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Setting up BPC MS 7 Management Console 

Management Console is a utility installed with the SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) software that offers a number of views of your BPC system, giving any system administrator a valuable insight into the real-time operating parameters of BPC. Information is provided concerning hardware resource levels, which users are currently on the system, and how the web services are performing, amongst many other useful administrative capabilities. [For more information on how Management Console can help you please refer to the supplementary document ‘How to understand the Management Console.pdf’ available from the SAP Help Portal.]

Purpose

Although the benefits of using Management Console to monitor your BPC system are clear, taking advantage of this functionality requires various stages of configuration in order to connect the BPC, SQL Server and Internet information Services components together in order for the data to flow consistently and provide you with this useful output. This document aims to guide you through the process of setting up the BPC Management Console, and is offered as a supplement to the information given in the BPC Installation Guide.

This document assumes that you are using a version of BPC based upon the 7.5 release, and that your MS Internet Information Server (IIS) is a variant of the 7.x releases (either 7.0 or 7.5). For other versions of BPC and IIS the process of setting up Management Console is fundamentally the same, but some of the steps may differ depending on software versions.

Overview

The setup for Management Console consists of various key stages. They are:-

  1. Create a BPCLog table
  2. Configure SQL Server
  3. Configure IIS
  4. Configure an ODBC Data Source
  5. Check BPC Management Console

This document will guide you through the requirements for setting up each stage of the process.

Stage 1 - Creating a BPCLog table 

Firstly, in the BPC 7.5 Installation Guide, Section 3.4 you are referred to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article to set up the SQL Server table and IIS server. Here are the important steps:-

Running a SQL Script to Automate Creating the Table

If you are using a computer that is running SQL Server, you can create the IIS ODBC logging table with a Transact-SQL script named Logtemp.sql that is included with IIS. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Log on to the server with a user account that has administrative access on the computer that is running SQL Server.

2. Open SQL Server Query Analyzer.

3. On the File menu, click Open.

4. Locate the %Windir%\System32\Inetsrv folder.

5. Click Logtemp.sql, and then click Open.

6. In the first line of the Logtemp.sql script, replace inetlog with BPCLog. This is specific to BPC.

7. Select the database to create the InternetLog table. By default, the database is Master, but Microsoft does not recommend that you use this database.

8. Click Query, and then click Execute.

 Creating a System DSN

NOTE: This example uses SQL Server 7.0.

1. On the IIS computer, open Control Panel, double-click the ODBC data source, click the System DSN tab, and then click Add.

2. When the Create New Data Source window appears, click to select SQL Server, and then click Finish.

3. In the Name box, type HTTPLOG, type a description, click to select the SQL server that you want to connect to, and then click Next. If the SQL server is on the same computer, select (local).

4. In the creation wizard, make sure that you click to select With Windows NT authentication using the network login ID for the computer that is running SQL Server. Examine the client configuration, and use the default Named Pipe setting. Make sure that the SQL server name is correct, and then click OK.

5. Click Next.

6. Map the default database to the database where the template table resides, and then click Next.

7. If you want to, you can click to select Save long running queries to the log file and Log ODBC driver statistics to the log file in the wizard.

8. Click Finish.

9. At the end of the wizard, click Test Data Source. Make sure that you have successfully connected to the computer that is running SQL Server, and then click OK to exit.


Now that the table exists we can tell the IIS server where to post the data it collects.

STAGE 2: Configuring SQL Server

In this section we will ensure that SQL Server is using the correct authentication mode to handle logins. In addition we will create a specific user account in SQL Server that will be used to transfer the data from IIS. This data will be moved into the BPCLog table that we have just created in Stage 1.

Configuring SQL Server authentication mode

Before creating the Login account we need to ensure that SQL Server is set to use both SQL Server and Windows authentication modes (sometimes called ‘Mixed mode’).

NOTE: If your SQL Server was installed with Windows Authentication mode ONLY then you will not be able to change it now. If you find this is the case then you will need to re-install SQL Server to change this.


To change the authentication mode you should do the following actions:-

  1. On the SQL Server database server open the SQL Management Studio
  2. Log in as a user with SQL Server administrator rights
  3. Navigate to the top-level node named (the name of your database server)
  4. Right-click and choose ‘Properties’
  5. In the Server Properties panel navigate to the property page named ‘Security’
  6. Change the Server Authentication section to have a setting of ‘SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode’
  7. Click the OK button to confirm the change
  8. Restart your SQL Server service

Creating a BPC Management Console SQL Server Login

The name of the account can be anything you want, but here are the steps required to create the account:-

a)      On the SQL Server database server open the SQL Management Studio

b)      Log in as a user with SQL Server administrator rights

c)       Navigate to the node named ‘Security’

d)      Add a new Login and name it how you wish (e.g. ‘bpcmanagement’)

e)      In the User Mapping section ensure that this user has

  1. AppServer as the default database
  2. 'db_datareader’, ‘db_datawriter’ and ‘public’ as database roles (alternatively, ‘db_owner’ gives the ‘db_datawriter’ and db_datareader’ rights too).


 
Now that you have the BPC Management Console login set up, and SQL Server is using mixed authentication mode, the next stage is to configure the web server to perform ODBC logging.

Stage 3: Configure an ODBC Data Source

Now that the SQL Server account has the correct roles assigned, and we have created a user account in SQL Server to transfer the data to the new BPCLog table, the next stage is to configure an ODBC Data Source to manage the transfer of the data from IIS to BPC.

The steps to do that are:-

  1. From the BPC Application Server’s Start Menu select ‘Administrative Tools’
  2. In the Administrative Tools select ‘Data Sources (ODBC)’
  3. Select the ‘System DSN’ tab and create a new data source using the ’Add…’ button

The following screen appears:-
 

  1. Supply a name for the data source (in our example we have used the name ‘BPC_ManagementDSN’). The description field is optional.
  2. Connect the data source to the SQL database server that contains your BPC AppSet tables, then click ‘Next’ to proceed.

The following screen appears:-
 

  1. Ensure that you have the SQL Server authentication mode enabled.
  2. Supply the SQL Server login account that was configured in Stage 2 and the password for that account. Then click ‘Next’.
  3. The remaining screens ask you to supply additional default information, but you can leave all of these options at their current default values. Click ‘Finish’ to create the new ODBC DSN (Data Source Name).

NOTE: The only setting in the final two ODBC Data Source configuration screens that has any bearing on Management Console is the ‘Default database’ setting. If you have configured this in the SQL Server section in Stage 1 when you created the login then you do not need to specify it here.

You have now created the means to transfer data into the SQL Server tables. In the next stage we will configure IIS to use this data source.

STAGE 4: Configure IIS for ODBC Logging

ODBC Logging cannot be set up in IIS 7.0 using the Internet Services Manager like it used to be in previous versions. The instructions that you will find online or in older documentation or guides about how to set up ODBC Logging all relate to these older versions and will not work for IIS 7.x.

Configuring IIS with the APPCMD utility

The way to reconfigure IIS is to use its APPCMD command lines.

NOTE: The APPCMD utility is in the <%windir%>\System32\inetsrv directory.

By default this directory is not in your server’s PATH environment variable, which makes using APPCMD difficult. Make life easier for yourself by running this command at a command box prompt:-

SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\INETSRV

You can now run the APPCMD utility from any directory in a Command Prompt.

Now that you’ve done that, here are the commands you’ll need to issue to IIS 7.0 from the Command Prompt on the BPC Web Server (or App Server running the web services). The following commands will configure the Custom Logging option for IIS:-

  • appcmd set site /site.name:"Default Web Site" /logFile.customLogPluginClsid:" ｛FF16065B-DE82-11CF-BC0A-00AA006111E0｝
  • appcmd site set /site.name:"Default Web Site" /logFile.logFormat:"Custom"

The next set of commands is used to associate IIS with the ODBC Data Source created in Stage 3. The commands to issue take parameters that you will need to complete yourself, and these have been highlighted in red. The SQL Server login is the user that was created in Stage 2, and the password associated with that account is required as well. This information was also used in the ODBC Data Source creation in Stage 3.
Issue the following commands at the Command Prompt:

  • appcmd set config "Default Web Site" /section:odbcLogging /dataSource:"<Name of the BPC Management Console ODBC Data Source>" /commit:appHost
  • appcmd set config "Default Web Site" /section:odbcLogging /tableName:"BPCLog" /commit:appHost
  • appcmd set config "Default Web Site" /section:odbcLogging /userName:"<SQL Server login>" /commit:appHost
  • appcmd set config "Default Web Site" /section:odbcLogging /password:"<SQL Server login password>" /commit:appHost

If these commands are all successfully issues then proceed to the next step of configuring the web server roles within IIS.

Configuring IIS Roles

It is necessary that IIS 7.0 has three IIS Web Server Roles installed so that logging will work. These roles are:-

  1. ODBC Logging
  2. Custom Logging
  3. Logging Tools


 
The following explanation related only to Windows Server 2008 and beyond. To install the IIS Web Server Roles do the following:-

a)      Go to the Server Manager utility

b)      Click on the node ‘Roles’ -> ‘Web Server (IIS)’ to reveal the list of installed roles

c)       Click on the ‘Add Role Services’ link in the right-hand pane

d)      Ensure that the three roles described above are selected

e)      Complete the installation wizard and restart the IIS Web Server service.

 

IIS Authentication

The final aspect of IIS configuration is to set the correct Authentication. It is necessary to set the ManagementConsole virtual directory node to have both Basic Authentication and ASP.NET Impersonation set to ENABLED. The following screenshot shows these settings:-

STAGE 5: Check BPC Management Console 

Now that you have configured all these aspects it is time to check that the data is flowing through from the web logs to the BPC tables, and that the Management Console is reading the data from these tables.

Before you perform any check you should generate some data. This can be done by logging into the BPC for Excel or BPC for Web interface and performing some arbitrary functions. The best test is to use the BPC for Web interface as this is actually generating HTTP traffic which IIS will then log. You might try, for example, creating a simple web report, or looking at a system report.

Checking the BPCLog table

To check the table do the following steps:-

  1. On the SQL Server database server open the SQL Management Studio
  2. Log in as a user with SQL Server administrator rights
  3. Navigate to the ‘AppServer’ database and open the table structure
  4. Select the ‘BPCLog’ table and right-click to open the context menu
  5. From the context menu select ‘Select Top 1000 Rows’ to show the data in the table.

You should see data in the table like this:


If you see the data then you can check the BPC Management Console interface by navigating to:

       http://name>/managementconsole

In the example below we have selected the “Who’s Online” function, but all other functions should also display current data. When you open the Management Console you should see something like this:


If your screen looks like the screenshot above then you have successfully configured BPC Management Console. 

Related Content

Related Documents

SAP Business Planning and Consolidation Installation Guide

Related Notes

Note 1262933 - How to run Management Console in BPC 70M

Note 1294085 - Management Console on NLB environment - how to configure Management Console in a network load-balanced environment.

 Note 1631801 - Server Diagnostic in Management Console - some features not available in Management Console if Windows User Account Control (UAC) is switched on.