9 Hyperion
Performance Myths
and How to Debunk
Them
www.datavail.com 2
Chuck Czajkowski, Solutions Architect
Over 20 years IT and Networking experience
On the support team at Hyperion Solutions in the early 2000’s working
as an Environmental Support Lead handling complex issues
Product Issues Manager for the Common Technology Group at Oracle
after acquisition
Worked closely with many dev teams (HFM, Planning, Essbase, FDM,
Workspace, Shared Services, Weblogic) to facilitate worldwide support
training for new releases, patches (PSEs/PSUs), and ensure overall
stability and functionality.
Joined the Accelatis team at the beginning of 2014 supporting all
customers currently running the platform.
At Datavail, works with the Sales and Marketing team to identify and
create solutions for new and existing customers
Presenter
About Datavail
www.datavail.com 4
We are data
specialists:
Databases,
Analytics, and
Application
Data Integration
Largest data management firm in North America with
over 600 DBA’s and 200developers /
consultants delivered in an onshore/offshore, 24x7
model
13+ years delivering data services
300+ customers with average customer life
of 7 Years
www.datavail.com 5
Our Range of Data Services
Health Checks &
Assessments
Upgrades Data Migration
OBIEE & Hyperion
Consulting
Development, Tuning,
Automation
Data Warehouse
Build & Optimize
DevOps (Deploy & Automate)
Project Services
Data Development Services
24x7 In-Office Coverage
Monitoring & Incident
Response w/ SLAs
Service Requests
(Patch, Modify, etc.)
Multi-factor Monitoring
Proactive Services
(Health, Tune)
Structured Service Review
Operational Managed Services
Visit the Datavail
Sponsor Table
Visit our table to WIN a pair
of Bose QuietComfort Noise
Canceling Headphones.
Mention you attended our
presentation for an
additional entry.
9 Hyperion
Performance Myths
and How to Debunk
Them
www.datavail.com 8
Myth #1: Reactive management is the only way to uncover issues
Myth #2: Root Cause Analysis takes large teams and days
Myth #3: Rebooting = effective problem resolution
Myth #4: Performance testing is expensive and complex
Myth #5: You must be an EPM guru to manage an EPM system
Myth #6: Admins must spend time on the urgent vs. the important
Myth #7: Conflict between IT and Finance is unavoidable
Myth #8: Prod & non-prod environments are hard to keep in sync
Myth #9: SOX audit requests are time consuming
Presentation
Overview
www.datavail.com 9
Debunking
the 9 Myths
Myth #1: Reactive management is the best way to uncover issues
Myth #2: Root Cause Analysis takes large teams and days
Myth #3: Rebooting = effective problem resolution
Myth #4: Performance testing is expensive and complex
Myth #5: You must be an EPM guru to manage an EPM system
Myth #6: Admins must spend time on the urgent vs. the important
Myth #7: Conflict between IT and Finance is unavoidable
Myth #8: Prod & non-prod environments are hard to keep in sync
Myth #9: SOX audit requests are time consuming
GOAL OF MEETING & AGENDA
www.datavail.com 10
Hyperion Performance Management
Optimization Performance
Testing Suite
Support Desk User Experience
Monitoring
Comparative
Benchmarking
Management Performance
Monitoring
Log ManagementAuditingAutomation
Datavail’s Performance Management Platform
Reporting Alerting Provisioning Communication User Interface
Myth #1:
Reactive management
is the only way to
uncover issues
www.datavail.com 12
The Reason for the Myth
Few tools are truly proactive
Existing solutions alert after a problem
has occurred
Users typically discover the issue before
the Hyperion admin
www.datavail.com 13
Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform offers:
Proactive alerting
Failure triggers
Performance optimization
Know what will happen before it happens.
www.datavail.com 14
Case Study:
Manufacturing
Company
Large manufacturing company relied on user feedback
to identify when issues were happening
Time wasted resolving unexpected issues rather than
preventing them
Installed Datavail’s software with proactive alerting
Issues were discovered and addressed before they
reached users
Average MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery) went from
43 minutes to 8
Myth #2:
Root Cause Analysis
takes large teams and
days
www.datavail.com 16
Hyperion has many moving parts across the
technical tiers to deliver business
functionality.
RCA is all about having the relevant
information in one place, however it’s
typically based on tribal knowledge with few
repeatable processes distributed across
multiple teams.
The Reason for the Myth
www.datavail.com 17
Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform offers:
Capture of instrumentation data from
network, application, infrastructure
and database layers in one place
Purpose-built analytics interfaces
Individuals and small teams can assess
issue causes that would otherwise
require large teams.
www.datavail.com 18
Case Study:
Mining Company
Large mining company with worldwide operations would
take days just to collect information needed for
troubleshooting
Deployed Datavail’s APM software and institutionalized
a repeatable RCA process
Now they experience faster issue resolution, improved
stability, and increased performance
“Remote User issues used to take up to 3 days and 24
hours just to gather relevant diagnostics. We get to
that same point now with 1 person in about an hour.”
Myth #3:
Rebooting is
effective problem
resolution
www.datavail.com 20
The Reason for the Myth
When the prospect of retrieving enough
data to determine the source of a problem
is slim, the fastest way to get the system
online is to do a holistic reboot (and cross
your fingers).
www.datavail.com 21
Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform offers:
Detailed RCA capabilities enabling a
repeatable process
Better pinpointing of issues by
monitoring and analyzing data on
multiple tiers
Automated diagnostics that
immediately rule out classes of issues
www.datavail.com 22
Case Study:
Healthcare
Organization
Client would start system-wide reboot for many different
symptoms
With Datavail software, we were able to connect
symptoms of slow reports to the FR sub-system service
restarts preventing full reboots
Downtime went from 45 minute, 3-4 times a week to
5-10 minutes, 3-4 times a week but for a fraction of
the users.
Total users affected by outages during reboots were
greatly reduced in the process.
Myth #4:
Performance testing
is expensive and
complex
www.datavail.com 24
The Reason for the Myth
Performance testing typically requires
highly skilled resources and lots of time.
www.datavail.com 25
Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform offers:
Pre-recorded scripts for all versions of EPM
Performance testing can get started in
matter of hours instead of days
Focus on actionable data
Design that can be leveraged by
professional performance testers as well as
business users
www.datavail.com 26
Case Study:
International
Bank
Client’s business group relied on weekly and monthly
regression testing
3rd party LoadRunner team owned scripts
All requests for changes would take 2 weeks to get into
production
After implementation of Datavail software, the business
user took ownership of performance testing
Able to run tests on the fly
Capabilities included regression testing and point testing
for Rules and Metadata changes.
Myth #5:
You must be an
EPM guru to manage
an EPM system
www.datavail.com 28
The Reason for the Myth
Each product in EPM has its own
administration console and log formats
creating complexity and the need for
training on each product.
www.datavail.com 29
Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform offers:
Property management, log access,
and application management for
products available in single console
www.datavail.com 30
Case Study:
Financial
Institution
Client had to request time from separate Essbase,
Planning, and HFM experts to retrieve logs whenever
troubleshooting was required
With Datavail’s platform, a single person on the support
desk can pull the respective logs for the given timeframe
Information can then be passed along to the experts
who can analyze the problems
Additionally a summary report of all configuration
settings across products (HFM, Essbase, Planning,
HSS, etc…) is now created in a single request.
Myth #6:
Admins must spend time
on the urgent vs.
the important
www.datavail.com 32
The Reason for the Myth
Admins are constantly putting out fires
Most tasks are manual
Automation isn’t available
www.datavail.com 33
Debunking the Myth
With Datavail’s platform:
Proactive Monitoring is in place
Manual tasks are automated
Root cause analysis is streamlined
Admins spend time on tasks they were
hired to do rather than putting out fires
www.datavail.com 34
Case Study:
Auto Parts
Manufacturer
Client was spending 40 person hours of a CPA’s time
monthly performing a 5 year consolidation in HFM
The time was spent unlocking periods, running consols
and waiting for them to finish and then locking periods
With Datavail’s platform, the entire process was
automated and scheduled
Zero manual effort was required going forward
Myth #7:
Conflict between
IT and Finance is
unavoidable
www.datavail.com 36
The Reason for the Myth
Finance Admins understand their
business and IT Professionals
understand the infrastructure.
The opposite is not always the case
Teams are dependent on each other
without clear mechanisms or vehicles for
collaborating on system design and
troubleshooting
www.datavail.com 37
Debunking the Myth
With Datavail’s platform:
A single set of environmental data and
tools can be used by both teams
Broad monitoring bridges the gap
between Finance and IT (Sharing data
instead of requesting data)
www.datavail.com 38
Case Study:
Global Banking
Company
Whenever business processes would fail, client would
complain about SLA turnaround from IT, Network and
DBA teams
With Datavail, the communication mechanism changed
from requesting information to providing information and
requesting a discussion
SLA turnaround times improved significantly
Finger pointing reduced dramatically as well
Myth #8:
Prod & non-prod
environments are hard
to keep in sync
www.datavail.com 40
The Reason for the Myth
Out of sync servers within an
environment as well as across
environments are some of the most
difficult issues to track down
Very time consuming to document and
compare settings
www.datavail.com 41
Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform can complete out-of-
the-box:
Auto-documentation
Server synchronization
Environment synchronization
Automated change history
www.datavail.com 42
Case Study:
Marketing
Firm
Client could not determine why groups of production
reports were slower than in QA
Both environments had same hardware and application
data
Datavail’s platform found the solution quickly: our
environment comparison found that the reports no
longer matched and that someone had been adding
member lists to the FR definition (about 5 reports out of
1000).
Myth #9:
SOX audit requests
are time consuming
www.datavail.com 44
The Reason for the Myth
Reconciling metadata, rules, report
definition changes are time consuming and
extremely error prone.
www.datavail.com 45
Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform can create an
automated versioned history of all
application objects.
www.datavail.com 46
Case Study:
Technology
Company
Client spent an entire week per quarter preparing start
of quarter to end of quarter report to compare:
Rules
Metadata
Report definitions
Report included logs showing load activities
With Datavail’s software, all changes were automatically
detected and snapshots captured
The Change Report was then generated automatically
every quarter
Time savings = 100%
Also very helpful for rolling back unwanted changes
www.datavail.com 47
Dashboards, Reports and Interactive Tools
Q&A
Chuck Czajkowski
Solutions Architect
Chuck.czajkowski@datavail.com
www.datavail.com
Thank you
Stop by the Datavail
Sponsor table to win
Bose headphones!

9 Hyperion Performance Myths and How to Debunk Them

  • 1.
  • 2.
    www.datavail.com 2 Chuck Czajkowski,Solutions Architect Over 20 years IT and Networking experience On the support team at Hyperion Solutions in the early 2000’s working as an Environmental Support Lead handling complex issues Product Issues Manager for the Common Technology Group at Oracle after acquisition Worked closely with many dev teams (HFM, Planning, Essbase, FDM, Workspace, Shared Services, Weblogic) to facilitate worldwide support training for new releases, patches (PSEs/PSUs), and ensure overall stability and functionality. Joined the Accelatis team at the beginning of 2014 supporting all customers currently running the platform. At Datavail, works with the Sales and Marketing team to identify and create solutions for new and existing customers Presenter
  • 3.
  • 4.
    www.datavail.com 4 We aredata specialists: Databases, Analytics, and Application Data Integration Largest data management firm in North America with over 600 DBA’s and 200developers / consultants delivered in an onshore/offshore, 24x7 model 13+ years delivering data services 300+ customers with average customer life of 7 Years
  • 5.
    www.datavail.com 5 Our Rangeof Data Services Health Checks & Assessments Upgrades Data Migration OBIEE & Hyperion Consulting Development, Tuning, Automation Data Warehouse Build & Optimize DevOps (Deploy & Automate) Project Services Data Development Services 24x7 In-Office Coverage Monitoring & Incident Response w/ SLAs Service Requests (Patch, Modify, etc.) Multi-factor Monitoring Proactive Services (Health, Tune) Structured Service Review Operational Managed Services
  • 6.
    Visit the Datavail SponsorTable Visit our table to WIN a pair of Bose QuietComfort Noise Canceling Headphones. Mention you attended our presentation for an additional entry.
  • 7.
  • 8.
    www.datavail.com 8 Myth #1:Reactive management is the only way to uncover issues Myth #2: Root Cause Analysis takes large teams and days Myth #3: Rebooting = effective problem resolution Myth #4: Performance testing is expensive and complex Myth #5: You must be an EPM guru to manage an EPM system Myth #6: Admins must spend time on the urgent vs. the important Myth #7: Conflict between IT and Finance is unavoidable Myth #8: Prod & non-prod environments are hard to keep in sync Myth #9: SOX audit requests are time consuming Presentation Overview
  • 9.
    www.datavail.com 9 Debunking the 9Myths Myth #1: Reactive management is the best way to uncover issues Myth #2: Root Cause Analysis takes large teams and days Myth #3: Rebooting = effective problem resolution Myth #4: Performance testing is expensive and complex Myth #5: You must be an EPM guru to manage an EPM system Myth #6: Admins must spend time on the urgent vs. the important Myth #7: Conflict between IT and Finance is unavoidable Myth #8: Prod & non-prod environments are hard to keep in sync Myth #9: SOX audit requests are time consuming GOAL OF MEETING & AGENDA
  • 10.
    www.datavail.com 10 Hyperion PerformanceManagement Optimization Performance Testing Suite Support Desk User Experience Monitoring Comparative Benchmarking Management Performance Monitoring Log ManagementAuditingAutomation Datavail’s Performance Management Platform Reporting Alerting Provisioning Communication User Interface
  • 11.
    Myth #1: Reactive management isthe only way to uncover issues
  • 12.
    www.datavail.com 12 The Reasonfor the Myth Few tools are truly proactive Existing solutions alert after a problem has occurred Users typically discover the issue before the Hyperion admin
  • 13.
    www.datavail.com 13 Debunking theMyth Datavail’s platform offers: Proactive alerting Failure triggers Performance optimization Know what will happen before it happens.
  • 14.
    www.datavail.com 14 Case Study: Manufacturing Company Largemanufacturing company relied on user feedback to identify when issues were happening Time wasted resolving unexpected issues rather than preventing them Installed Datavail’s software with proactive alerting Issues were discovered and addressed before they reached users Average MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery) went from 43 minutes to 8
  • 15.
    Myth #2: Root CauseAnalysis takes large teams and days
  • 16.
    www.datavail.com 16 Hyperion hasmany moving parts across the technical tiers to deliver business functionality. RCA is all about having the relevant information in one place, however it’s typically based on tribal knowledge with few repeatable processes distributed across multiple teams. The Reason for the Myth
  • 17.
    www.datavail.com 17 Debunking theMyth Datavail’s platform offers: Capture of instrumentation data from network, application, infrastructure and database layers in one place Purpose-built analytics interfaces Individuals and small teams can assess issue causes that would otherwise require large teams.
  • 18.
    www.datavail.com 18 Case Study: MiningCompany Large mining company with worldwide operations would take days just to collect information needed for troubleshooting Deployed Datavail’s APM software and institutionalized a repeatable RCA process Now they experience faster issue resolution, improved stability, and increased performance “Remote User issues used to take up to 3 days and 24 hours just to gather relevant diagnostics. We get to that same point now with 1 person in about an hour.”
  • 19.
  • 20.
    www.datavail.com 20 The Reasonfor the Myth When the prospect of retrieving enough data to determine the source of a problem is slim, the fastest way to get the system online is to do a holistic reboot (and cross your fingers).
  • 21.
    www.datavail.com 21 Debunking theMyth Datavail’s platform offers: Detailed RCA capabilities enabling a repeatable process Better pinpointing of issues by monitoring and analyzing data on multiple tiers Automated diagnostics that immediately rule out classes of issues
  • 22.
    www.datavail.com 22 Case Study: Healthcare Organization Clientwould start system-wide reboot for many different symptoms With Datavail software, we were able to connect symptoms of slow reports to the FR sub-system service restarts preventing full reboots Downtime went from 45 minute, 3-4 times a week to 5-10 minutes, 3-4 times a week but for a fraction of the users. Total users affected by outages during reboots were greatly reduced in the process.
  • 23.
    Myth #4: Performance testing isexpensive and complex
  • 24.
    www.datavail.com 24 The Reasonfor the Myth Performance testing typically requires highly skilled resources and lots of time.
  • 25.
    www.datavail.com 25 Debunking theMyth Datavail’s platform offers: Pre-recorded scripts for all versions of EPM Performance testing can get started in matter of hours instead of days Focus on actionable data Design that can be leveraged by professional performance testers as well as business users
  • 26.
    www.datavail.com 26 Case Study: International Bank Client’sbusiness group relied on weekly and monthly regression testing 3rd party LoadRunner team owned scripts All requests for changes would take 2 weeks to get into production After implementation of Datavail software, the business user took ownership of performance testing Able to run tests on the fly Capabilities included regression testing and point testing for Rules and Metadata changes.
  • 27.
    Myth #5: You mustbe an EPM guru to manage an EPM system
  • 28.
    www.datavail.com 28 The Reasonfor the Myth Each product in EPM has its own administration console and log formats creating complexity and the need for training on each product.
  • 29.
    www.datavail.com 29 Debunking theMyth Datavail’s platform offers: Property management, log access, and application management for products available in single console
  • 30.
    www.datavail.com 30 Case Study: Financial Institution Clienthad to request time from separate Essbase, Planning, and HFM experts to retrieve logs whenever troubleshooting was required With Datavail’s platform, a single person on the support desk can pull the respective logs for the given timeframe Information can then be passed along to the experts who can analyze the problems Additionally a summary report of all configuration settings across products (HFM, Essbase, Planning, HSS, etc…) is now created in a single request.
  • 31.
    Myth #6: Admins mustspend time on the urgent vs. the important
  • 32.
    www.datavail.com 32 The Reasonfor the Myth Admins are constantly putting out fires Most tasks are manual Automation isn’t available
  • 33.
    www.datavail.com 33 Debunking theMyth With Datavail’s platform: Proactive Monitoring is in place Manual tasks are automated Root cause analysis is streamlined Admins spend time on tasks they were hired to do rather than putting out fires
  • 34.
    www.datavail.com 34 Case Study: AutoParts Manufacturer Client was spending 40 person hours of a CPA’s time monthly performing a 5 year consolidation in HFM The time was spent unlocking periods, running consols and waiting for them to finish and then locking periods With Datavail’s platform, the entire process was automated and scheduled Zero manual effort was required going forward
  • 35.
    Myth #7: Conflict between ITand Finance is unavoidable
  • 36.
    www.datavail.com 36 The Reasonfor the Myth Finance Admins understand their business and IT Professionals understand the infrastructure. The opposite is not always the case Teams are dependent on each other without clear mechanisms or vehicles for collaborating on system design and troubleshooting
  • 37.
    www.datavail.com 37 Debunking theMyth With Datavail’s platform: A single set of environmental data and tools can be used by both teams Broad monitoring bridges the gap between Finance and IT (Sharing data instead of requesting data)
  • 38.
    www.datavail.com 38 Case Study: GlobalBanking Company Whenever business processes would fail, client would complain about SLA turnaround from IT, Network and DBA teams With Datavail, the communication mechanism changed from requesting information to providing information and requesting a discussion SLA turnaround times improved significantly Finger pointing reduced dramatically as well
  • 39.
    Myth #8: Prod &non-prod environments are hard to keep in sync
  • 40.
    www.datavail.com 40 The Reasonfor the Myth Out of sync servers within an environment as well as across environments are some of the most difficult issues to track down Very time consuming to document and compare settings
  • 41.
    www.datavail.com 41 Debunking theMyth Datavail’s platform can complete out-of- the-box: Auto-documentation Server synchronization Environment synchronization Automated change history
  • 42.
    www.datavail.com 42 Case Study: Marketing Firm Clientcould not determine why groups of production reports were slower than in QA Both environments had same hardware and application data Datavail’s platform found the solution quickly: our environment comparison found that the reports no longer matched and that someone had been adding member lists to the FR definition (about 5 reports out of 1000).
  • 43.
    Myth #9: SOX auditrequests are time consuming
  • 44.
    www.datavail.com 44 The Reasonfor the Myth Reconciling metadata, rules, report definition changes are time consuming and extremely error prone.
  • 45.
    www.datavail.com 45 Debunking theMyth Datavail’s platform can create an automated versioned history of all application objects.
  • 46.
    www.datavail.com 46 Case Study: Technology Company Clientspent an entire week per quarter preparing start of quarter to end of quarter report to compare: Rules Metadata Report definitions Report included logs showing load activities With Datavail’s software, all changes were automatically detected and snapshots captured The Change Report was then generated automatically every quarter Time savings = 100% Also very helpful for rolling back unwanted changes
  • 47.
  • 48.
  • 49.
  • 50.
    Thank you Stop bythe Datavail Sponsor table to win Bose headphones!