Disk Configurations

[cogdev]

I have inherted a System where we Install the OS on the C: drive, all of Cognos on the D: drive and the Temp space on the E: drive. This has been going on for about 4 years. Now the original administrators have left the job, and we are in the process of rebuilding our servers as w2k.
Is there any particular justification to seperating the OS and the applications in this way? What do you think is a good idea?

Another issue: previously, the users (the cognos developers), would have been able to log on to the Development and production servers, and do actual development on these boxes. I am thinking that they should only have access to the shares and all development should be done on their desktops. In effect, for IWR, I want only IWR installed on the Server, and for PPES, I want only PPES installed on the servers. The developers do not seem to like this idea.
I just think that we should limit the persons who can log on to the box, to improve accountability.

Any thoughts?

Fazil

 

[Pommie]

Hi Fazil,

We have a similar setup on our servers which, I believe, were set up by Cognos for us, this may be their way of doing things. We too are about to convert our servers to W2K and intend installing the Cognos Software on the C: drive as normal. I can't see any problems with this, the only part I'm not looking forward to is the IWR serer as it's a bit of a mess. I look forard to comments for others sites.
As far as development goes I do all of our IWR development on my PC and upload to the server when it's ready. With PPES I try to build the IQD's and model on my PC but I take advantage of the processing power of the server (twin cpu's , 1 gig memeory etc) if it's a largish cube or there is a lot of data to churn through. Mind you I am in charge of the whole system so it's easier for me to keep check of it. All of our production cubes are built on the servers.

Hope this helps,

John

 

[cogdev]

Hey John,

I think the D: drive set-up is better: I have had to re-intall cognos on many occasion, and that usually entails me reformatting the D drive. Sometimes add/remove does not work properly, and I would have delete the registry files manually, and clean the HD. In this way, I am not interfering with the OS on the C drive.

I am still curious to know if your users have Access to the Servers, or are they just using the shares to post reports/cubes.

 

[Pommie]

Hi Fazil,
None of our users have direct access to the servers, there are only a few of us who develop cubes. We have 2 distinct areas of reports, production reports which I am responsible for, and general reports written by the users. We will 'productionize' reports written by users and maintain them but these are only Impromptu reports not IWR. I guess it comes down to how much you can trust the other devlopers not to tinker with the set up.
I guess we've been lucky with our servers as we haven't had too much trouble with them, maybe we're not pushing the envelope enough. I have had occasion to reinstall Impromptu on my PC when it's become complete screwed after mucking about with it, maybe I just confused it. Even then I only had to do a re-install which fixed it I haven't had to reformat. I guess the server software is a bit more involved and relies upon a lot more seperate processes so I can see where problems could exist.
Please keep us informed of your progress in this as we will be attempting our upgrade shortly and it will be interesting to compare notes.

Regards

John