How many upgrade tests should I run

This is a common conundrum for clients and technical consultants that are running the upgrade process.  How many times should they perform the upgrade before they can be confident that it’s going to work properly on the “go-live” weekend.  The true answer is, it depends…   Complexity and data volume are huge factors when trying to determine this number.

After the initial “upgrade” that is going to bring across code and data, you generally fine tune the upgrade process to upgrade the least amount of items properly.  My preference for an upgrade is a strictly “data only” approach.  This means that there are less moving parts and less to go wrong on the go-live weekend.  I generally prefer to execute this conversion at least 3 times to be confident that things are going to work well over the go-live weekend.

At the end of the 3 times, I’ll understand the following:

• timing (so I know if something is going wrong)
• results and how to ensure that things have worked (table counts, row counts, index counts)
• when I can get some rest and when I need to pay attention to the process (timing again)
• Documentation and general familiarity
• Backup and restore points
• Disk and CPU usage patterns and what is normal

This being said, I’ve been on projects that have a super tight window for the execution of the upgrade routines and this means that the the process has been run about 8 times.  I suggest between 3 & 8 executions.

JD Edwards OneWorld older release support sunset dates–EnterpriseOne support dates

Remember at the JDE summit Oracle announced a published JDE roadmap until 2026!

What I’m trying to reiterate in this section is that you must plan your upgrades to ensure that you can download software fixes and react to statutory changes.  Of course, upgrades do not need to be re-active – they can be pro-active!  Get on the latest software for the best technology and functionality.

This matrix is super important for ALL JDE customers.  This will allow you to know when you are going to be out of support and therefore allow you to plan you upgrade backwards from this date.

Some critical dates for the near future

XE Tax, legal and regulatory updates finish DEC 2013 (10 months from date of publish)

ERP8 Tax, legal and regulatory updates finish DEC 2013 (10 months from date of publish)

8.11 December 2012 – if you are 8.11 you will not get any fixes for your software

8.12 April 2014 – 14 months from retirement

For additional information, please see the oracle publication:  http://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/lifetime-support-applications-069216.pdf

Great IBM JDE material

Google is good, not wait…  Google is great.  Although it’s nice to find really targeted material that is relevant.  I just recently went to the IBM site thanks to a tweet and found a plethora of documentation on IBM’s take on EnterpriseOne.  Sure a lot of it is i centric, but that os good too.

The below URL should search of all “EnterpriseOne” documents and sort by date descending.

http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebAllDocs2/?Search&Query=[HTMLDocumentName=WM*]+AND+(EnterpriseOne)&Start=1&Count=100&SearchOrder=4&DateSearch=1&SearchMax=10000

I particularly liked:

• Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne IBM POWER7 performance characterization
• IBM Power Systems with IBM i using Solid State Drives to boost your Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne performance (a good article that you could glean stats of how you might improve none i implementations with SSD (57% improvement in performance in some areas).
• IBM Power Systems with IBM i single core server tuning guide for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
• IBM Power Systems with IBM i Performance and Tuning Tips for Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0
• Solution Sizing Sheet for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne (great simple sizing sheet)

Some very generic JDE web sizing tips

Q. How many users can run within a JDE JVM (whether this is web logic / websphere or OAS)? 

A. It depends…  I’ve read white papers that say 200 users can be supported per JVM.  That is a JVM that occupies 1.5GB of memory and sits on a single core can support 200 users.  Personally I’m unsure about putting 200 users on a single JVM and being confident with the results.  I think that 50 concurrent busy users is a good number – and I think that this could comfortable go to 80 – with low risk to all users on the system.  I’ve done lots of load testing on virtual web servers.  I’ve done lots of volume testing too, to try and see where things start to slow down.  What you find is that the web engine is very good at scaling, but the back end database connections have to be set up correctly to get the right performance out of JDE.  Load testing puts an unfair load on the JVM too, perhaps way more than what occurs in the real world.

Functional footprint is another important consideration for how many users you can get on a JVM.  If you are just running time entry, then you can probably get way more users on the JVM.  All the caches will be similar, loaded apps will be similar – shoot for the stars (200)!

In this virtual / multi core world that we live in – go for around 50 to 80 – you’ll NEVER worry that a JVM is over loaded.  They are super simple to create and manage with SM these days.  If someone goes to the end of a huge grid or reads a massive PDF – they are not going to affect too many other users when the JVM drops.  More JVMs means more access to cores. 

So with my metrics…  400 concurrent users will need:

400/80 = 5 JVMs @ 1.5GB

Web server will need 5 cores for JDE and 7.5GB of RAM for JDE.  You will need some overhead cores and also OS and overhead RAM.  Therefore for this configuration 8 cores and 12GB a RAM should be adequate.

At the more conservative end of the spectrum (which I like to be because hardware is cheap). is

400/50 = 8 JVMs @ 1.5GB

8 cores + OS and management.  + 12GB RAM + OS and management RAM.

12 cores and 16GB RAM would serve this load up nicely.

caveats:  This advice does not attempt to circumvent the need for proper vendor sizing's.  This is general sizing information that I find applicable for many of the sites that I work with.  If things are dramatically under or over this, then there might be problems with the design.

JDEdwards summit 2012 notes

A couple of the large announcements from the partner summit from 2012.  Firstly the sheer volume of people at the summit is great, over 600 people are attending which doubles the number from last year.  There is some great energy around the product, the tools 9.1 UI is getting some major kudos, and so it should.

Product support:

A roadmap was giving which shows that JDE is going to be around until at least 2026.  I say JDE, because this announcement is for world and EnterpriseOne.  There are plans for major releases every 3 years, therefore 2012 for 9.1 apps, 2015 and 2018.  Adding 5 years of premiere support and 3 of extended, takes JDE to 2026!

Mobile Applications:

Oracle has announced a suite of mobile applications for JDE.  The official press release is here.  If you have a smart phone, android or iPhone  - then you can access specific workflow related tasks from them.  Oracle ADF underpins the applications which talk with business services.  Oracle ADF creates web based apps – not device specific apps.  Therefore they are HTML apps and are not device specific, you basically have an icon on your phone which points to your published URL.

The new mobile applications available for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, include:

• Mobile Requisition Self Service Approval – Provides real-time transaction processing for the review, approval or rejection of requisitions.
• Mobile Purchase Order Approval – Helps enable mobile workers to review and approve purchase orders regardless of physical location. (approve, review, reject POs, enter comments at header and detail level)
• Mobile Sales Inquiry – Addresses the needs of sales representatives, service technicians and managers by providing access to sales orders, item availability and item base price on-demand. (see historical orders and current orders)
• Coming soon – expense management

What do you need to get started?

1. Buy it (PO = 690 per user, RSS 20 per user, Sales 690 per user)
2. Business services installed and running
3. Download a package from edelivery
4. Licence for TopLink and Application Development Framework (ADF).  ADF license is included in WebLogic Server Standalone edition.  If you have WebLogic then you have the license.

Additional oracle knowledge documents:  (JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Announces Availability of Mobile Applications for Release 9.0) 1199953.1,

The good technical information is here: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Mobile Applications Documentation Overview [ID 1387796.1]