Monitor and Manage Your MicroStrategy BI Environment … · With Enterprise Manager you get all you...

#mstrworld

Monitor and Manage Your

MicroStrategy BI Environment

Using Enterprise Manager and

Health Center

Presented by: Dennis Liao | Sales Engineer

Zach Rea | Sales Engineer

January 27th, 2015

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Session 4 This Session is Part of

MicroStrategy World Track 6:

Enterprise BI I

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MicroStrategy Leads with a Comprehensive Set of Administration Tools

Source– Cindi Howson, BI Scorecard® Strategic and Product Summary

MicroStrategy’s Administration Product Suite

http://www.microstrategy.com/Strategy/media/downloads/about-us/microstrategy_bi-scorecard-summary-q4-2013.pdf

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Presentation Agenda

Introduction

Enterprise Manager Project

Best Practices

Introduction

Products Features and Applications

Benefits

MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager

MicroStrategy Health Center

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How successful is my BI Application?

• Based on number of Users created / Logging in

• Based on number of Jobs run

• Based on returning user frequency

What maintenance does my project require?

• Delete unused objects

• Project Growth Trends

How can I improve end user experience?

• Analyze User wait times

• Analyze Success vs. Error Jobs

• Perform error analysis to reduce errors

How can I improve my application performance?

• Optimize Database Design

• Adjust Product settings

Need for Usage Analysis of BI Applications

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MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager allows administrators to log usage

statistics of their environment and provides out of the box Reports &

Dashboards to enable them to report on these collected statistics.

Analysis can be carried out in areas such as PROJECT, OPERATIONS,

USER and PERFORMANCE.

INTRODUCING

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Setup one or multiple projects to log Statistics

Setup Enterprise Manager to monitor one or multiple projects

A data load process first reads project metadata and populates lookup tables

Then it moves data from usage statistics tables Into the fact tables

Enterprise Manager Project reports analyze the warehouse data

Metadata

Statistics

Tables

Project 1

Project 2

Project 3

Project 4

Enterprise

Manager

Fact

Tables

Look up

Tables

Intelligence

Server

Enterprise Manager Architecture

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Presentation Agenda

Introduction


Best Practices

Introduction


Benefits



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Enterprise Manager Project is organized into 4 areas of analysis

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Quantify & Improve Project ROI

• Provides overview of current project content indicating project complexity

and value

• Find frequently executed reports and objects • Action Item: Should be cached?

• Find frequently executed end user designed reports • Action Item: Should they be made publically available?

• Find and delete unused objects to save resources

Resource Planning & Maintenance

• Report on project growth trend

• Who contributes to the project by building objects? Over what period?

• Use existing project analysis as a model to plan for new projects

1. Project Analysis

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How many reports/attributes/metrics currently exist in the metadata?

Who owns the most objects in profile folders?

• Ensure that users use shortcuts to shared objects to reduce unnecessary

duplicates.

1.a Analyze content of MicroStrategy Projects

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• Objects that have not been

used for a long time* and

exist in the metadata are

candidates for deletion

• Similar reports for many

other objects in the project

metadata exist in the

Enterprise Manager project

* This report shows existing

reports not used since Jun 30

2005.

1.b Find Unused Objects

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Analyze historical usage trends

• By clients (Scheduler vs. Web), by day, etc.

• Capacity planning based on trends

Optimize workload

• Monitor concurrency, queue and response time trends by hour/minute/etc.

• Insights on scheduling, caching, prioritization, clustering, etc.

Distribution Services Analysis

• Analyze Weekly Subscription Trends by Delivery Type

• Find Top Subscribed Reports / Documents / Contacts

• Find Longest Running Subscriptions

Actions performed on History List Messages

• Find users who utilize History List feature often

• Find users with unread History List Messages

2. Operational Analysis

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Counts

summarizing

usage

Percentages

indicating the

nature of

load on the

system

Averages

measuring

performance

Comparison to

historical

usage

2.A Weekly Summary of Project Activity

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• Identify peak times

for report execution

and determine if

queue and execution

times are acceptable

• Schedule batch jobs

outside the peak time

periods to distribute

the load evenly

• Used in an internal

reporting environment

to determine

maintenance

windows

2.B Determine Maintenance Windows

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• Identify the cause of reporting errors

Drill to Template, “Error Analysis Template”

2.C Enhanced Workflow for Troubleshooting Errors

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Report on project success & justify BI investments

• How many users regularly connect to this project?

• How many reports do they run and how frequently?

• User adoption curve over time

Monitor user session and reporting activity

• Feature usage: drilling, ad-hoc reports, etc.

• Cancellations, Timeouts: educate users if necessary

Assign costs to customers / Business Units / Bill for usage

• Database cost in terms of Result rows

• Session Durations, number of users logging in etc.

3. User Analysis

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Identify feature usage patterns

• Which users execute the most

reports/dashboards?

• Market project to inactive

users

• Who executes the longest

running jobs?

• Educate them

• Assign costs based on jobs

and duration.

3.A Track User Activity

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Which users have not logged on

since a specified date?

• Have they changed roles?

• Reassign licenses to other

users

3.B Manage User Accounts

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• Provide supportive information to DBA to improve query

performance

• Improve OLAP Services usage by adding attributes and metrics to

report designs that cause database hits

• Understand number and performance of datasets for frequently run

documents

4. Performance Analysis

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• Report used to measure

throughput & average

response times over a

given week.

• Charts such as this

were used by a large

logistics company to

understand overall

system performance,

adjust governing

parameters and

stabilize the system.

4.A Quantify Performance and Find Problems

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• Customers target warehouse

table optimizations to achieve

performance improvements of

100% to 5000% per report

• Columns used frequently in

the “WHERE” clause are good

candidates for indexing

4.B Identify Tuning Candidates

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Multidimensional warehouse

• 7 Hierarchies

• 115 Tables

>350 Metrics

• Document Processing Analysis

• Object Analysis

• Report Processing Analysis

- Averages

- Counts

- Percentages

• User / Session Analysis

>150 Out of the box Reports

• Project analysis

• Operational analysis

• User Analysis

• Performance Analysis

115 Attributes

• Application Objects

• Configuration Objects

• Data Load

• Document Job

• Indicators & Flags

• Report Job

• Schema Objects

• Session

• Time

Organization of the Enterprise Manager Project

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Drilling Hierarchies constitute the Ad-Hoc Drilling Experience

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Drill Maps Constitute the Guided Drilling Experience

• Drill maps using drill to templates constitute the guided drilling

experience.

• Workflows indicating use cases are outlined in project documentation.

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Interactive Dashboards designed for each Area of Analysis

Newly created Dashboards provide introduction into the respective analysis area

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Enterprise Manager goes Mobile

• The Enterprise Manager Phone Dashboard is

a collection of MSTR Documents which

simulate an application.

• Available on both iOS and Android.

• Allows Administrators to monitor environment

on the go!

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New level of Statistics – Client Statistics

Available only for Mobile Client at this point

Allows administrators to collect statistics about:

• Client rendering time

• Network time

• Number of manipulations by user

• View time of each report / document

• Offline executions

• Executions hitting device cache

• Type of Executions: User, Back Button, System Recovery, Report Queue

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Presentation Agenda

Introduction


Best Practices

Introduction


Benefits



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1. Do not create Statistics

Tables & Metadata tables

in the same database

space

2. Take advantage of

parameterized inserts

3. Start collecting statistics

now even if you plan to use

Enterprise Manager a few

quarters later

Intelligence Server

P

P

P

Intelligence Server

P

P

P

Intelligence Server

P

P

P

P

Statistics

Tables

Best Practices for Creating Statistics Tables

Metadata

Tables

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Choose Level of Statistics

• Basic statistics are

sufficient for most

reports & dashboards

• Advanced statistics are

usually recommended

for troubleshooting

specific issues

• Negligible effects on

performance from

checking all statistics

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Initialization

• Transfer the Enterprise

Manager project Metadata

and Warehouse tables to

your destination database

Configuration Schedule

• Choose which

Servers and projects

you wish to monitor

• Specify the

frequency of the data-

load process

The Enterprise Manager console guides

you through these steps

3. Create and populate the Enterprise Manager Repository in 3 simple steps

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Schedule the data load process to run as often as you like

Configure data load options according to your needs

• Update Folder Path

• Update Object Deletions

• Repopulate Relationship Tables

• Update Database Statistics

With scheduled data loads, the migration window is automatically determined

• Use custom time window data-loads only if you need to control the migration

window

• Custom time window data-loads can be run from the command line

Basic data load log is automatically generated

• Advanced data load log which includes SQL used to carry out the data load

should be turned on only for troubleshooting purposes

Enterprise Manager Console provides several data load options

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Recommend keeping only 5-6 months of statistics data

Statistics Tables can be purged as follows:

• Via MicroStrategy Developer by manually providing the time range of

statistics to purge

• Via MicroStrategy Developer by scheduling purging of Statistics

• Via MicroStrategy Command Manager

If statistics must be retained for longer periods, for better system

performance

• Replicate records to a carbon copy statistics database

• Purge old data from run-time statistics tables after copy

• Set up Enterprise Manager on the carbon copy database

Statistics Tables Maintenance/Retention

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With Enterprise Manager you get all you need to monitor your BI

environment • Interactive Dashboards

• Out of the box reports for detailed analysis

• Attributes, Metrics, Filters, Prompts etc enable you to create your own reports

Enterprise Manager provides insight into the decision making

process • Capacity Planning

• Feature usage

• Project adoption

• Predictive Analytics and so on..

Start collecting Statistics as soon as you create new projects

Create your own Reports & Dashboards to suit your requirements. If

modifying existing ones, make a copy and modify them

Summary

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Presentation Agenda

Introduction


Best Practices

Introduction


Benefits



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A Single MicroStrategy Environment Generates Dozens of Logs, Configuration Files,

and Settings

CONFIGURATION FILES

MicroStrategy BI Platform

LOG FILES

5-10 files generated per

product

1000s of rows of data

SETTINGS

Files contain details on: • Errors • Events • Installations • Product History

• 100’s of different settings • Stored on each server in

registry or databases

1 or 2 files generated per

product

Many configuration

settings

Files contain details on: • Configuration Settings • Server Information

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Identifying, Diagnosing, and Solving Issues Can Consume Significant Resources

BI Users

This process can take days and sometimes even weeks!

Problem

BI Users Identify Issues

Users Complain To Administrators

Administrators Scan Large Log Files

Administrators Contact Support

Support Recommends A Solution

Support Requests Log And Configuration Files

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MicroStrategy Provides a Simpler and More Efficient Way to do this!

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Health Center Console Provides a Centralized View and Control for the Entire

MicroStrategy Environment

Monitor all Servers from a single interface.

Facilitates log collection when access control is restricted

Health Center

Console

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Health Center Automatically Discovers Machines in the MicroStrategy Environment

Find and add machines running MicroStrategy using the

Machine Discovery Wizard

Manual addition is also supported.

MHA

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Health Center’s Architecture Ensures that all Components in Your MicroStrategy

Environment Are Working Properly

MH

A

A A A A

C C

1. Health Agents run on each

machine with MicroStrategy

products.

2. The Master Health Agent

manages all agents in the

configuration

3. Health Center Consoles

provide a single interface to

manage all the Health Center

operations across all machines.

A

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Presentation Agenda

Introduction


Best Practices

Introduction


Benefits



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× A × B × C A

B C

1. Proactively Evaluate the Health of Your BI Environments

Scan Log Files, Configuration Files, and System Settings across

Multiple BI Environments

Identify Errors or Potential Problems

Diagnose Problems

Sends alert to Administrators

Provide Action Links to Immediately Resolve

Problems


Pre-Coded Plug-Ins

Enterprise BI Platform Prod Environment

Enterprise BI Dev Environment

Departmental BI Prod Environment

SCAN ALERT / FIX

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Health Center Can Diagnose Common Problems Across the MicroStrategy

Platform

MicroStrategy Intelligence Server

Memory Depletion

Metadata Connection

LogPath Registry Key

Component Registration

Network Port Detector

Path Environment Variable

Warehouse Connection

MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server

Object Repository Connection

Network Port Detector

Path Environment Variable

DCOM Settings


MicroStrategy Desktop


LogPath Registry Key

Metadata Connection


Data Load Failures

MicroStrategy Web

JVM Heap Size

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Health Center Sends Alerts to Administrators when a Problem is Detected

Error Details and Diagnosis

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Health Center Provides a Centralized View of the BI System Allowing Administrators

to Visualize Alert Details

Visually

Identify Alerts

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Presents Action Links for the Administrators to Correct Common Problems

Easily Fix Common Problems with a Single Click

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× A × B × C

2. Enable Administrators to Proactively Collaborate with MicroStrategy Technical

Support

Scans Log Files, Configuration Files, and

System Settings

Identify Errors or Potential

Problems

Details Packaged and Sent to

MicroStrategy Technical Support

Support Quickly Collaborates with

Administrators

Zip File


Pre-Coded Plug-Ins

Enterprise BI Platform Prod Environment

Enterprise BI Dev Environment

Departmental BI Prod Environment

COLLECT DIAGNOSTIC PACKAGES

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Diagnostic Packages Collect Files and Information Specific to Each Product as Well

as Some Machine-level Information

MicroStrategy Intelligence Server

MicroStrategy Web Server


Intelligence Server Logs

Web Server Logs

Enterprise Manager Logs

Diagnostic Package

MicroStrategy Technical Support

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Collects Diagnostic Information and System Configuration Details across the Entire

MicroStrategy Environment

Data Collection Wizard simplifies collection of relevant information

and files

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Simplifies the set up of a reproduction scenario

Collects both Report/Documents and Cache files into a

Diagnostic Package

• Technical Support will replicate customer’s environment

faster

Metadata Slice Collector Useful when Reproducing an Issue

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The content of the package can be reviewed before sending it

through FTP / FTPS to MicroStrategy Technical Support or

exported to disk for later transmission.

Accelerate Problem Resolution through Enhanced Collaboration with MicroStrategy

Technical Support

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Easily Review and Analyze Log Files

Slice and dice MicroStrategy log files within Log Analysis

Panel of Health Center Console

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You can set up an Access Code to control the

access to Master Health Agent

You can control the access to Health Agent by

using either an Access Code or Trusted IP list

Action History keeps track of changes made

through Health Center

Communication between Master Health Agent and

Tech Support uses HTTPS and FTPS protocols.

Health Center uses the same encryption as the rest

of the platform for:

• Communication between Master Health Agent –

Health Agents and among Health Agents

• Any password stored as part of configuration

Health Center is Designed with System Security in Mind

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Presentation Agenda

Introduction


Best Practices

Introduction


Benefits



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DECREASE NUMBER OF HOURS SPENT locating, collecting, and

analyzing configuration files, log files, and system settings across

MULTIPLE ENVIRONMENTS and MULTIPLE MICROSTRATEGY

PRODUCTS

Easily FIX common issues with a single-click

Cut down user complaints by PROACTIVELY resolving current or

potential problems

Improve COLLABORATION with MicroStrategy Technical Support by

providing immediate notification alerts and quickly gathering required

files

Summary of MicroStrategy Health Center Benefits

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QUESTIONS

Dennis Liao

Email: [email protected]

Zack Rea

Email: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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