.  And again, I’m impatient.  So on my 11.1.2.4 environment I needed to stop and restart Planning.  So first let’s see what it looks like when I have a stopped service:

WAS 08

Now let’s look at the HyperionPL24.hyperion.local services console:

WAS 09

It is in fact down.  It also needs to be switched to manual…but I’ll work on that later.  So let’s go ahead and restart the service:

WAS 10

That was easy!  It’s already running!  Except that we all know that the services console lies.  It’s not really running, its just running the process that starts the process.  So how do we know when it’s really started?  Option 1…we can go old school and look at the service logs.  It will eventually update to say that the state has been changed to RUNNING.  Option 2…we can just go see if it’s there in Workspace.  Call me paranoid, but I always feel like I’m going to break something if I don’t wait until it’s done.  Option 3…refresh the admin server list from above.  It will eventually register that it’s STARTING:

WAS 11

And finally let you know that its RUNNING:

WAS 12

I’m sure that there are plenty of other cool and interesting things that we could break do with the Admin Console, but this is my simple use.  I hope some of you find this helpful, or at the very least…interesting.


New Quick Links Page

I decided to add a new Quick Links page to the site.  Like many of you, I go from version to version and environment to environment a lot.  This page includes links to all of the active documentation libraries on the Oracle site.  This page also includes the links to the various harder-to-find products like the EAS web console and the Financial Reports mobile site.  You can find it here:

Quick Links

And a preview:

Full DocsEssbase Tech RefEssbase DBAGPlanning Admin GuideHFM Admin GuideFDMEE
11.1.2.4





11.1.2.3





11.1.2.2




11.1.2.1
11.1.1.4



9.3.x

9.2.1


I’d love to expand this page to include other useful information, so feel free to speak up and let me know what I’m missing!  I actually already used this page tonight…twice before getting it fully posted.


Building a Hyperion Home Lab: Choosing Your Storage

Before we get started, here’s the entire series in case you need to look back (or ahead):

It’s finally time for the last piece of our Home Lab before we put it all together.  Where do we store our data?  There are three main areas that come to mind when we start to put together our storage system:  virtual hard drive storage, high performance storage, and backup storage.

First we need a place to store the operating system and installed software for each of our guest virtual machines.  With the prices of SSD’s coming down every day, it’s hard not to go that route for our main storage.  This is, after all, going to make everything run very fast.

Next, we need some high performance storage.  This might still just be SSD storage, or we might want to go with something faster.  Maybe RAID or NVMe (we’ll get to this).  But when we look at certain applications where disk I/O is important (our databases like Essbase and our Repositories), we might want something faster than our standard storage.

Finally, we should back things up.  This is where we will safely leave SSD’s and go straight to old-school magnetic storage.  For each of our budget options, we’ll have a slightly different overall configuration.  Let’s get started.

Desktop High Budget

For our high budget option, we’ll choose a drive for each of the above areas of concern.  We’ll have a large SSD for our virtual machines, and NVMe drive for our high performance area, and a big magnetic drive for our backups.  For our main SSD drive, I prefer the Samsung 850 EVO 1TB drive.  This drive has impressive performance and longevity making use of the latest in flash technology.  With 540 MB/s sequential reads, 520 MB/s sequential writes, 98,000 IOPS for random reads, and 90,000 IOPS for random writes…this drive is pretty great for $329.99.

For our high performance drive, we’ll stick with Samsung, but we’ll upgrade to an NVMe drive.  But wait, what’s an NVMe drive and why do we care?  Our regular SSD drive will connect to a SATA3 port.  SATA3 maxes out at 6 gigabits of bandwidth.  NVMe on the otherhand is designed to run directly on the PCIe bus.  This means that we have four lanes of PCIe 3.0 to work with.  PCIe provides 975 megabytes (not bits) of bandwidth per lane.  That means we have nearly four gigabytes (not bits) or bandwidth to play with for our NVMe device.  The specific NVMe drive I’ve chosen Samsung 950 Pro 256GB drive, priced at $326.25.  If you think the EVO was fast, the 950 Pro sports 2,500 MB/s sequential reads, 1,500 MB/s sequential reads, 300,000 IOPS for random reads, and 110,000 IOPS for random writes.

And now for our nice slow, but plentiful back-up drive.  HGST makes a nice NAS-rated 4 TB drive for $159.99.  It’s a 7200 RPM drive, so it will provide pretty good sequential performance for our back-up needs.

Desktop Medium Budget

For our medium budget option, we’ll stick with an SSD for our main drive, but we’ll go a little cheaper.  The SanDisk Ultra II provides great performance at a much lower price of $249.99 (if you are lucky, you can find them on sale under $200 occasionally).  The performance on this drive is 550 MB/s sequential reads, 500 MB/s sequential writes, 99,000 IOPS for random reads, and 83,000 IOPS for random writes.  I have one of these drives in my new ESXi box and it’s a solid performer.

For our high performance drive, we’ll just stick with the Samsung, but cut the space and cost in half.  At $181.99, the 256 GB version of the 950 Pro sports 2,200 MB/s sequential reads, 900 MB/s sequential reads, 270,000 IOPS for random reads, and 85,000 IOPS for random writes.  Still crazy fast…

And for our back-up drive, we’ll cut the costs a little and go with a smaller version of the same drive that our high budget option uses.  At $124.99, we’ll save a little money and just keep a smaller number of running back-ups.

Desktop Low Budget

For our low budget option, we’ll do things a little different.  As cost is our primary issue here, we’ll stick with a single drive.  We’ll stick with the 3 TB HGST NAS drive at $124.99.  This gives us some flexibility with the number of VM’s we can handle and it will still be plenty fast for our goal of learning new technology.

Server High Budget

For our server choices, things will change…but just a little.  We’ll stick with our Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB drive for our main drive.  The 850 Pro is a good choice, but it’s hard to justify the additional cost, so we’ll stick with the EVO.

For our performance drive, we’ll definitely change things up.  We’ll go with the Intel DC P3600.  This is actually the same drive several models of the Oracle Exalytics systems use and re-brand as a Sun Flash Accelerator.  It’s a straight PCIe card rather than an M.2 SSD since we don’t have that type of slot using in our server options.  The 400 GB drive cost $579.99 and provides 2,100 MB/s sequential reads, 550 MB/s sequential reads, 320,000 IOPS for random reads, and 30,000 IOPS for random writes.

For our back-up drive, we’ll stick with the 4 TB model at $159.99.

Server Medium Budget

In our medium option, we’ll go back to our desktop medium option where we find our SanDisk drive at $249.99.  This is a great option for our lower cost server option.

For our performance drive, we’ll stick with Intel, but we’ll go the Intel 750 drive.  At $329.99, it provides 2,200 MB/s sequential reads, 900 MB/s sequential reads, 430,000 IOPS for random reads, and 230,000 IOPS for random writes.  So it’s cheaper and faster than the P3600.  What gives?  Those are peak numbers…and it’s all about firmware.  In reality, the P3600 can outpace the 750 in real-world server-level duty loads.  The P3600 is also more over-provisioned giving it a longer life.

Like our medium desktop, we’ll stick with the 3 TB HGST drive at $124.99.

Server Low Budget and Tiny Server

For our low budget and our tiny server, we’ll stick with the Ultra II 960 GB drive at $249.99 and our HGST 3 TB back-up drive ast $124.99, but we’ll ditch the performance drive altogether.  We’ll just keep it nice and simple.

And now…some pretty tables:

Base Storage:

OptionDrivePriceCapacityS-ReadS-WriteR-ReadR-WriteLink
Desktop HighSamsung 850 EVO 1 TB$329.99 1,000 540520 98,000 90,000 Link
Desktop MediumSanDisk Ultra II 960 GB$249.99960550500 99,000 83,000 Link
Desktop LowHGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.99 3,000 164154Link
Server HighSamsung 850 EVO 1 TB$329.99 1,000 540520 98,000 90,000 Link
Server MediumSanDisk Ultra II 960 GB$249.99960550500 99,000 83,000 Link
Server LowSanDisk Ultra II 960 GB$249.99960550500 99,000 83,000 Link
Tiny ServerSanDisk Ultra II 960 GB$249.99960550500 99,000 83,000 Link

High Performance Storage:

OptionDrivePriceCapacityS-ReadS-WriteR-ReadR-WriteLink
Desktop HighSamsung 950 Pro 512 GB$326.25512 2,500 1,500 300,000 110,000 Link
Desktop MediumSamsung 950 Pro 256 GB$181.99256 2,200 900 270,000 85,000 Link
Server HighIntel P3600 400 GB$579.99400 2,100 550 320,000 30,000 Link

Back-Up Storage:

OptionDrivePriceCapacityS-ReadS-WriteR-ReadR-WriteLink
Desktop HighHGST Deskstar NAS 4 TB$159.99 4,000 164154Link
Desktop MediumHGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.99 3,000 164154Link
Server HighHGST Deskstar NAS 4 TB$159.99 4,000 164154Link
Server MediumHGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.99 3,000 164154Link
Server LowHGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.99 3,000 164154Link
Tiny ServerHGST Deskstar NAS 3 TB$124.99 3,000 164154Link

Now that we have all of our hardware picked out, we can add up the total costs in our next post and see the total damage.


The EPM Week In Review: Week Ending February 13, 2016

Welcome to the inaugural post of what I hope to make a weekly post collecting all of the news and information that was produced in the past week.  We’ll see how this goes…

Patches and Updates:

DRM 11.1.2.4.330 has been released.  It does require a password to download, but it is supposed to include the DRM Analytics that many have been waiting for.  Check it out here.

Hyperion Shared Services 11.1.2.002 has been released.  Check it out here.

Blog Posts:

This week I discussed chassis and power supply selection for your Hyperion Home Lab.

Sarah showed off the new data export command that allows for data to be sanitized.

Tim tells us what we can expect when working with block density.

Cameron is letting Philip take over his blog again, this time discussing Smart Push in PBCS.

John Goodwin continues his excellent series around Essbase Web Services.

Kevin over at In2Hyperion shows us how to map Smart Lists to dimensions.  This is a handy feature in PBCS until we finally get real attribute dimensions (I hear this is coming in March).

Other News:

Tony has a new book out on FDMEE.  This one will definitely be in my Amazon cart soon.

Note bad for a first try at a weekly re-cap…if I do say so myself.  If I missed a great blog post or a patch release, let me know and I’ll either update this post or add it to next week’s post.  Have a great weekend everyone!