Allstate Migration and Infrastructure for XI R2

Allstate Migration and Infrastructure for XI R2 Tim Rodine, TCR Solutions, Inc. Alex Timberg, Allstate Insurance Company

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

Business Intelligence at Allstate • History of Business Intelligence at Allstate Prior State: up to 2004 Interim State AllCorp AllCorp EDS Tool 1 EnterpriseReportingTool 2 IvantageTool 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)

Business Intelligence at Allstate • Current state • BusinessObjects XI R2 – common Business Intelligence platform

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

Starting with Separate Environments BusinessObjects 6.5 environment

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

Starting with Separate Environments Crystal Enterprise 10 environment

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

Starting with Separate Environments Crystal Enterprise 10 production - detail

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 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

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

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

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

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

Design of XI R2 Cluster BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 production environment

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

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”

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 to @BOEPRD cluster, not individual server name • CMS and FRS replicated from Ohio to Illinois • Disaster recovery procedures identified, documented and tested

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

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

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

Migration – the Process

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

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…

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

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.

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

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

Lessons Learned and Tips • Tips • Set up common reference documents for easy access • Set up training / support sites internally early

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

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 • Email: trodine@tcrsolutions.com • Email: atimberg@allstate.com

Allstate Migration and Infrastructure for XI R2