Lotus Connections Requirements and Architecture – Part 3 Installing Lotus Connections

Well after a much longer delay then I planned on here is part 3 Installing Lotus Connections. Just to review in Part 1 I covered overall considerations for a Connections deployment, followed by Part 2 on considerations for installing and configuring WAS,  now I will cover considerations specific to installing  Lotus Connections. First a checklist of items that should be completed before installing Lotus Connections 1. WAS + Required Fixes installed 2. WAS Profiles or JVM Processes created 3. Federated Repositories configured (if multiple profiles for each one) 4. Databases created 5. Profiles Database populated. (More on TDI coming later in Part 4) Most of the data for Lotus Connections is stored in the Database, however each Connections service uses disk space to store indexes and other files.  If you are installing in a Network Deployment, the file system needs to be shared between the nodes where the service is installed.  This chart from the Hardware Requirements section in the Lotus Connections Infocenter details the requirements for each service, obviously you need to adjust these numbers for the number of users and anticipated usage in your environment Now on to the installation itself, each service is installed on it’s own, this allows you to select which ones you want installed, and into which profile they should be installed, so if you are installing all five services you will be running the install five times. If you want to save your response file make sure to check the box, in addition if you are installing multiple services on one machine each install will overwrite the response file unless you change the name from the default which is InstallResponse.txt.  If you plan on clustering you can use the response file to perform a silent install on the second node. Next select the feature to install, you can only install one at a time. Next select the Websphere Application Server to install to, you will most likely only have one instance per machine. Next select the WAS Profile to install the Connections service to, here you can see why creating custom profiles and naming them to match the service names will make things much simpler, as it will be easier to remember that Dogear is installed to the dogear profile as opposed to AppSrv01 for example Next enter the FQDN of the WAS Server (it will auto populate this field for you from the host name, make sure this name is resolvable in DNS Next up you need to provide the information for you Database This is the DB2 screen, you will need the JDBC driver library, you can either install the DB2 client, or simply copy the :IBMSQLLIBjava over from the DB2 server.  The database name will be filled in automatically with the correct name for the feature.    Make sure you can resolve the hostname of your database server, and specify a user ID and Password that has rights to the database. This is the database configuration for Oracle.  I am just starting to test Connections with Oracle so not much to say here right now, though basically the same information, (yes there is a screen for MS SQL as the database as well, but I have not worked with it at all, and don’t really have plans to) The next screen will prompt you for the location of the file systems for the data that is stored on disk and not in the database, the example here is from a Dogear install, but each feature will have this step. Finally you need to confirm the FQDN, and ports, this will become the URL that the service is accessed on (until you map it to an HTTP Server).  Remember each profile you create has it’s own port values, this will be detected and filled in automatically but you should make sure it matches what you recorded when you created the profiles. If all goes well you should see the Installation was successful message.  You can now start the WAS Profile, and access the feature you just installed.   In this example we installed Dogear which would be accessed via http://host.domain:9081/dogear.  Once you configure and map the HTTP Server you will be able to access the feature without including a port number in the URL. If you have followed all the pre-installation steps, the install itself is pretty smooth.   I am now installing Oracle so I can begin testing Lotus Connections with Oracle as the database, up till now I have been working with DB2, but the plan for production is to use Oracle.  Another new learning experience for me. More coming on TDI, and I will report back on my adventures with Oracle.