To me, one of the most frustrating aspects of WebSphere Portal is the installation process. Don’t get me wrong, it has been greatly improved over the years to the point of being point and click for the basic install. Still, it takes a long time to get the basic software installed (2-3 hours). Then you need to set up the security interface, which can take another couple of hours. Finally, there is the database connection – another hour. When you have to do this process for five or six systems, it gets a little boring!
I’ve always wondered why can’t I just take a previously installed portal, copy the directory structure to another machine, tweak a couple of configuration and registry settings in Windows and be done? Well if it was that easy, I’m sure IBM would have provided a way to do that by now.
Well maybe there is light at the end of our install tunnel: Cloning WebSphere Portal is now a feature of version 7. Walter Haenel, a Lead Architect for IBM recently published a white paper on DeveloperWorks called Cloning an IBM WebSphere Portal V7 Installation.
The key to the cloning feature is that you clone an already configured portal server so you don’t have to keep applying security and database changes with every installation. There are several steps in the cloning process shown below. Most steps are done one time to get everything set up initially.
- Get and install the Installation Factory. This is a new tool that will create the new cloned install images for you
- Install and customize the master server. Do a normal install to get the master server to the correct configuration and fixpack level. Yes, you still have to spend the day getting the first server installed properly. Your clone will use the same user registry and database connections as your master server.
- Gather input for the install factory from the master installation.
- Create the new install image. This image will be your new clone(s).
- Install the clone(s)
If you are using a clustered environment, you would install a standard server and federate them after the clones are created.
A formidable share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a bit of analysis on this. And he in fact bought me breakfast because I discovered it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the treat! However yeah Thnkx for spending the time to discuss this, I really feel strongly about it and love studying more on this topic. If potential, as you turn out to be expertise, would you mind updating your blog with extra details? It’s highly useful for me. Massive thumb up for this blog post!