IBM Cognos 8 on Windows 2008 - Ouch.

After just two years it seems the IT world is beginning to wake up to Windows 2008 Server, and I suppose its a good thing that its taken this long, particularly for Cognos users who have had to wait until version 8.4 to get support on the OS.

Microsoft seem to have taken note of all those who complained that IIS security is too relaxed out of the box and as a result seem to have set it up so that in IIS7, everything is disabled by default.
I would say this is a good thing, because it is.  Except if you are the poor Technical Consultant who has to keep installing on this version.  Because it is not straight forward.

Like most things, the more you do it, the easier it becomes, but gone it seems are the days where you simply create a bunch of Virtual Directories and enable "All Unknown ISAPI Extensions", or if you are feeling a little more security conscious then set up the specific .cgi or dll required to get Cognos going.

So what I can offer is a list of steps that can be used to get the IBM Cognos 8 BI or Planning suite up and running on Windows 2008 with IIS 7.  What I am still trying to work out is if I am doing this for the benefit of anyone who finds this post, or if its just so I know where to find the instructions the next time I am scratching my head over why its not working the way I expect it to.

Steps:

1. Open IIS Manager 
2. In the left Connections pane, open the server level, open Sites then right-click on Default Website, and click "Add Virtual Directory"
3. Enter "cognos8" for the alias and enter the path to the x:\Program Files\Cognos\c8\webcontent directory in Physical Path and then click on OK.
4. Right click on the cognos8 virtual directory and click "Add Virtual Directory" (this will create a sub-directory to cognos8)
5. Input "cgi-bin" for the Alias and enter the path to x:\Program Files\Cognos\c8\cgi-bin directory in Physical Path. Click OK.
6. Right click on the cognos8 virtual directory and again click "Add Virtual Directory"
7. Enter "help" for the Alias and enter the path to the x:\Program Files\Cognos\c8\webcontent\documentation directory in Physical Path. Click OK.  You will now have the basic structure we are used to for Cognos 8
8. In the left Connections pane, select the server node, then double-click ISAPI and CGI Restrictions in the right hand side.
9. In the Actions section to the right, click Add, enter the path to either cognosisapi.dll or cognos.cgi depending on which you will use (it is recommended to use cognosisapi.dll for IIS installations as it provides better performance) ensure you have ticked the "Allow extension path to execute" box, then click OK.
10. In the left Connections pane, select the cgi-bin virtual directory, then double-click Handler Mappings in the right pane.
11. In the Actions pane click Add Module Mapping, then enter either "cognos.cgi" or "cognosisapi.dll" for the Request Path, choose either CGIModule or ISAPIModule for the Module, give it an identifiable name like "CGI-cognos" then click OK.
12. In order for Cognos Administration to function properly, the directive added to the IIS configuration file by step 11 has to be edited manually. Depending on how IIS is set up, this will have been written either to C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationhost.config or to "<cognos_home>/c8/cgi-bin/web.config. Check those files for the following entry:
    
    <add modules="CgiModule" name="CGI-cognos" path="*.cgi" resourcetype="Unspecified" />
    
    add allowPathInfo="true" to it like this:
    
    <add name="CGI-cognos" path="*.cgi" verb="*" modules="CgiModule" resourceType="Unspecified" allowPathInfo="true" />
    
    
13. Optionally, if appropriate, in addition to the above steps, when running IIS on a Windows 2008 Server 64-bit installation, you will need to configure the default application pool for the Cognos cgi-bin directory that permits 32-bit applications to execute.
    
    Right hand click on "Default Application Pool" and select "Advanced Settings", when the window opens up, change the property for "Enable 32-bit Applications" to "True".

So as you can see, its hardly rocket science, but then it is a hell of a lot more hard work than it used to be under Windows 2003.