Deploying BOXI R2 on 64-bit OS

[Former Member]

Hi guys,

We are trying to deploy BOXI R2 SP3 on a 64-bit system, either Windows Server 2003 or Red Hat Linux.

Now, I would like to inquire what are your experiences, if you have any, on doing such, as we are already aware of the ff. facts

1. BOXI R2 SP3 is a 32-bit application. It may not use more than 4GB of memory even on a 64-bit OS, irregardless if its Unix, Linux or Windows

2. BOXI R2 does not support /largeaddressaware, which could help the application go beyond the 4GB limit

Our reporting frequently encounters memory full error due to this limitation.

Unfortunately, BO Support keeps on pointing us to Microsoft Support site re this inquiry.

Thanks

[Former Member]

Hi;

yes, unfortunately for you, with XI R2, no way to go over the infamous 4GB (actually 2GB because of most OS mysterious implementation). And I've never seen anything about largeaddressaware, so I guess it's not supported.

Now if you have such memory errors, I guess it's coming from some webi reports, first you can add some webi servers to your cluster, but also create a few server groups to better split your live reporting and scheduled stuff.

Further more, one thing I have noticed is that some users have a tendency to use Business Intelligence software to dump their database, creating huge reports, that's not really the goal of BI software, I'm not saying you're doing so, but if some of your reports are that big, maybe you want to review them.

Upcoming releases of R3 will support full 64 bits, there is no plan to backport to R2, this is a huge development and test/validation task.

Regards;

Lionel

[Former Member]

thanks lionel. your inputs are really very helpful.

I'm not familiar with BOXI R3, but is it on production already?

on adding some webi servers for a cluster setup, we've done that already, to no avail.

well our reports are honestly, quite big.

[Former Member]

Hi;

XI R3.1 (XI R3 SP1) is out since last week.

Full 64 bits support is available only on HPUX-Itanium at the moment, it will come to other platforms more or less shortly (sorry can't be more precise here).

In my opinion, your best solution at the moment is to review your reports, and/or your user possibility to refresh, in some cases it's more interesting to schedule report runs at night, and then have the user see the pre rendered instances only, depending on your need for extra fresh data or no.

What will use a lot of memory servr side is export to PDF and/or Excel because then the report needs to be fully rendered, but usually if you use dhtml viewer, or other online viewing method, the report servers only renders a page at a time, so it should have a lighter impact on the server memory usage (be careful about displaying page n/N at the bottom of your report pages, because it then needs to render all pages to calculate N). Here, once again, if an instance has already been rendered the night before, if can solve the problem.

There is also a secret configuration key somewhere to enable rendering to pdf one page at a time (not very interesting for printing, but useful in some online viewing scenarii) if this is your problem, let me know, I'll try to dig out the how to.

Regards;

Lionel

[Former Member]

Lionel,

"...There is also a secret configuration key somewhere to enable rendering to pdf one page at a time (not very interesting for printing, but useful in some online viewing scenarii) if this is your problem, let me know, I'll try to dig out the how to...."

can we get this secret configuration key? not really connected with the problem but useful anyway

we'll be re-exploring setting up a multiple webi servers for a cluster configuration. do you have any tips on its implementation? like how to optimize the settings etc...

thanks again!