Cognos Access Manager

Access Manager Backups (Exporting to LAE File)

This article is writtien in response to the common questions asked in relation to Access Manager Backups.
The user information held within your directory server is not only useful but its also time consuming to reproduce, so having a good backup is very important.
Exporting to an LAE file also gives you an ideal way to migrate user information between environments if you have multiple Access Manager Server implementations, as well as being of use when running local copies of the Cognos products.

Cognos Access Manager

Access Manager is the program responsible for controlling the authentication for the Cognos Planning software.  Running at the back-end is the Sun Java Directory Server which is an LDAP directory server.
Once your system is up and running you will likely have a large number of users and groups that have been created inside Access Manager, it is important to ensure that a copy of this data is taken at regular intervals in order to avoid having to re-create it manually.

There is a process for exporting this information which creates a file known as a .LAE file (Local Authentication Export), this file can be temporarily used as an authentication source for Access Manager in the event of a broken directory server, but can also provide an import source for restoring your user and group information when moving / re-installing a directory server.

To create a .LAE file, load up Access Manager Administration, you will see “Directory Servers” and “Local Authentication Export Files” in the tree.

Right-hand click on the “Local Authentication Export Files” branch as shown in the image below. 

Select “Add .LAE File…”

A form will appear in which you will need to provide information for your .LAE file, a logical name such as “BackupNamespace” will do.
You must also provide a physical file name and directory in which to store the file.

Next, click on the “Ticket Service” tab and fill in some details there.  You will need the name of your Directory Server, and the port that the Ticket Service is running on.  This is typically 9010.
Click “Test” and you will get a message confirming that the operation was successful.

Once you have tested you can then click “Ok” to generate the LAE.  A message will appear asking if you want to make the LAE to be compatible with older namespaces.  Click “No” as this is typically not required.

The next step is to complete the export of your Namespace.  Right hand click on your namespace, this is frequently called “Default” and appears in the tree under your Directory Server.

Choose “Export to .LAE file…”

You will be given a window with your LAE file listed.  Select your LAE and ensure that “Empty the Target namespace” is selected otherwise it will append.  Now choose the “Export” button to create your backup.

You will be given a summary of the operation to indicate the process has completed.

That’s it, you have backed up your namespace to a .LAE file.  This is a manual process that must be run periodically, this may be completed from the I.T. support persons computer or on the Cognos Planning administrators computer, who ever takes on the role, it is important that the process is completed as often as you feel the need to save your changes.  The implication of not having a .LAE file backup is the likelihood of having to re-create all of your users and userclasses in the event of a directory server loss.

Finally, it is possible to build an automated process for this task, however this is outside of the scope of this document.  If you feel that an automated process is something that is important to your organization then this can be acheived using Technical Consultants with Cognos Planning expertise.