Installing and configuring Information Platform Services

The Information Platform Services (IPS) product package was added as a component into the Data Services bundle starting from the Data Services 4.x version. The reason for this was to make the Data Services architecture flexible and robust and introduce some extra functionality, that is, a user management layer to the existing SAP Data Services solution. As we mentioned before, IPS is a light version of SAP BI core services and has a lot of similar functionality.

In this recipe, we will perform the installation and basic configuration of IPS, which is a mandatory component for future Data Services installations.

Tip

As an option, you could always use the existing full enterprise SAP BI solution if you have it installed in your environment. However, this is generally considered a bad practice. Imagine that it is like storing all eggs in one basket. Whenever you need to plan downtime for your BI system, you should keep in mind that it will affect your ETL environment as well, and you will not be able to run any Data Services jobs during this period. That is why, IPS is installed to be used only by Data Services as a safer and more convenient option in terms of support and maintenance.

Getting ready…

Download the Information Platform Services installation package from the SAP support portal and unzip it to the location of your choice. The main requirement for installing IPS as well as Data Services in the next recipe is that your OS should have a 64-bit architecture.

How to do it…

1. Create an EIM folder in your C drive to store your installation in one place.
2. Launch the IPS installer by executing InstallIPS.exe.
3. Make sure that all your critical prerequisites have the Succeeded status on the Check Prerequisites screen. Continue to the next screen.
4. Choose C:\EIM\ as the installation destination folder. Continue to the next screen.
5. Choose the Full installation type. Continue to the next screen.
6. On Select Default or Existing Database, choose Configure an existing database and continue to the next screen.
7. Select Microsoft SQL Server using ODBC as the existing CMS database type.
8. Select No auditing database on the next screen and continue.
9. Choose Install the default Tomcat Java Web Application Server and automatically deploy web applications. Continue to the next screen.
10. For version management, choose Do not configure a version control system at this time.
11. On the next screen, specify the SIA name in the Node name field as IPS and SIA port as 6410.
12. Do not change the default CMS port, 6400.
13. On the CMS account configuration screen, input passwords for the administrator user account and the CMS cluster key (they can be the same if you want). Continue further.
14. Use the following settings from the following screenshot to configure the CMS Repository Database:
    
15. Leave the default values for Tomcat ports on the next screen and click on Next. Remember the Connection Port setting (default is 8080) as you will require it to connect to the IPS and Data Services web applications.
16. Do not configure connectivity to SMD Agent.
17. Do not configure connectivity to Introscope Enterprise Manager.
18. Finally, the installation will begin. It should take approximately 5–15 minutes, depending on your hardware.

How it works…

Now, by installing IPS, we prepared the base layers, on top of which we will install the Data Services installation package itself.

To check that your IPS installation was successful, start the Central Management Console web application using the http://localhost:8080/BOE/CMC URL and use the administrator account that you set up during IPS installation to log in. In the system field, use localhost:6400 (your host name and CMS port number specified during IPS installation).

Check out the Core Services tree in the Servers section of CMC. All services listed should have the Running and Enabled statuses.