Informatica Upgrade 8.6.1 to 9.0.1
As a follow up to my last blog post on Informatica no longer supporting 8.6.1, I have completed a test upgrade on one of our internal development systems. This system is an installation of Oracle BI Applications 7.9.6.2 on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 (64-bit) with the data warehouse and repositories being stored in an Oracle 11.1.0.6 database.
In case of any doubt Informatica 9.0.1 is now certified with BI Applications 7.9.6.0, 7.9.6.1 and 7.9.6.2 and 7.9.6.3. Details can be found in the ‘System Requirements and Support Platforms for Oracle Business Intelligence Applications version 7.9.6, Rev. N’ which was released in December 2011.
The upgrade ran smoothly and quite painlessly and this post will breifly cover the steps I took to perform the upgrade.
Source Information
The details of the steps to take can be found in the word document attached to note 1346738.1 on Oracle’s My Oracle Support site. This covers details for upgrading any BI Applications install from version 7.9.0 up to 7.9.6.2. (7.9.6.3 already uses Informatica 9.0.1 so no need to upgrade if you are on that version).
This document in 1346738.1 defers the bulk of the actual Informatica steps to the Informatica Upgrade guide. Getting access to this is the first hurdle…
The guide is contained in the Informatica 9.0.1 client software files that you can obtain from E-Delivery. These are located in the Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Media Pack and comprise of 2 zip files (V26112-01_1of2.zip and V26112-01_2of2.zip). I had trouble extracting these with 7-zip, and the only way I could find to uncompress them was to use WinZip (I used the trial version from the WinZip website). Use WinZip to unzip all the parts as the supplied zip files uncompress to a 2 part zip file which itself requires unzipping, but if you have unzipped the original files with 7-zip the 2 part zip file won’t unzip!
Once you have the 2 zip files completely unzipped the actual document you need is in yet another zip file – Infa901Docs.zip. This can be unzipped with other zip programs fine, and actual pdf you need is:
Disk1\InstData\Documentation\en\PowerCenter\PC_901HF1_Upgrade85×86x_en.pdf
The only other document I used for reference was my initial install document just to check settings at the time.
Pre-Upgrade Steps
There are a few things you need to do before upgrading Informatica and here are the ones that applied to me (these and other later steps in the upgrade depend on your configuration – BI Apps version, database vendor etc so always refer to the official documentation).
- Backup the system. As we use virtualisation I took a snapshot of the virtual server before doing anything
- Verify file descriptors. Check that the max files is greater than 3000 with the command:
more /proc/sys/fs/file-max
- Check the $DISPLAY is set suitably
- Check $JRE_HOME,$PATH, $INFA_HOME,$INFA_DOMAINS_FILE are all as per documentation
- Backup the Informatica Domain with the infasetup.sh BackupDomain command
- Backup required metadata files
- Check the database requirements are met (open_cursors high enough and correct privileges granted to Informatica repository database user)
- Backup the Repository
- Shutdown the Domain
Upgrade Informatica Domain
To perform the upgrade a copy of the Informatica 9.0.1 software is required. Again this is available on E-Delivery for various platforms. To start the installer use install.sh command from the location the software has been extracted. You will be prompted at the command line whether you want to install or upgrade Informatica or apply Hotfix 2 to an existing installation, and whether you you want Console or GUI mode.
Choose to install/upgrade an existing install and use GUI mode (ensure $DISPLAY is set correctly):
On the first screen select that you want to upgrade to Informatica 9.0.1. You will then go through a couple of screens to verify pre-requisites, prompt for the existing installation location (8.6.1 install) and the location you want the new 9.0.1 install to go. After this despite the Informatica Domain being shutdown you still get asked to stop it… Just click OK here.
The next screen is a summary so check this and click install. After some time the screen appears with the database connections details, supply any required information and use the test connection button to check all is correct.
The only other screen of real note is the one to select which ports you want to use. I left them as default but change if you wish. Also note that the old default port (6001) is routed to the new port (default 8001) so this won’t need changing in DAC later.
Once the wizard is complete your Informatica server is now upgraded. The next step is to upgrade the application services within the Domain.
Upgrade Application Services
Before upgrading the services there are 2 pre-requisite steps:
- Configure environment variables – Set INFA_DOMAINS_FILE and INFA_HOME to point ot the new installation
- Clear your browser cache
To upgrade the servcies use the Informatica Administration console. The new URL to access the console is:
http://<servername.domain>:8002/administrator
In the top right corner is a ‘Manage’ menu. Use this to access the Upgrade Wizard:
This will prompt for the service to upgrade. You need to select your Repository Service here and then supply the username and passowrd for the Repository. This will then upgrade the service:
After the upgrade the repository will be in Exclusive mode – this needs resetting to Normal mode. You will also need to restart the Integration Service as I found this hadn’t started correctly.
Check Informatica Configuration
After upgrading the Domain and the Repository service its wise to ensure settings from the original install have been migrated, so check (and change if necessary):
- Source and Lookup files have been moved to the SrcFiles and LkpFiles directories under the new INFA_HOME directory
- ValidateDataCodePages variable is set to ‘No’ in the Integration Service configuration properties
- Custom properties (ServerPort and overrideMpltVarWithMapVar) are still set correctly as per original install
- The Repository Admin user is in the Native Security group
Configure DAC
DAC needs to know about the new installation directory so:
- Update dac_env.sh file to reflect the new INFA_HOME (this can be found in the root dac directory e.g. /u01/app/oracle/product/dac/bifoundation/dac)
- Change the InformaticaParameterFileLocation parameter under the DAC System Properties tab within the DAC client. This needs setting to the SrcFiles directory e.g.:
/u01/app/oracle/product/Informatica/PowerCenter9.0.1/server/infa_shared/
Conclusion
After following the supplied upgrade guide from Oracle I found the steps all fairly straight forward, and once finished I ran an ETL successfully with no issues. The upgrade itself is straight forward but as always it really should be performed by somebody with a good understanding of the BI Apps technology stack.
Awesome post. Helped me a lot in my upgrade. Thanks a ton.- Parag