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