Oracle EPM 11.2 Installation How To

There have been some very helpful blogs and twitter posts out there commenting on the Oracle EPM 11.2 installation so I'd like to thank these lovely people:

• Dave Shay: http://www.epmonprem.pro/
• That EPM Bloke: http://hyperipwn.blogspot.com/
• AJ Martelino https://twitter.com/HyperionInfra

I’ve taken some of the info from the resources above and my own trial an error and come up with a condensed Oracle EPM 11.2 installation crib sheet. I’d recommend getting an Oracle EPM infrastructure consultant to do this for you as it’s quite involved. Oracle have had years to get this right so I really can’t understand how they’ve made such a mess of it. Multiple RCUs?!

Server Preparation

I used the following 3rd party software versions. Check the EPM Certification Matrix for full details

• Windows Server 2019
• SQL Server 2016

Windows Firewall

• Turn off notifications and blocking for Domain and Local Network.

Windows Defender

• Turn off on-access scanning.

Other Bits

• Create a new user with administrator privileges (using the 'administrator' user is not recommended although it worked for me).
• Turn off UAC. I also set these local policies to ensure UAC is completely turned off:
• User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode (set to Elevate without prompting)
• User Account Control: Detect application installations and prompt for elevation (set to Disabled)
• User Account Control: Only elevate UIAccess applications that are installed in secure locations (set to Disabled)
• User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode (set to Disabled)
• When launching any batch files right-click and 'Run as Administrator'.
• Check your install binaries. For some reason my V984509-01_part5.zip was unable to extract the fmw_12.2.1.3.0_odi.jar file.

RCU

For distributed installs you will need to run the RCU for each server node. I did try copying across the RCUSchema.properties file from my first node to other nodes but I got this error when trying to deploy the web app servers on other nodes: "The schema EPM_OPSS is already in use for security store(s)". So each node does need a separate RCU schema.

Having multiple RCU SQL databases per server node is a pain. To make things more manageable I used the same RCU database for each node and just changed the RCU prefix so I only needed one database.

Add your RCU database connection details manually to the E:\Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1\common\config\11.1.2.0\RCUSchema.properties:

sysDBAUser=UserName
sysDBAPassword=Password
rcuSchemaPassword=Password
schemaPrefix= e.g EPM1
dbURL= e.g. jdbc:weblogic:sqlserver://EPM1:1433;databaseName=RCU

EPM Configuration

Configure only the Foundation app server and database first. After configuring Foundation launch Weblogic admin server and start the Foundation Windows service.
Once you’ve done this you can then go ahead and configure the other components.
If you’re doing a distributed installation, make sure the Weblogic admin server is running on the first node before you configure the other nodes. On the second node I went through the same procedure of only configuring Foundation first, starting it, stopping it and then configuring the rest.

OHS

The config utility doesn’t create a OHS Windows service for us so we need to start it manually.

• To start OHS run E:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\EPM1\httpConfig\ohs\bin\startComponent.cmd ohs_component
• To stop OHS run E:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\EPM1\httpConfig\ohs\bin\stopComponent.cmd ohs_component

That EPM Bloke has kindly created a service wrapper here.

Rip it up and start again

The uninstallers are surprisingly good. If you need to ditch it all and start again then uninstall in this order. From the Windows menu:

• Run the “Oracle EPM System” -> “Uninstall EPM System”
• Run “Oracle FMW – 12.2.1.3.0 (2)” -> “Uninstall OracleHome2”
• Run “Oracle FMW – 12.2.1.3.0”  -> “Uninstall OracleHome”

The Oracle Client installs will prompt you to uninstall from the command line
Just to be sure I also deleted anything EPM related in the C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local folder.

I've now got a clustered EPM installation working nicely. Happy installing everyone.