How to Install Discovery Hub or Upgrade to a Newer Version

Introduction

This document will outline the steps necessary to install Discovery Hub or upgrade your production environment to use a new version of Discovery Hub. It will cover the download and installation of the software, upgrading the project repository (if upgrading), and ensuring that the Discovery Hub Scheduler service for the new version is up and running.

Please see the separate Discovery Hub Prerequisites article for information on the settings and software you need to have on the machine to install Discovery Hub.

Step by Step

Download and Installation

If you are installing Discovery Hub for the first time, i.e. not upgrading from a earlier version, you can ignore steps 12-15.

1. Download the latest version of Discovery Hub in the edition and bit-version you need.
2. When the file has been downloaded, unzip the installation package and run Setup.exe.
   

   

   If all prerequisites has been met, you should be able to install using the .msi file in the downloaded archive. Using setup.exe is recommended, however, since it checks for the required version of the .NET Framework and installs it if necessary.
3. On the welcome page, click Next.
   

   

4. On the End-User License Agreement page, review the license agreement and select I accept the terms in the License Agreement if you do. Click Next.
   

   

5. On the Choose Setup Type page, select Typical and click Next.
   

   

6. On the Ready to Install page, click Install. Windows might ask you to confirm that you wish to make changes to the computer. If so, click Install the software. Wait for the installation to finish.
   

   

7. Once the installation is completed, click Finish to close the setup program.
   

   

8. Start Discovery Hub. There will be an icon on the desktop for Discovery Hub that you can doubleclick to launch the program. The first time Discovery Hub is opened it will prompt you for an activation code. Select Activate over the Internet
   

   

9. If your server is located behind a proxy server you can add the credentials here, by activating the Use this proxy server.
   

   

10. On the following screen paste or type in your organization's activation code and click Next. This will synchronize with our licensing server and enable all your licensed features of Discovery Hub.

    

11. You will then be presented with this screen. Notifying you that the product have been activated successfully.
    

    

12. After activating the software, you will receive a warning  that the project repository settings are invalid.
    

    

    Click OK to dismiss the warning, and on the next screen type in the server name that your current project repository resides on. Click the drop down arrow for the Database and select your current project repository. Click OK.
    

    

13. If you are upgrading, Discovery Hub will recognize the old repository and prompt that it needs to be upgraded to be compatible with the new version of Discovery Hub. It will also show the location where the backup of the repository will be located. Click the Upgrade button.

    

    While it is running a menu prompt will show you the current progress.

    

14. You will then be prompted for the upgrade method. Select Web service.

    

    The upgrade scripts will be downloaded and processed. Discovery Hub has now been installed and the project repository has been upgraded to be compatible with the new version of the software.
15. Deploy and execute your project(s) using the new version to have the upgrade reflected in the actual project code. Validate the results before letting your end-users perform reporting on the upgraded projects data warehouse and/or cubes.

Setting Up the Scheduler Service

During the installation of Discovery Hub Server, a service is installed on the local machine that controls the execution packages. These execution packages handle the regular updates made to the data warehouse and the cubes. 

The service needs to be run by a user with sufficient user rights and configured to use the correct repository database. This can either be the same account that you use to develop your projects or a different service account (recommended). How to point that user to the correct repository will be described below.

Follow the steps below to set up a new user account for use with the scheduler service. If you have upgraded to a new version you will still need to start up the scheduler in this new version. You can skip the first bit and go the step where we start the service, if you are using the account you use for development or if you are upgrading and already have a user account set up with the correct repository settings.

1. Make sure that the account has sufficient permissions.
• On Analysis Services, Administrator rights (if you use OLAP Cubes).
• On the msdb database, membership of the db_ssisadmin role.
• On repository, staging and data warehouse databases, membership of the db_owner role.
2. Log in with the user account that will be used to run the scheduler service. Go to the installation folder normally on the C: drive and find timextender.exe press Shift+RightClick and choose Run as different user.

   

3. Add the user account you want to run the scheduler service as.

   

4. You will get the same warning you got the last time you started the program. Point to the same repository as before.

   

5. Open the Windows service Setup.

   

6. Set the start mode to run as Automatic Delayed.

   

7. Press the Change User Name and Password button and add the credentials.

   

8. Press Start Service.

   

9. If it worked you will be presented with this screen.

   

10. If you receive a message that the service started and then stopped the most common cause is that the Discovery Hub configuration files have not been created for the service account that was specified to start the service. Doing it this way should make it not happen.

With the user account configured, there is only one thing missing. Setting up what should be done if the service fails.

1. Press the Windows button to bring up the start menu/start screen, type "services.msc" and press enter. This brings up a overview of Windows Services.

   

2. Right click the Discovery Hub Server Scheduler service and select "Properties".
3. On the Recovery tab the First failure and subsequent failures should be set to "Restart the service".

   

If you have started the service, but for some reason the execution gets errors regarding the wrong repository. It could be that the old version of the service is still running. Press the Options menu and choose filters All versions.

You can now see all the installed versions of Discovery Hub scheduler and server. Sort it by status. Only one scheduler service should be running.

To solve it simply stop it.

If you are upgrading from an earlier version, you can uninstall the old version of Discovery Hub once all of the previous steps have been successfully completed.