1. Allstate Migration and Infrastructure for XI R2
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Allstate Migration and Infrastructure for XI R2
Tim Rodine, TCR Solutions, Inc.
Alex Timberg, Allstate Insurance Company

2. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Topics
Business Intelligence at Allstate
Starting with Separate Environments
Planning for the Migration
Design of XI R2 Cluster
Performance, Resiliency, and Failover
Migration
Lessons Learned and Tips
Q&A

3. Business Intelligence at Allstate
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Business Intelligence at Allstate
History of Business Intelligence at Allstate
Prior State: up to 2004
Interim State
AllCorp
AllCorp
EDS
Tool 1
Enterprise Reporting Tool 2
Ivantage Tool 3
Enterprise Business Intelligence Tools
Centralized BI Center of Excellence
BusinessObjects 6.5 for
ad hoc reporting
Crystal Enterprise 10 for
operational reporting.
Historically, multiple Allstate areas held responsibility for business intelligence, which created:
Overlapping tool functionality
Overlapping organizational responsibilities
A lack of clear tool direction and appropriate usage
Drive an enterprise BI strategy to deliver business value, lower costs, and reduce inefficiencies
Consolidate tools and support under one organization (EBIT)

4. Business Intelligence at Allstate
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Business Intelligence at Allstate
Current state
BusinessObjects XI R2 – common Business Intelligence platform

5. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Topics
Business Intelligence at Allstate
Starting with Separate Environments
Planning for the Migration
Design of XI R2 Cluster
Performance, Resiliency, and Failover
Migration
Lessons Learned and Tips
Q&A

6. Starting with Separate Environments
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Starting with Separate Environments
BusinessObjects 6.5
Primarily used for analysis with the Allstate data warehouse
Supported ~20 independent ad hoc and reporting projects in addition to the Allstate data warehouse
Rolled out in 2004, supported ~8,000 users
Production in Ohio data center, Dev and QA in Illinois
Total number of servers: twelve, eight in production
IBM WebSphere as an application server

7. Starting with Separate Environments
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Starting with Separate Environments
BusinessObjects 6.5 environment

8. Starting with Separate Environments
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Starting with Separate Environments
Crystal Enterprise 10
Rolled out in 2004, supported ~22,000 users
Variety of data sources
Oracle
SQL Server
DB2
SAP
Distributed between two data centers: Illinois and Ohio
Access through ePortfolio/Infoview or custom applications
Most custom apps hosted on their own web servers
Production cluster of six servers

9. Starting with Separate Environments
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Starting with Separate Environments
Crystal Enterprise 10 environment

10. Starting with Separate Environments
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Starting with Separate Environments
Crystal Enterprise 10 – continued
Multi-tier design for load balancing and failover
Two Web Servers (IIS/.NET) with load balancer
Two Intelligence/Processing Servers in Illinois data center
Two Processing Servers in Ohio data center
Predecessor for XI R2 design
Tested for disaster recovery
Total number of servers: nine

11. Starting with Separate Environments
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Starting with Separate Environments
Crystal Enterprise 10 production - detail

12. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Topics
Business Intelligence at Allstate
Starting with Separate Environments
Planning for the Migration
Design of XI R2 Cluster
Performance, Resiliency, and Failover
Migration
Lessons Learned and Tips
Q&A

13. Planning for the Migration
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Planning for the Migration
In 2005 developed the strategy for migrating to BusinessObjects XI R2 and continued with participation in the Beta program
Detailed planning started in April 2006
Q2 2006
Q3 2006
Q4 2006
Q1 2007
Strategy
Detailed Planning
New Servers Built
XI R2 Environment Available
Retire
Platform
Crystal 10 Migration to XI R2
BusinessObject 6.5 Migration to XI R2
Retire
Platform
BusinessObject 5 Migration to XI R2

14. Planning for the Migration
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Planning for the Migration
Migrate existing content only
Audit reports used to develop list of content and validate usage
Some projects/reports were no longer needed
If the project needed enhancements then this started in the BusinessObjects XI R2 development environment and went through the entire project life cycle on the new platform
No re-write to another tool
No conversion from BusinessObjects Reporter to WebIntelligence
No enhancements to existing content
No Enhancements as part of the migration!!!
Infrastructure build - incremental approach
Build parallel XI R2 environment
Migrate applications one at a time
Move servers as load changes

15. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Topics
Business Intelligence at Allstate
Starting with Separate Environments
Planning for the Migration
Design of XI R2 Cluster
Performance, Resiliency, and Failover
Migration
Lessons Learned and Tips
Q&A

16. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Design of XI R2 Cluster
How many servers?
Requirements:
30,000 users
8,000 WEBI, 10% concurrent
22,000 Crystal Reports, 10% concurrent
Up to 400 simultaneous requests
Scalable to 40,000 users
Data distributed between multiple data centers
Allstate Data Warehouse in Ohio
SAP in Illinois
Other sources in Ohio, Illinois, or Texas

17. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Design of XI R2 Cluster
Sizing exercise
Call your friendly Business Objects consultants
Three days of shuffling numbers
Sizing estimator spreadsheet as a basis
The most important info:
Ability to handle 470 simultaneous requests
Verdict:
60 CPU’s
Processing servers in two data centers
Separate tiers for web/application, intelligence, and processing

18. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Design of XI R2 Cluster
Distributed design
Web/application tier – two servers
IIS/.NET/WebSphere
Intelligence tier – two servers
Central management servers
High availability Oracle data base on Unix
I/O file repository servers
FRS on network attached storage
Event server
Cache servers
Processing tier – eight servers
Four- eight CPU machines in Ohio Data Center
Four- four CPU machines in Illinois Data Center
Expandable to 40,000 by adding one server to web/app and one to intelligence tiers

19. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Design of XI R2 Cluster
BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 production environment
Dj lowercase production environment

20. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Design of XI R2 Cluster
The Bottom line:
Number of servers: twelve (savings of nine)
Support staff: four (savings of two)
Flexible design
Easy to scale up – just add servers as needed to the appropriate tier
Load balancing and failover built in

21. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Topics
Business Intelligence at Allstate
Starting with Separate Environments
Planning for the Migration
Design of XI R2 Cluster
Performance, Resiliency, and Failover
Migration
Lessons Learned and Tips
Q&A

22. Performance, Resiliency, and Failover
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Performance, Resiliency, and Failover
Objective: blend of performance and fault tolerance
Separation of tiers improves performance
Processing tier servers installed close to data
Servers in pairs for load balancing and failover
Single server failure should be barely noticeable
All services installed on all servers
Simplified standard installation
Only needed services switched on
Easy to readjust servers if needed
Remote processing servers used as a standby failover
No backup servers sitting idly in a “hot site”

23. Performance, Resiliency, and Failover
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Performance, Resiliency, and Failover
Servers in Illinois data center preconfigured in case of a disaster in Ohio
Start Central Management Server (CMS) on backup servers to register with the cluster, then stop and set to manual
Set location of File Repository Server (FRS) root to backup NAS share
All services configured to point cluster, not individual server name
CMS and FRS replicated from Ohio to Illinois
Disaster recovery procedures identified, documented and tested

24. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Topics
Business Intelligence at Allstate
Starting with Separate Environments
Planning for the Migration
Design of XI R2 Cluster
Performance, Resiliency, and Failover
Migration
Lessons Learned and Tips
Q&A

25. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Migration – the Scope
Migrate existing content only
Audit reports used to develop list of content and validate usage
Some projects/reports were no longer needed
If the project needed enhancements then this started in the BusinessObjects XI R2 development environment and went through the entire project life cycle on the new platform
No re-write to another tool
No conversion from BusinessObjects Reporter to WebIntelligence
No enhancements to existing content
No Enhancements as part of the migration!!!
Infrastructure build - incremental approach
Build parallel XI R2 environment
Migrate applications one at a time
Move servers as load changes

26. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Migration – the Scope
Content Migrated
Users/Groups
Universes and connections
Standard reports (Crystal and BusinessObjects Classic)
Personal documents
Historical instances of Crystal reports
Custom code (.NET viewers) for application integration
Content Not Migrated
Inbox documents > Save as personal document first
Scheduled documents > Need to reschedule on new platform
Preferences

27. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Migration - the Team
The Team
Project Owner/Sponsor
Project Manager
Technical and Process Lead
Infrastructure Team ~ 4 part time team members
The Infrastructure Team were Technical Analysts/Engineers
Migration Coordinators ~ 20 part time team members
The Migration Coordinators were Business Analysts or Developers who were familiar with the applications and users

28. Migration – the Process
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006

29. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Topics
Business Intelligence at Allstate
Starting with Separate Environments
Planning for the Migration
Design of XI R2 Cluster
Performance, Resiliency, and Failover
Migration
Lessons Learned and Tips
Q&A

30. Lessons Learned and Tips
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Lessons Learned and Tips
The basics
Invest time in strategy and planning
Clearly identify roles, responsibilities and processes
Meet regularly with migration team members
Log all issues in a central location
Ensure regular / thorough communication occurs
Don’t take the upgrade/migration lightly
Start with smaller projects to migrate
Plan for issues and delays
Keep the end user in mind to minimally impact their needs

31. Lessons Learned and Tips
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Lessons Learned and Tips
Tip: Spend time to thoroughly know the technical environment
Numerous new services to set up, configure and monitor
Spend some time each day in the environment
Review the Readme from the latest release
Set up naming standards for folders, groups, connections…

32. Lessons Learned and Tips
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Lessons Learned and Tips
Tip: Spend time to thoroughly know the user environment
Shake down key functionality to make sure it works as expected
When starting, spend some time each day in the environment
Review the ‘XIr2 What’s New’ document

33. Lessons Learned and Tips
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Lessons Learned and Tips
Tip: Spend time on the security setup
Security drastically changed from BusinessObjects Classic
Have a checklist for the setup of any project
Standardize functionality roles to ease maintenance
For Supervisor like interface use the Security Viewer and CMC together for administering the system.

34. Lessons Learned and Tips
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Lessons Learned and Tips
Tip: Spend time to understand the Import Wizard
Decide if it’s a one time or gradual migration
Where did the reports or that universe go?
Why do I have multiple connections with similar names?
Find out where the Import Wizard log is and how to read it

35. Lessons Learned and Tips
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Lessons Learned and Tips
Tip: Work with Business Objects support closely
There may be a resolution already
There may be issues that needs resolution from Business Objects
Most of the content migrated without an issue however a quick modification fixed others

36. Lessons Learned and Tips
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Lessons Learned and Tips
Tips
Set up common reference documents for easy access
Set up training / support sites internally early

37. Lessons Learned and Tips
Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Lessons Learned and Tips
The results
Majority of the content was migrated without any issue or intervention
Most users needed minimal to no training on the new environment
The Knowledge Accelerator content improved dramatically which helped with any gaps in training
Reduced the amount of infrastructure needed with BusinessObjects XI R2 compared to the separate Crystal Enterprise 10 and BusinessObjects 6.5 deployments
Infrastructure support staff was freed up to work on other efforts
Many positive comments by users on the new interface and functionality with BusinessObjects XI R2
Few remaining apps delayed due to external reasons
…all of this was accomplished while new development efforts were underway as well as another major upgrade project for Oracle 10g was rolled out at Allstate

38. Business Objects Insight Americas 2006
Q&A
Questions
Tim Rodine, President, TCR Solutions Inc.
Alex Timberg, Systems Consultant, Allstate Insurance Company
We will repeat questions to ensure everyone can hear
Contact information