A Fresh Approach to Essbase Backups

Methods to automate the backup process for Essbase are certainly available but tend to be
complicated and often times more than a business user maintaining Essbase wants to take on.
Most companies have resources capable of writing old-fashioned hard-coded ESSCMD,
MaxL & batch scripts to automate the process but the scripts are cumbersome to maintain,
collide with existing processes and when something does go wrong like leaving Essbase in a
read-only mode, the administrator only finds out in the morning! Moreover, Hyperion
administrators may not have time or may not have enough technical knowledge to maintain
or modify these scripts. On the other hand, IT systems analysts may not have enough
business background to modify the process. From time to time, the process easily becomes
outdated and not able to meet the business requirement and needs.
Star Command Center (SCC) gives Hyperion administrators the ultimate solution to
automate these processes in a well-organized and manageable way without writing any
custom scripts. Using SCC to automate the Essbase backup process can save an incredible of
amount of time versus building and maintaining custom scripts.
The following steps details one approach to setting up an Essbase back up process using Star
Command Center and the Essbase and Utilities plug-in tasks:
Step #1. Create a backup directory for each Essbase application and database. Note the highlighted areas in the
example below:


Create a task Create backup folder using the SCC Utilities Task Pack as the first step
under the process Backup DemoApp process. Fill in the parameters such as the path
and directory name. Setup time 2 minutes.

Step #2. Disable connections for the target Essbase application:

Create a task to Disables Connections using the SCC Essbase Plug-in. Setup time
less than 1 minute.

Step #3. Backup the target database to text file(s):

Create an Export Data task using the SCC Essbase Plug-in to export data from
Essbase to a text file. Setup time 1 minute.

Step #4. Detect if any errors occurred during the Data Export:

This task is designed ensure the Export Data task has successfully run without error. If
there is an error, it will skip the next three tasks: Reset Data, DataLoad & Error File
Existence Export. Setup time 2 minutes.

Step #5. Assuming the previous step is successful, clear the data in the Essbase cube to remove fragmentation:

Create a task to Reset Data using the SCC Essbase Task Pack. Fill in the Essbase
application and database names. Setup time less than 1 minute.

Step #6. Load data from the latest backup file(s) to the target Essbase database:

Create a task to Data Load Text File using the SCC Essbase Task Pack. F ill in the
Essbase application and database names as well as the data file name. Setup time less
than 1 minute.

Step #7. Detect if any errors occurred during the Data Load:

This task is designed ensure the Load Data task has successfully run without error. If
there is an error, it will simply skip to the following task. Setup time 2 minutes.

Step #8. Create current date/time directory in the backup directory:

Create a task to Create new folder (data) using the SCC Utilities Task Pack. Fill in the
root path where a new folder will be created in the DD-MM-YYYY format. Setup time
less than 1 minute.

Step #9. Move backup file(s) & log file(s) to the current date/time directory:

Create a task to Copy Logs and fill in the required Source and Target path and file
information. Setup time 2 minutes.

Step #10. Delete processing logs:

Create a task to Delete Logs using the SCC Utilities Task Pack. Setup time less than
1 minute.

Step #11. Delete any date/time directory which is 15+ days old:

Create a task to Delete log folders (15+ days old) using the SCC Utilities Task Pack.
This unique task will dynamically remove any folder and all its contents with a naming
convention of DD-MM-YYYY. Note: all other folders are ignored. Setup time less
than 1 minute.

Step #12. Enable connections for the target Essbase application:

Create a task to Enable Connections using the SCC Essbase Task Pack. F ill in the
Essbase application and database names. Setup time less than 1 minute.

Step #13. Send out email notifications to in the event the process fails:

Tips:
1. Review the Star Analytics plug-ins inventory and understand what the plug-ins can do for you. A lot of time can
be saved by using plug-ins, instead of writing custom code.
2. Based on the above example, each task takes 2 minutes or less to setup and not a single line of custom code
was used to setup this semi-complicated process.

3. Use Star Command Centers environment or process variables when setting up the tasks. Most tasks above
have hardcoded values that can leverage environment variables.