Inital LBI Implementation Questions

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hrasmuss

Basic Member

Posts: 8

9/18/2007 4:19 PM

We are currently an 803.7 Env shop with e-broadcasting and Report Designer reports. We plan on implementing LBI prior to going to LSF9. Our initial scope is to move the Report Designer reports over to Crystal and publish in LBI along with copying over our broadcasting functionality. We have an Oracle database and will be implementing with SQL Server as the Mid Tier database and Websphere. I have a couple of questions...
1) How long has it taken to implement LBI so that you are up to pre-LBI functionality?
2) How many resources (employees) did you have dedicated to the installation?
3) Has anyone found any problems having LBI and Crystal RAS installed on the same server? Any system resource issues?
4) If you do not install Scorecard right away, and thus do not need Microsoft Analysis Services, do you still need to install SQL Server on the LBI server?
5) Has anyone migrated LBI from an 803.7 Env to LSF9? What kind of configuration was involved?

Thanks in advance for any help!!!

k-rock

Veteran Member

Posts: 142

9/18/2007 5:17 PM

Why are you moving to Crystal Reports? You can publish RW100 reports directly with LBI.

John Henley

Senior Member

Posts: 3348

9/18/2007 5:18 PM

Hans, please elaborate on 'Report Designer' reports...

hrasmuss

Basic Member

Posts: 8

9/18/2007 5:23 PM

Report Designer is an old Lawson reporting/query tool that is going away with LSF9 and LBI. They are very simple reports that are not run through RW. So, Lawson stated that we would need to convert those over to Crystal Reports. All of our RW reports are going directly to LBI.

Chris Martin

Veteran Member

Posts: 277

9/18/2007 5:37 PM

Can you define "pre-LBI functionality"?

With an experienced installer, the install can be completed in a week max. You may want to allot more time if it's somebody who's unfamiliar with the product. Shouldn't take more than one person.

I have seen system resource issues with RAS installed on the same server, which were resolved by moving RAS to remote/load-balanced servers.

hrasmuss

Basic Member

Posts: 8

9/18/2007 5:43 PM

Do you know if this was because of the quantity of reports within the RAS or the substance of the reports (i.e. heavy queries)? Do you believe this could be resolved with a more powerful server (ours will have 4 8MB dual-core processors)?

Chris Martin

Veteran Member

Posts: 277

9/18/2007 5:51 PM

RAS (ver 10) wasn't releasing memory. We had the latest patches applied. We considered an upgrade to XI to see if that resolved it, but due to the number of Crystal 10 reports we had, upgrading the reports to XI and testing them was a huge effort. We had two extra boxes that we put to work as dedicated/load-balanced RAS servers.

hrasmuss

Basic Member

Posts: 8

9/18/2007 9:52 PM

If you don't mind me asking, what was the capacity of those two boxes you used (hardware/processing)? This is a big help in making our decision. Thanks!

Chris Martin

Veteran Member

Posts: 277

9/19/2007 12:40 PM

Both servers are Dual 3 ghz Xeon (hyperthreaded) processors, 8 gb memory. That's probably overkill for servers only running RAS, but it's just what happened to be available.

Chris Martin

Veteran Member

Posts: 277

9/19/2007 12:42 PM

FYI - We initially looked at vm servers, but the memory requirements made this not practical.

hrasmuss

Basic Member

Posts: 8

9/19/2007 10:00 PM

Thanks Chris:
Those specs you offered were for your Crystal boxes right? What were the specs on your actual LBI box? Thanks again for all your help!

Chris Martin

Veteran Member

Posts: 277

9/20/2007 2:27 PM

The LBI servers are essentially the same specs, however FS/RS/SN are all installed on separate servers (clustered)

jellis

Veteran Member

Posts: 54

1/8/2009 9:24 PM

Chris,

I am working at a place that is about to deploy LBI and have multiple RAS servers. What or how did you load balance them? Did you use a piece of hardware or something via software?

Thanks.

Jim

John Henley

Senior Member

Posts: 3348

1/8/2009 10:45 PM

I think what Chris means is the Framework Services, Reporting Services, and Smart Notifications are installed on separate servers, not that Crystal is clustered.

Chris Martin

Veteran Member

Posts: 277

1/9/2009 5:53 PM

Well, really it's just a configuration that alternates requests between the RAS servers. The file you need to modify is clientSDKOptions.xml. With new versions of LBI, I believe Lawson has documented how to accomplish this (in the install guide).

Ben Coonfield

Veteran Member

Posts: 146

1/10/2009 4:17 PM

Posted By hras on 09/18/2007 12:19 PM

4) If you do not install Scorecard right away, and thus do not need Microsoft Analysis Services, do you still need to install SQL Server on the LBI server?

LBI does not require SQL Server, if you are not using Scorecard. We have LBI installed without SQL server.

John Henley

Senior Member

Posts: 3348

1/10/2009 6:16 PM

But it does require a database of some flavor

Ben Coonfield

Veteran Member

Posts: 146

1/11/2009 11:28 PM

Posted By John Henley on 01/10/2009 01:16 PM

But it does require a database of some flavor

That's right. But since hras is using Oracle for the Lawson database, they might find it conveneint to use the same DBMS for LBI. At least I found that to be easier to support in my circumstances. (Now, my entire Lawson environment runs on a single DBMS and is managed by the same DBAs.)

Another point is that the DBMS does not need to be installed on the LBI server(s), nor need it even be on Windows. The LBI server needs only the DBMS client and the server can be located wherever convenient.

John Henley

Senior Member

Posts: 3348

1/12/2009 12:26 AM

Very well explained--thanks!