OAC - How to Create Oracle Autonomous Essbase and OBI Analytics Cloud Instances?

I've recently been implementing Autonomous Oracle Analytics Cloud for a customer. The customer had Essbase and OBIEE on-prem and we have migrated everything to the Oracle Autonomous Cloud.

It's been an interesting process and whilst there have been some small niggles the OAC offering is a very simple to use and powerful platform.

In this OAC blog (the first of several if I get the time!) I will show how easy it is to spin up new OAC instances. We shall create an Essbase instance and a Business Intelligence Enterprise instance, each running on one OCPU.

With the Autonomous Cloud, Oracle have made this process super simple!

There are free trials available, so I urge you all to give it a go and test drive the new features in Essbase 12c and Data Visualization. When you receive your login, you will get a URL which will direct you to your Oracle Services:

https://myservices-<TENENT-NAME>.console.oraclecloud.com/mycloud/cloudportal/cloudHome 

This will give you a huge list of all the services your Oracle credits enable you to use. You can filter these down to a more manageable list by 'favouriting' your relevant services (clicking on the star). I'm interested in the Oracle Analytics Cloud and the Oracle Identity Cloud Server (more on IDCS in a subsequent blog). Here is my shortened list of services:

Both Essbase and OBIEE come under the Analytics service so click on the Oracle Analytics Cloud link highlighted in yellow. 

Creating the OAC Autonomous Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Instance

You don't need to know anything about infrastructure or installs with Autonomous. Just click on the ‘Create Instance’ link to build your Essbase/OBIEE instance. 

You have a choice of options for your instance: 

• Instance Name: The name of your Analytics instance. This will appear in the OBI/Essbase URL. You are not allowed to use any special characters in the instance name. 
• Description. Enter the description of the service here.
• Notification Email. All information associated with the instance (patch notifications, failures) will be sent to this account. 
• Region. Choose your closest data centre. 
• License Type. Choose between the Bring Your Own License (BYOL) model or the standard subscription model. 
• Edition. Choose between Oracle Analytics Cloud - Standard, Oracle Analytics Cloud - Essbase, Oracle Analytics Cloud - Enterprise. 
• Feature Set. This is the subset of features contained within the 'Edition'. 
• Number of OCPUs. Self-explanatory! 

Here is the list of OAC Editions:

And here is the list of feature sets:

Click create and after about 10 minutes your OBI instance is created. 

To access your OBI instance click on the burger menu on the right hand side and select 'Oracle Analytics Cloud URL'. 

This will take you to the OAC Data Visualization homepage: 

Creating the OAC Autonomous Essbase Cloud Instance

Now to create the Oracle Autonomous Analytics Cloud Essbase instance.

We follow the same process as the BI instance but change the instance details. The only thing we have changed here is our Instance name and the Feature Set: Essbase - Collaborative Data Collection, Scenarios and What-if Analysis.

Here we had an issue with the creation process. We logged an SR with Oracle and they un-froze the creation process. I'm sure Oracle will iron out these small niggles in the future. 

Once you have created your Essbase instance it too will appear in your Analytics instances list: 

Click on the link on the burger menu to login to the new Essbase Jet UI:

I did say it was super simple!

• We haven't had to wait months to allocate hardware
• We haven't had to download GBs of software installers
• We haven't had to wait days for an infrastructure consultant to install the stack

However, there are some fundamental aspects of the service which need improving:

• You cannot currently stop a service on demand (there is no STOP button in the console menu!). To stop the service or to schedule up-time you need to log an Oracle Service Request
• You can't modify the existing instance (number of OCPU for example). Again, you need to log an SR to get it modified

Oracle are working to get these and many more features added. With the crazy pace that things change in the Oracle Cloud I'm sure it won't be long before they are there.

That's it for now, more OACS content coming soon.