Month: January 2015

DIY Hyperion Planning – Introduction

Starting a blog is a new experience for me.  I implement Hyperion Planning and Essbase solutions for a living, and as part of that process I write a lot of user guides and admin guides.  I’m used to writing formal, structured documents where I don’t have to worry too much about being interesting.  Blogs are different, and finding a good starting point has been a challenge.  So let’s see if we can start with something useful . . .

The Most Effective Thing I’ve Ever Done to Advance My Career

I’m going to illustrate, step-by-step, how to build your own personal Hyperion Planning sandbox environment (version 11.1.2.4).  This is no simple task, so why go to the trouble if you have an environment at work?  Well, it can be risky to “experiment” at work.  Perhaps you want to try something that just might bring down the whole environment?  Work might not be the best place for that sort of thing.  Maybe you need an environment on a specific version or patch?  Do you build demos for clients or present at conferences?  These are all situations where it can be advantageous to have your very own, personal Hyperion Planning environment.

There are three basic options for getting started:

  1. Leverage a pre-built cloud environment
  2. Build your own cloud environment
  3. Build your own environment on your own hardware

Option #1 is fast and cheap.  Option #2 is slow and cheap.  Option #3 is slow and somewhat pricey.  (Because you will need a Windows Server 2012 license.)  But it’s definitely my favorite option.  By building something yourself, you learn more.  And in the end, you will have an environment that you know well, and that you control completely.

If you’re looking for Option #1, head to Metavero and check out John Booth’s excellent AMI’s (Amazon Machine Images).  If you’re looking for Option #2, the information I’m going to present will still be useful.  You’ll just be using hardware in the cloud.  If you are like me and are interested in Option #3, . . . click here.