In-Place Upgrade to EPM 11.2.5: OPMN

I have much to say about the in-place upgrade to Hyperion / Oracle EPM 11.2.5.  Anybody who knows me well... knows that I pretty much despise Hyperion in-place upgrades, and moving to 11.2.5 in-place is no exception.  In fact, it may be one of the harder ones.

We've already talked on this blog previously about how applying the quarterly Oracle Critical Patch Update ("CPU") for Oracle Fusion Middleware - OPatch for Weblogic in particular - currently bricks your in-place upgrade from either 11.2.3 or 11.2.4 to 11.2.5.... unless you backed up your Middleware folder prior to patching it.

But this post is about other factors that'll make you want to tear your hair out.

Let's begin with OPMN.

No matter which version of EPM you're upgrading from, if you're upgrading in-place you will need to edit your opmn.xml.  The in-place upgrade doesn't require you to reconfigure Essbase, and that is messy anyway and trying to reconfigure Essbase makes the system think you're trying to add to the Essbase Cluster or create a new one, rather than updating the one that already exists.

One thing I do like about 11.2.5 is the name of the JDK folder is now generic; Oracle finally relented and removed the reference to the version and update numbers in the folder's name.  It is now simply \Oracle\Middleware\jdk instead of jdk1.8.0_181 or jdk160_35.  But because of this, you'll need to do some surgery.

Edit opmn.xml, find the reference to the jdk folder as shown in my screenshot above, and wipe out the version and update numbers so it is exactly DRIVELETTER:\Oracle\Middleware\jdk\jre\bin\server

The 11.2.5 web version of the README indicates an in-place upgrade on top of either 11.1.2.3 or 11.1.2.4 directly to 11.2.5.0 is "certified".  Um... no.  Caesar says "thumbs down".

I've been working my way through an in-place update to 11.2.5 for a customer who lagged behind and is still on 11.1.2.3.7xx.  I really cannot recommend this approach, despite the README's claim that it is certified.  I finally got OHS, Essbase, Planning RMI, and the WebLogic managed servers online.  This upgrade path is fraught with multiple problems and should only be attempted by EPM Infrastructure experts.  

Look forward to a more detailed post on this 11.1.2.3 -> 11.2.5.0 in-place upgrade -- problems & solutions, after the dust settles.  I have one last problem to solve, and this is: why the heck did the upgrade not convert the RA Framework content over to Document Repository?  Massaging LCM files isn't the answer as their RA Framework repository is too massive for LCM to handle all in one shot.  Ugh!