The Pulse migration feature overcomes TM1’s file-based architectural limitations with a centralized model that reduces risk of mistakes. This article explains everything you should know about the Pulse migration feature.

Pulse provides enterprise grade migration features allowing you to easily move changes in your IBM TM1 and Planning Analytics models between servers. The migration has four important steps:

The first step is to Create a migration package, select or let Pulse select the TM1 objects you want to migrate.

If you target instance is on a separate Pulse server, you will have to Download the migration package from Pulse on the source server and then import it to Pulse on the target server.

The last step is to Execute the migration package.

The Download and Import steps are not needed if the TM1 instances are monitored by the same Pulse Application Server.

The first step when creating a migration package is to choose the method. The All package will enable you to include all TM1 objects. This method can be used to compare two instances. With the Documentation Only, Pulse will migrate the documentation input in Pulse. By choosing the Manual method, Pulse enables you to select manually the TM1 objects you want to migrate. The Source Control method allows you to query for a list of changes based on a date range and also by developer/user (leave this blank for all users) and then select the items you want to migrate.

In this example we selected the Manual method and we picked the General Ledger cube:

In the next screen you can review the files that are going to be included in the package, there can be 1 or 2 files depending on the type of objects selected. .cubx is a technical file in Pulse containing the cube information such as its dimensions. When migrating a dimension, the files .dimd and .dimx are included in the package.

After clicking Next, you will be presented with the dependencies that Pulse has found for each object in the package. Pulse recursively finds dependencies so there may be many dependencies for each object selected.

What is more here is that you don’t need to worry if you missed one object, Pulse will include all dependencies into the package. For example, if you want to migrate the General Ledger cube, just select the cube and Pulse will add the rule file, all dimensions and attributes.

One your objects have been selected, you then have 3 options:

• Add or update the dependency on the target server.
• Add the dependency if the objects don’t exist (default)
• Ignore the dependency: If you choose to ignore the dependency it is possible that the package will fail to execute.

You can choose to include/exclude dependencies as required, however it is recommended that you include all dependencies. 

Pulse is catered for two types of migration:

• Live Update (Hot Promote): Creates a package that can be executed on a running TM1 instance.
• Offline Update (Cold Promote): Creates a package that contains the native TM1 files that can be copied to the target data directory once TM1 has been stopped.

The Offline package will require a restart of the target instance. You will then have to unzip it and paste these TM1 objects into the target TM1 data folder and restart the TM1 instance.

With a Live package, you will be able to migrate TM1 objects without restarting the target instance. In the package you will find technical files created by Pulse to store the information about the objects. Pulse will them use these files to create on the fly the new objects in the target instance.

• What’s behind the execution of a migration package
• Merging migration packages
• Comparing two TM1 instances
• Configuring change tracking and source control
• Include elements and attributes in source control

• Pulse Migration