Enterprise Manager

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’s Administration Product Suite
MicroStrategy Leads with a Comprehensive Set of Administration Tools
Source– Cindi Howson, BI Scorecard® Strategic and Product Summary
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Presentation Agenda
MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager
Introduction
Enterprise Manager Project
Best Practices
MicroStrategy Health Center
Introduction
Products Features and Applications
Benefits
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Need for Usage Analysis of BI Applications
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
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INTRODUCING
MicroStrategy
Enterprise Manager
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.
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Enterprise Manager Architecture
 Setup one or multiple
projects to log Statistics
 Setup Enterprise
Manager to monitor one
or multiple projects
Statistics
Tables
Intelligence
Server
Fact
Tables
Look up
Tables
Project 1
Project 2
Project 3
Project 4
Metadata
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Enterprise
Manager
 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
Presentation Agenda
MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager
Introduction
Enterprise Manager Project
Best Practices
MicroStrategy Health Center
Introduction
Products Features and Applications
Benefits
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Enterprise Manager Project is organized into 4 areas of analysis
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1. Project Analysis
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
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1.a Analyze content of MicroStrategy Projects
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.
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1.b Find Unused Objects
• 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.
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2. Operational Analysis
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
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2.A Weekly Summary of Project Activity
Counts
summarizing
usage
Percentages
indicating the
nature of
load on the
system
Averages
measuring
performance
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Comparison to
historical
usage
2.B Determine Maintenance Windows
• Identify peak times
•
•
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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.C Enhanced Workflow for Troubleshooting Errors
• Identify the cause of reporting errors
Drill to Template, “Error Analysis Template”
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3. User Analysis
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.
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3.A Track User Activity
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.
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3.B Manage User Accounts
Which users have not logged on
since a specified date?
• Have they changed roles?
• Reassign licenses to other
users
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4. Performance Analysis
• 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
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4.A Quantify Performance and Find Problems
• 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.
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4.B Identify Tuning Candidates
• 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
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Organization of the Enterprise Manager Project
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
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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
MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager
Introduction
Enterprise Manager Project
Best Practices
MicroStrategy Health Center
Introduction
Products Features and Applications
Benefits
#mstrworld
Best Practices for Creating Statistics Tables
P
P
P
P
Intelligence
Server
P
P
P
Intelligence
Server
P
P
P
Intelligence
Server
1. Do not create Statistics
Tables & Metadata tables
in the same database
space
2. Take advantage of
parameterized inserts
Statistics
Tables
Metadata
Tables
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3. Start collecting statistics
now even if you plan to use
Enterprise Manager a few
quarters later
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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3. Create and populate the Enterprise Manager Repository in 3 simple steps


Initialization
Configuration

Schedule
• Transfer the Enterprise
• Choose which
• Specify the
Manager project Metadata
Servers and projects
frequency of the data-
and Warehouse tables to
you wish to monitor
your destination database
The Enterprise Manager console guides
you through these steps
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load process
Enterprise Manager Console provides several data load options
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
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Statistics Tables Maintenance/Retention
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
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Summary
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
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Presentation Agenda
MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager
Introduction
Enterprise Manager Project
Best Practices
MicroStrategy Health Center
Introduction
Products Features and Applications
Benefits
#mstrworld
A Single MicroStrategy Environment Generates Dozens of Logs, Configuration Files,
and Settings
MicroStrategy BI Platform
LOG FILES
5-10 files
generated per
product
1 or 2 files
generated per
product
1000s of rows
of data
Many
configuration
settings
Files contain details on:
• Errors
• Events
• Installations
• Product History
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CONFIGURATION FILES
Files contain details on:
• Configuration Settings
• Server Information
SETTINGS
• 100’s of different settings
• Stored on each server in
registry or databases
Identifying, Diagnosing, and Solving Issues Can Consume Significant Resources
BI Users
Identify Issues
Administrators Scan
Large Log Files
Users Complain
To Administrators
Administrators
Contact Support
Support Requests Log
And Configuration Files
Support Recommends
A Solution
Problem
BI Users
This process can take days and sometimes even weeks!
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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
A
A
A
A
2. The Master Health Agent
manages all agents in the
configuration
MH
A
C
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A
1. Health Agents run on each
machine with MicroStrategy
products.
C
3. Health Center Consoles
provide a single interface to
manage all the Health Center
operations across all machines.
Presentation Agenda
MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager
Introduction
Enterprise Manager Project
Best Practices
MicroStrategy Health Center
Introduction
Products Features and Applications
Benefits
#mstrworld
1. Proactively Evaluate the Health of Your BI Environments
MicroStrategy Health Center
Pre-Coded Plug-Ins
SCAN  ALERT / FIX
Enterprise BI Platform Prod Environment
Enterprise BI Dev Environment
Departmental BI Prod Environment
×A
×B
×C
Scan Log Files, Configuration
Files, and System Settings across
Multiple BI Environments
Diagnose
Problems
Identify
Errors or
Potential
Problems
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A
B
C
Sends alert to
Administrators
Provide Action Links to
Immediately Resolve
Problems
Health Center Can Diagnose Common Problems Across the MicroStrategy
Platform
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server
Component Registration
MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server
Memory Depletion
DCOM Settings
Metadata Connection
Object Repository Connection
Warehouse Connection
Path Environment Variable
Network Port Detector
Network Port Detector
LogPath Registry Key
Component Registration
Path Environment Variable
MicroStrategy Desktop
MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager
Metadata Connection
Data Load Failures
Component Registration
MicroStrategy Web
JVM Heap Size
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LogPath Registry Key
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

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Visually
Identify Alerts
Presents Action Links for the Administrators to Correct Common Problems

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Easily Fix Common Problems with a Single Click
2. Enable Administrators to Proactively Collaborate with MicroStrategy Technical
Support
MicroStrategy Health Center
Pre-Coded Plug-Ins
Enterprise BI Platform Prod Environment
COLLECT  DIAGNOSTIC PACKAGES
Enterprise BI Dev Environment
Departmental BI Prod Environment
Zip File
Scans Log Files,
Configuration Files, and
System Settings
×A
×B
×C
Identify Errors
or Potential
Problems
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Details Packaged
and Sent to
MicroStrategy
Technical Support
Support Quickly
Collaborates with
Administrators
Diagnostic Packages Collect Files and Information Specific to Each Product as Well
as Some Machine-level Information
MicroStrategy
Intelligence Server
MicroStrategy
Web Server
MicroStrategy
Enterprise Manager
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Intelligence Server
Logs
Web Server
Logs
Enterprise Manager
Logs
Diagnostic
Package
MicroStrategy Technical
Support
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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Metadata Slice Collector Useful when Reproducing an Issue
 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
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Accelerate Problem Resolution through Enhanced Collaboration with MicroStrategy
Technical Support
 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.
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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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Health Center is Designed with System Security in Mind
 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
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Presentation Agenda
MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager
Introduction
Enterprise Manager Project
Best Practices
MicroStrategy Health Center
Introduction
Products Features and Applications
Benefits
#mstrworld
Summary of MicroStrategy Health Center Benefits

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
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QUESTIONS
Dennis Liao
Email: deliao@microstrategy.com
Zack Rea
Email: zrea@microstrategy.com
#mstrworld