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Upcoming Improvements to your Planning Analytics Cloud

By Paulo Monte posted Wed January 03, 2018 09:31 AM

  
IBM will be upgrading the infrastructure for your Planning Analytics environment to provide improved stability, and to assist with our latest security and compliance readiness.  The upgrade will involve the IBM team moving your deployment to a new environment designed to provide a more stable and secure service.  The upgrade will involve the dedicated components we provide to each customer, which host your data, web services, and remote desktop service; these will be upgraded to the latest network infrastructure, operating system versions, and middleware.

Some of the changes we are making may require you to take action by upgrading components installed locally or updating your firewalls. IBM will be contacting you directly to detail the necessary changes.

When will the upgrade take place and how long will it take?

IBM will contact you in the coming weeks with your scheduled upgrade date and duration.  The team will upgrade any of your non-production environment(s) first, followed by your production environment(s) 2 weeks later.

If you are actively engaged with an IBM Business Partner, it may be useful for them to know about the upcoming change, so they can support you as necessary through the migration.

What are the specific changes that I need to know about?

  • Withdrawal of support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1
    This is part of
    IBM's commitment to offering a cloud that is secure and in alignment with industry best practices for security.  For modelers accessing the remote desktop, this will require a change on Windows 7 machines  documented here and in the new welcome kit.



  • Planning Analytics Version
    All customers will be upgraded to the latest version of Planning Analytics.  The latest version and fixes are described
    here.



  • IP Addresses
    All upgraded environments will receive a new IP Address. Any firewall entries you have added will need to be updated with the new addresses.  Similarly, any IP Addresses configured in components like Cognos Command Center (CCC), Cognos Integration Server (CIS), or Secure Gateway will also need updating.  For your end users, DNS updates on the internet can take variable amounts of time, but in general, this is done within hours during the migration.



  • Welcome Kit
    Customers will receive a new Welcome Kit after the upgrade – it will include new information if you have not received a welcome kit in some time and will include new IP addresses where applicable.  Your URLs will remain unchanged.  The passwords for Modelers, FTP, Cloud Control, non-interactive accounts and CCC agent will all change.



  • Remote Desktop content
    Content on the remote desktop will not be migrated.  Please store any information that needs to be migrated on the s:\ shared drive.  As a reminder, content on the Remote Desktop is not backed up as per the service agreement.



  • Remote Desktop Access
    For customers not on RDP (Gateway) https already, the upgrade will change the Remote Desktop service to leverage https for communication. This may result in fewer firewall rules being required on the customer site. For example, port 3389 does not need to be open after the upgrade. When you receive your new welcome kit, it will contain RDP connection files for Windows, Mac and Linux.  These files are required to access the RDP and should be distributed to your end users that are accessing the remote desktop.



  • Remote Desktop - Internet Explorer
    Upgraded environments will include the latest version of Internet Explorer 11.



  • Remote Desktop - Microsoft Excel 2016
    Upgraded environments will include the latest version of Microsoft Excel 2016.



  • Cognos Command Center (CCC) Agent upgraded to version 10.2.4
    For customers leveraging CCC, you may need to upgrade your local install of CCC on the same day that the associated cloud environment is upgraded. Prior versions of CCC (10.2.2, 10.2.3) are not compatible with the new CCC 10.2.4 Agent. If you are leveraging the CCC Agent running inside your PA Cloud environment (via port 61617), you will need to upgrade your CCC Client on the same day. If you are running a local CCC Agent and a local CCC Client, and do not use the CCC Client inside the PA Cloud environment, you do not need to upgrade on the same day, however we recommend you upgrade at your earliest convenience.

    After the upgrade to 10.2.4, IBM is happy to inform you that port 61617 is no longer required to be opened in your firewall in order to communicate with the CCC Agent running inside your PA Cloud environment.  The latest version of Cognos Command Center will be made available on the shared drive for you to download and install.  A full list of fixes is available here.



  • Cognos Integration Server (CIS) upgrade available
    As part of the upgrade, the latest version of CIS (10.2.3) will be made available on the shared drive for you to download and install. A full list of fixes is available
    here.



  • Secure Gateway
    For some of the customers leveraging Secure Gateway, IBM will be changing your configuration to leverage a Secure Gateway service dedicated to Planning Analytics customers (from the Secure Gateway service on Bluemix).  IBM will communicate impacted clients directly with specific details.  Both deployments of Secure Gateway are identical in version and customers will benefit from improved network latency between Secure Gateway and Planning Analytics.



  • FTPS
    For those customers leveraging FTPS (not to be confused with SFTP), upgraded environments will use Passive FTPS on port range 4460 to 4500. Customers using Active FTPS or an existing Passive FTPS configuration will be migrated to Passive FTPS on ports 4460-4500. Customers may be required to change or add firewall settings to accommodate the new FTPS port range. Port 21 is still used for the initial connection and Port range 4460 to 4500 will be used for the data connection that moves the files back and forth.



  • Cognos BI Upgrade
    Customers with the limited use Cognos BI (not to be confused with Cognos Analytics on Cloud) will be upgraded from 10.2.2 FP5 to 10.2.2 FP7


Here is a summary of the changes that may be required to your firewall

  • Removal of Port 3389 RDP – this is no longer required for Remote Desktop Service

  • Addition of Port 443 for RDP

  • FTPS now uses ports 4460-4500 – old port configurations may need updating

  • New IP addresses – your environment will now use different IP addresses that you will receive when you get the new environment

  • New IP addresses for Secure gateway – please see above for details

  • Removal of Port 61617 incoming – this is no longer required for Cognos Command Center


Questions?

We have created the following forum should you have any questions.

For more information about EU GDPR, please visit www.ibm.com/gdpr.

Thank you,
The IBM Planning Analytics Team





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