Installing MobileFirst Platform Server v7.1 on WAS ND

Installing MFPv7.1 on WAS ND Introduction

Disclaimer: The solution discussed herein is from my own personal experience as a developer using the MobileFirst platform and do not represent IBM's view nor IBM's interest in supporting this officially.

I'm starting this article with the assumption that you know what MobileFirst Platform Server is; you know what WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Server is; and you want to install one into the other.

If the above sentence made no sense at all, then move along. Geek only from this point forward.


Whilst I'm going to step through what's involved to install MFPv7.1 into BIG WAS (as I prefer to call it), I am going to do it all inside one VMWare. In reality, you would do it on multiple servers / environments . As I have broken up the tasks, you can clearly see where you could now move to another environment and do the next set of tasks.

For instance, you could do the first lot of tasks to install MFP itself and a Runtime into one environment. You would then move to another for the Operational Analytics server install and then move to another for the Application Center server install. You may even decide you do not even want to do the last two installs, in which case you can ignore them. I'm just going to lay it all out there and let you decide what bits you need.


I made the reference to BIG WAS earlier, well let me explain. There is a little WAS, it's called WebSphere Liberty Profile (WLP). It is actually awesome and can be used pretty much for everything that BIG WAS can be. MobileFirst Platform ( MFP) runs very well with WLP and if you do a development installation inside Eclipse of MFP, then you'll be running MFP on WLP.

There is quite a lot of material on the internet about using and configuring MFP with WLP, that's why I've not repeated it for myself on this site.


What is missing though, is information on installing MFP on BIG WAS. Sure, there is mention of it in the IBM InfoCenter (which if you export it to PDF is about 1800 pages long!), Feel free to go check it out and " just follow the instructions ". To be fair, it IS all there, pretty much. It's just not in a straight line. In fact, it's not even in a curvy line. It's in a loopy, circular reference, with multiple threads that don 't always return to an end event line.

To save you the headache and the trial and error and to just share the know-how, I've made a series of videos of stepping through the installation in a proper VMWare, taking you through the installation of the MFP product, setting up MFP inside WAS, creating a Runtime, deploying it, adding a .wlapp and a .adapter, installing Operational Analytics and installing Application Center.

I stop at the point where I need to connect up real or emulated devices to connect to the MFP products running on the server. But, you can do that. Following this guide, you'll get to that goal pretty quick and can be safe in the knowledge that you've "got the server-side sorted out".


Pre-reqs:

  • Some coffee
  • Some time
  • A passionate desire to learn and accept a challenge


I'm assuming that:

  • You've downloaded a Red Hat .iso (RHEL 5)
  • Created a new VMWare image with it (40Gb is more than enough)
  • It created a default account called admin with the password of admin
  • Downloaded Oracle XE and installed it and configured it with the default values
  • It obtained the correct IBM software from Passport Advantage
  • It copied the correct product installation files to the VMWare
  • Installed the IBM Installation Manager
  • I used the IBM Installation Manager to install IBM WAS ND and HTTP Server (just select all the defaults when doing the installation)

We shall be loosely following these instructions, except we shall only be concerning ourselves with Host1 and Host2 (as we're only creating a single VMWare).  If we created another VMWare we could easily set this up to be Host3 and the Dmgr would deploy everything across the cluster and we could scale up nicely.





Performed the following to create a Profile etc in WAS ND:
su to root
cd / opt / IBM / WebSphere / AppServer / bin

./Manageprofiles.Sh -create -profileName dmgr -profilePath / opt / IBM / WebSphere / AppServer / profiles / dmgr -templatePath / opt / IBM / WebSphere / AppServer / profileTemplates / Management -ServerType DEPLOYMENT_MANAGER

./manageprofiles.sh -create -profileName ihs -profilePath / opt / IBM / WebSphere / AppServer / profiles / ihs -templatePath / opt / IBM / WebSphere / AppServer / profileTemplates / managed
./startManager.sh

./addNode.sh localhost 8879 -profileName ihs

Open up http: // localhost: 9060 / ibm / console
System Admin> Nodes [check]

./manageprofiles.sh -create -profileName node1 -profilePath / opt / IBM / WebSphere / AppServer / profiles / node1 -templatePath / opt / IBM / WebSphere / AppServer / profileTemplates / managed

./addNode.sh localhost 8879 -profileName node1

Open up http: // localhost: 9060 / ibm / console
Servers> Clusters> WebSphere application server clusters> New
'Mfpcluster'
add members: server1 for localhostNode01 | server2 for localhostNode02

System Administration> Nodes
[X] check all Nodes and select [Synchronize]
Servers> Clusters> [x] mfpcluster> Start


At this point I WAS ND should be configured and ready to go!





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