Updated for PAW v 2.0.87. This post details how to install Planning Analytics Workspace on Windows Server 2019. The process changed from the Windows Server 2016 installation and now your are required to download Docker components from Mirantis, the new owner of Docker Enterprise.
Windows Server 2019 Only
These instructions are for the installation of Planning Analytics Workspace onto Windows Server 2019 only. There are separate instructions for installing on Windows Server 2016 or Linux.
Separate Server for PAW
Before you start, we strongly recommend installing PAW on a separate server from your primary Planning Analytics (TM1) server. Since PAW takes considerable resources and you don’t want to impact the performance of the TM1 server with the overhead of PAW. More importantly, you also want to avoid consuming valuable PVU (which is the license metric for the TM1 server) on the resources used by PAW.
Planning Analytics Components
There are a number of components that make the Planning Analytics ecosystem work. These include:
- The Planning Analytics (or TM1) server itself. This is where your models are.
- Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW)
- Planning Analytics Spreadsheet Services (PASS, and otherwise known as TM1 Web)
- Planning Analytics for Excel (PAfE or PAX)
Docker
The version of Docker that used to be installed for PAW is now owned by Mirantis corporation and is now called the Mirantis Container Runtime (MCR). The installation method for PAW on Windows Server 2019 now requires you to download Docker, Mirantis Container Runtime (MCR), from Mirantis using Powershell commands.
We have a full blog post explaining how to install Mirantis Container Runtime onto Windows Server 2019 here.
Note: You don’t need a license to install Mirantis Container Runtime. You’re welcome to experiment at no cost, but a license is required from Mirantis for production usage.
Change Docker Location
The Mirantis version of Docker seems to require that it initially uses C drive for Docker. We want to end up using our data drive (so not the C drive), so part way through the installation, you are going to change the drive that Docker uses.
Planning Analytics Workspace Releases
Before we install PAW though, we need to understand that IBM plans to release a new version of PAW every month or so. Therefore, we suggest that you copy the entire unzipped PAW installation folder into a folder that is called something like “PAW” at the root of your data drive. Then it will be easy to access from Windows PowerShell.
Then, inside the PAW folder, copy the downloaded installation files from IBM.
Following this, unzip the download and rename the unzipped folder as “PAW_nnnn”, where the “nnnn” part refers to the version of PAW. So for PAW version 2.0.80, it would be PAW_2080, with the dots removed for ease of use. For the remainder of this post, we will refer to PAW_nnnn in place of the version-related folder (so in place of say, “PAW_2080”).
After that, open Windows PowerShell in Administration mode and navigate to the location where you copied the installation files, so something like “F:PAWPAW_nnnn”.
Useful Windows Powershell Commands for PAW
We have a whole post dedicated to Powershell script commands you can use for Planning Analytics Workspace. Please see this post for details. These allow you to do things like start and stop PAW without logging into the Admin tool – and a whole lot more!
Steps to Install Planning Analytics Workspace onto Windows Server 2019
Time needed: 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Detailed steps to Install Planning Analytics Workspace to Windows Server 2019.
- Create a new Windows 2019 server
First, create a new Windows server and install all the standard stuff.
- Update Windows
Make sure that your server has all the most recent Windows Updates applied.
- Disable Antivirus
If there is any third-party anti-virus software running on the PAW server, please disable it prior to installation.
- Install Mirantis Container Runtime
Docker is now supplied by Mirantis and is called Mirantis Container Runtime. Please see this post for full details for downloading and installing Mirantis Container Runtime on Windows Server 2019.
- Download and Unzip Planning Analytics Workspace
Head over to IBM Fix Central and download the latest version of Planning Analytics Workspace. You will need the file that has “win_2019” in it. This will be about 4Gb smaller than the Windows 2016 version as it does not contain Docker.
Once downloaded, unzip it and rename the unzipped folder PAW_nnnn. Here the “nnnn” part represents the version, for example, use “PAW_2087” for version 2.0.87. Then each time you update, you will add a new folder and migrate from the previous version. We use just 2087 so that it is easy to refer to in Powershell. - Create a location for Planning Analytics Workspace installation files
Create a folder at the root of your data drive. Something like E:PAW
- Copy the PAW installation files
Following this, move the unzipped PAW installation folder into the new folder, so in our example it will end up as E:PAWPAW_nnnn.
- STOP! Change the Drive Docker is to Use
This step changes the drive that Docker is to use. After the Mirantis installation of Docker, Docker will be trying to use your C drive for Docker. This is not recommended as the containers can grow very large and could conflict with the operating system. We, therefore, recommend that you change the drive that Docker uses to your data drive. To do this do the following:
Create a folder on a data disk (E, F etc) at the root called “Docker”. Note the casing of the letters as these are important. Our example here on the data disk has a capital D and the rest lower case.
Go to C:ProgramDatadocker/config (this will have been created via the Mirantis setup above)
In config, check for a file called “daemon.json”.
If it exists, edit it.
If it doesn’t exist, then create a new text file.
Paste or edit the file so that it has the following in it:{ "shutdown-timeout": 180, "data-root": "
e:\Docker" }
Modify the path to the Docker folder you created above. Mine is on E drive, so my path is e:\Docker. Note the double backslash and capital letter at the start of “Docker”.
Also, be very careful that there is no formatting in this command – the inverted commas must be straight up and down, not curly!
Save this file as “daemon.json”.
Go to Services and restart the Docker service. Make sure it does restart!
Now, when you go to install PAW, the installation will go to ProgramData/docker and read the daemon.json file. It will then be redirected to the location you want. - Run the PAW installer
1. Open a PowerShell window as an Administrator.
2. Navigate to your PAW folder (like E:PAWPAW_nnnn).
3. run ./start.ps1
This will initiate the installation of Planning Analytics Workspace on Windows Server 2019. - Initial Checks
First up, the installer does some basic checks of the Docker environment. If you have not switched Docker to use a drive other than drive C, you will get this warning. I’m going to say No to this to switch to another drive as I have already instructed Docker to use drive E above.
- Loading Images
After that, PAW install script will install the containers required for Planning Analytics Workspace. This might take a long time. Be patient, it will complete eventually.
- Start PAW Administration tool
At the end of the validation step, you will be prompted whether you want to start the Planning Analytics Administration tool. Answer Y to this prompt.
- Accept the licenses
After that, you will then be prompted to accept both the IBM and Non-IBM licenses.
- Enter the PAW Configuration details
In the Planning Analytics Workspace Administration Tool, copy and paste the various settings from the tm1s.cfg file for your TM1 model.
The values that go in these boxes are as follows:
TM1 Admin Server URI: the URI for your TM1 server, with either HTTPS and port 5898 or HTTP and port 5895
TM1 Application Server URI: Your TM1 Web address WITHOUT the trailing “/tm1web/”
TM1 Login Server URI: The URI from the Admin server above, excluding the port and suffixed with the HTTPPortNumber from tm1s.cfg on your TM1 server.
So if our TM1 server name was “TM1XPA” and our fully qualified address was “tm1xpa.tm1explorers.com”, the HTTPPortNumber from tm1s.cfg was “12345” and we were using HTTPS, then the settings would be likely to be:
https://tm1xpa.tm1explorers.com:5898
http://tm1xpa.tm1explorers.com:9510
https://tm1xpa.tm1explorers.com:12345
Note that in the screenshot below we are using TM1 security, not CAM security. For CAM you will be prompted for the Cognos BI Gateway, Dispatcher URI and Authentication Namespace.
- Validate
With those values entered, hit Validate at the bottom of the screen. That will check what you have entered and will probably show a screen like the following, with the Application Server URI not successful (if you installed Planning Analytics Spreadsheet Services).
- Update
Now hit the Update button next to Validate. This will write your entries out to the paw.ps1 file inside the /config folder for your version of PAW.
- Wait!
Now is the next time to wait. Flip over to the Status tab and it will probably be blank. Hit the Refresh (not Restart) button and wait.
You can also open Task Manager to see progress. For a new installation of PAW on a fresh Windows Server 2019 box, it will get up to about 16Gb of memory consumed on the Performance tab and the CPU will sit at 100% until it is finished. It might take about 10 minutes.
When it is complete, you will see a screen that looks like this. Note that there are a few services that are “Initialization” services and these are to get others going. Once they are up, the initialization services are shut down. - Launch Planning Analytics Workspace
Open a fresh PowerShell window and navigate to your PAW installation (F:/PAW/PAW_nnnn).
When there, enter ./scripts/launch.ps1. This will then launch PAW into your browser.
Note that each time PAW restarts, it assigned a new IP address inside the Docker container. Using launch.ps1 will go get the IP address and then open that in your browser. You can’t bookmark that though cos it will be different next time. - Open Planning Analytics Workspace from another PC
Once you know that it is working on the server, go to another PC and enter http://PAWServerName. Because it uses port 80, there is no need to add the port suffix. That should open PAW directly in the browser.
After that, you can distribute the address or add it as a connection inside Planning Analytics for Excel for use there as well. - Add exclusion to Antivirus
Add exclusions to both the Docker and PAW folders.
Version Management for Planning Analytics Workspace on Windows 2019
The versions of Planning Analytics Workspace, Planning Analytics for Excel and Planning Analytics Spreadsheet Services must be kept pretty well in sync. Further, your TM1 (Planning Analytics) server must be on a version that supports these other tools. For more information on this topic, please see this post.
Other PA Installation Guides and Helpful Links
Here are some guides to help you install the other components of Planning Analytics on Windows Server 2019:
- Planning Analytics (TM1) Server
- Planning Analytics Spreadsheet Services
- Planning Analytics for Excel
- Help from Mirantis re MCR
Thanks!
Thanks to Kushal Joshi from IBM for reviewing this post and letting me know of a number of minor errors. Any errors on this page are ours, not his!
Need Help installing Planning Analytics Workspace on Windows Server 2019?
So that is about it. If you need help or have questions about how to install Planning Analytics Workspace on Windows 2019 or keep things in sync, please let us know.
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