Introduction

The IBM WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1 installer supports two installation options: basic and advanced. The basic option, which is for installing WebSphere Business Monitor in development, demo, and test environments, is covered in Part 2 of this series.

The advanced installation option is for production environments and is similar to the WebSphere Business Monitor 6.0.2 installer's advanced option. However, WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1 offers greater flexibility and fewer manual configuration steps. You can, for example, install the monitor database on one machine, portal dashboards on a second machine with a stand-alone IBM WebSphere Portal installed, and a distributed monitor server configuration on a third machine. One or more of the components can be installed, as needed, at one time.

Prerequisites

Depending on the components you wish to install, you will need the following software and current licenses for:

• IBM AlphaBlox® 9.5
• IBM WebSphere Portal 6.0.1.1 (including IBM WebSphere Application Server 6.0.2)
• IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment 6.1.0.13 or higher
• IBM WebSphere Business Monitor server 6.1 or higher

Overview of advanced installation scenarios

The advanced WebSphere Business Monitor installation lets you install one or more of the following components:

• Monitor server
• Portal dashboard
• Monitor database
• Information center

There are many installation scenarios with the advanced approach, and each scenario has its own unique behavior. For example, some of the scenarios create a server profile for you, while others augment an existing profile or require that you run the profile management tool (PMT) after installation. Table 1 summarizes the main installation scenarios. In this article, you'll walk through each scenario in detail, with the exception of a distributed network deployment (which will be covered in a future article).

Scenarios for installing the monitor server

Depending on your system topology, you might need to install only the monitor server component on one machine. WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1 supports Web-based dashboards for monitoring business activities. The Web-based dashboards will be deployed when you select to install monitor server with a stand-alone profile. The AlphaBlox features for Web-based dashboards can be installed as an advanced installation option.

Installing the monitor server on a clean machine

This section walks through an example of installing the monitor server for the first time on a machine.

Start the WebSphere Business Monitor installation wizard from the common launchpad, as described in Part 1 of this series. Go through the welcome, license, and system-prerequisite check panels, which are common to all the scenarios, to the installation type selection panel, as shown in Figure 1.

Select Advanced Installation and click Next.

You will see the component selection panel.

All four components are selected by default. Uncheck Portlet-based dashboards and Information center. The monitor database component is required by WebSphere Business Monitor server, and you're not allowed to uncheck it. Click Next.

Figure 3 shows the detected WebSphere Application Server panel, which you'll see only if you have one or more pure WebSphere Application Server (application server without monitor server) installed on the machine.

Installing a new copy of WebSphere Application Server is selected by default. You can also choose to use an existing installation of WebSphere Application Server. In this example, keep the default selection and click Next.

Figure 4 shows the feature selection panel.

In the scenario for installing WebSphere Business Monitor server only, AlphaBlox features for Web-based dashboards is the only available feature you can select (it's selected by default). You may select None to not install this feature. In this example, keep the default selection and click Next.

You should see the installation directory panel as shown in Figure 5 if you do not have pure WebSphere Application Server installed on the machine or if you selected installing a new copy of WebSphere Application Server in Figure 3.

Enter the installation location for monitor server and click Next.

Figure 6 shows the WebSphere Business Monitor profile environments panel.

On this panel you can select the type of profile environments to create for WebSphere Business Monitor.

If you keep the default environment Stand-alone and click Next, you will go through: WebSphere Application Server enable administrative security -> Human tasks configuration -> Screen customizations -> Database configuration -> Additional database configuration. All of these panels are described in the basic installation flow in Part 1.

On the database configuration panel, if you select:

• DB2® for z/OS®, you don't have the option to create the database because the installation cannot create a database on the remote z/OS machine.
• Oracle, the creating database option will create only monitor database artifacts, such as database tables, in an existing database. The Oracle database instance must already exist.

At this point you should see the installation summary panel, as shown in Figure 7.

Click Next to start the installation. After the installation finishes, you will see the results, as shown in Figure 8.

At the end of the installation, a stand-alone profile environment for WebSphere Business Monitor server is created.

In the WebSphere Business Monitor profile environments panel, if you select None for profile environment and click Next, you will get a warning, as shown in Figure 9.

If you click Yes, you will see the installation summary panel. Click Next to start the installation. When it finishes, you will see the installation results. In this scenario, no monitor server profile is created during installation. After you exit installation, you can start the PMT manually to create a profile.

If you select the deployment manager option on the WebSphere Business Monitor profile environments panel, a deployment manager profile for WebSphere Business Monitor server will be created. With the deployment manager profile alone, you can create only empty clusters (for example, no node).

If you select the custom option, a custom node profile can be federated into the cell managed by the deployment manager during profile creation (or later, manually). After the installation, you can start the deployment manager administrative console to create the clusters in the cell shown in Figure 10. Refer to "Installing WebSphere Business Monitor in a highly available and scalable environment" in the WebSphere Business Monitor Information Center (see Resources) for more information.

The sample distributed topology for the WebSphere Business Monitor server is supported by the WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1 installer. Six types of monitor clusters are created in one cell. The monitor database is installed on a remote machine. The Web dashboard cluster includes a Web- based dashboard, representational state transfer (REST) services, and AlphaBlox. Web-based dashboards communicate with the monitor database through a REST service called the monitor data security service. AlphaBlox installed in the Web-dashboard cluster communicates to the monitor database through Java™ database connectivity (JDBC). The Web server receives and distributes requests from the browser to the appropriate clusters and cluster members.

Installing WebSphere Business Monitor server on top of an existing one

This section walks you through an example of installing a monitor server assuming you already have a monitor server installed on the machine.

Follow the steps in the previous example to the component selection panel. As in the previous example, select to install only monitor server and click Next. You will see the detected monitor server panel, as shown in Figure 11.

The installation wizard detected one or more existing installations of monitor server on the machine. You might see two or three options; the two you will always see are: "Install a new copy of Business Monitor server," and "Create a new Business Monitor server profile using the Profile Management Tool."

If you select to install a new copy of monitor server, the rest of the panel flow will be the same as the previous example.

If you select to create a new monitor server profile using the profile management tool (PMT), the installation wizard will start PMT automatically.

If your previous installation of monitor server does not have AlphaBlox features installed, you will also see the option to add features to monitor server. If you select this option and click Next, the feature selection panel appears, as shown in Figure 12.

In this scenario, you can accept only the default to install AlphaBlox features for Web-based dashboards. Click Next to go to the install summary panel, and click Next again to start the installation.

After the installation finishes, you must run the provided script to complete the installation if you are installing these features into an existing profile. In this example, the script provided is in C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\MonServer2\scripts.wbm\abxFeature\installABXFeature.bat.

If you are installing these features into a new profile, you can use the PMT to create a stand-alone profile with this feature.

Scenarios for installing a portal dashboard

In this section, learn to:

• Install a portal dashboard on a clean portal server
• Install AlphaBlox features on top of an existing portal dashboard

WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1 supports portal-based dashboards for monitoring business activities with WebSphere Portal. The portal-based dashboards can be deployed onto an existing WebSphere Portal 6.0.1.1 installation as an advanced install option. If your current version of WebSphere Portal is 6.0 or less, you must upgrade to version 6.0.1.1, or the installer will not detect the WebSphere Portal installation.

Figure 13 shows an example installation topology for WebSphere Portal supported by the WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1 installer. The business monitor servers are installed into a network deployment (ND) cell that spans one or more machines, with a Web server distributing requests to the business monitor servers on a second machine. Here, monitor server is a general term for the WebSphere Business Monitor, Web dashboard, and other clusters listed in the WebSphere Business Monitor server sample distributed topology in Figure 10.

The monitor database and portal server are also each installed on separate machines. Through a REST service proxy, the monitor portlets installed on the portal server communicate through the Web server to the monitor servers in the cell, where the Web server's role is to distribute the incoming requests.

There is an additional JDBC connection to the monitor database required by AlphaBlox dimensional views. If you select the AlphaBlox feature, a panel will be displayed for entering the information required for accessing the monitor database.

Installing portal dashboard on a clean portal server

This section goes through an example of installing portal dashboard for the first time on a portal server installation. For this example, WebSphere Portal, WebSphere Business Monitor server, and the monitor database are each installed on a separate machine.

Start the WebSphere Business Monitor installation wizard from the common launchpad as described in the first section. Go through the welcome, license, and system prerequisite check panels, which are common to all scenarios, and you will see the installation type selection panel. Select Advanced Installation, then click Next.

Follow the steps in the first example to the component selection panel. Leave only Portlet-based dashboards checked, and uncheck the other three components, as shown in Figure 14.

Click Next. The detected WebSphere Portal panel displays, as shown in Figure 15. A list of WebSphere Portal Server 6.0.1.1 installations, which the installer found on the local machine, is displayed in a drop-down list. The monitor dashboards for WebSphere Portal Server will be installed into the portal server installation you select from the list.

Click Next. The feature selection panel displays, as shown in Figure 16. If you select AlphaBlox features for portlet-based dashboards (selected by default), the monitor dashboards for the portal server will support AlphaBlox dimensional views of your data. You will have to enter the information required for a JDBC connection to the monitor database, as required by AlphaBlox.

If None (no feature install) is selected instead, no JDBC connection is needed, and the corresponding database configuration panels are not displayed.

Click Next. The WebSphere Portal administrative security panel displays, as shown in Figure 17. Enter the WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Portal user names (they may be the same), and their associated passwords.

Click Next. The portlet-based dashboards configuration panel displays, as shown in Figure 18. Recall that the example topology has a clustered monitor server installation on a separate machine with a Web server distributing requests to the cluster. The Web server's host name and port number represent the monitor data-security service remote end-point locations. Enter the Web server's host name and port number.

Click Next. The human tasks configuration panel displays, as shown in Figure 19. For this walk-through, Configure human task monitor model is not checked. To configure the human task monitor model, enter the host name and RMI port number of an IBM WebSphere Process Server installation.

Click Next. The screen customizations panel displays, as shown in Figure 20. Check one or more of the screen customizations that you would like to be displayed when you access your portal dashboards. All three customizations are checked by default.

Click Next. The database configuration panel displays, as shown in Figure 21. This is the first of two panels for entering the information needed to configure the JDBC connection. Select a supported Database product from the drop-down list. This is the database product that contains the monitor database in the example WebSphere Portal Server topology (Figure 13). You must also enter the Database name and Schema name. MONITOR is the default.

Click Next. The additional database configuration panel displays, as shown in Figure 22. The JDBC connection to the monitor database requires additional security, driver, driver type, database server host name, and service port information. Enter the information as shown below.

If you select JDBC driver type 2, database client software must be installed on the portal server machine.

Click Next. The installation summary panel displays, as shown below. Click Next to start the installation.

After the installation finishes, you will see the installation results panel.

Installing AlphaBlox features on top of existing portal dashboard

In the previous scenario for portal dashboard installation, on the feature selection panel, None may be selected to install portal dashboards without AlphaBlox features. The WebSphere Business Monitor installer allows the AlphaBlox features to be installed separately after Portal dashboards have been installed onto an existing WebSphere Portal 6.0.1.1 installation.

In this scenario, after selecting Portlet-based dashboards on the component selection panel, the detected portlet-based dashboards panel displays, as shown in Figure 24. Select a WebSphere Portal Server installation from the drop-down list.

Click Next. The feature selection panel displays, as shown in Figure 25. AlphaBlox features for portlet-based dashboards is the only selection allowed; other selections are grayed out.

Click Next. Enter the database configuration information for configuring the JDBC connection required by AlphaBlox, as shown in Figure 21 and Figure 22.

Scenario for installing monitor server and portal dashboard

If you choose to install both Monitor server and Portal dashboard on the same machine, the installation flow will be a combination of the Monitor server-only scenario and Portal dashboard-only scenario. There will be one difference in the feature selection panel, as shown in Figure 26.

In this scenario, you can select to install AlphaBlox features for either Web-based dashboards or portlet-based dashboards but not both. This limitation is due to the monitor installation not supporting AlphaBlox clustering out of the box. If AlphaBlox features are installed into both Web-based and portlet-based dashboards without AlphaBlox clustering, only the AlphaBlox widget for one dashboard is able to view the monitor model data. The AlphaBlox widgets for the other dashboard won't be able to view the monitor model data, so you can only install AlphaBlox features onto one side of the dashboards. The AlphaBlox library has more information on clustering AlphaBlox (see Resources).

Scenarios for installing the information center

The information center is the documentation for WebSphere Business Monitor. It provides information on getting started, monitoring business performance, installation and migration, and developing monitor models. You can choose to install the information center by itself, or install it with other product components.

Installing only the information center

This section has an example of installing only the information center. First, follow the steps in the first example to get to the component selection panel. Uncheck the first three components, leaving only Information Center checked, as shown in Figure 27.

Click Next.

The information center installation directory panel displays, as shown in Figure 28.

Enter the installation directory for the information center and click Next.

Figure 29 shows the installation summary panel.

Click Next.

You should see the installation results panel, as shown in Figure 30.

The result is that the information center is installed in the specified directory.

Installing the information center with monitor server

On the component selection panel, if you check Information center and Monitor server you will go through the same panel flow as described in the monitor server installation scenario.

In this scenario, though, you won't see the information center installation directory panel. The information center will be installed in the monitor server installation directory, which you specify on the installation directory panel.

Installing the information center with portal dashboard

On the component selection panel, if you check Information center and Portlet-based dashboards you will go through the same panel flow as described in the portal dashboard installation scenario.

In this scenario, though, you won't see the information center installation directory panel. The information center will be installed in the portal server installation directory, which you choose on the detected WebSphere Portal panel.

Scenario for installing only the monitor database

Depending on your system topology, you may need to install monitor database on a separate machine. In this section, learn to install only the monitor database.

Follow the steps in the first example to the component selection panel, but leave Monitor database checked, as shown in Figure 31.

Click Next.

Figure 32 shows the database configuration panel.

This database configuration panel is different from the one in the monitor server or the portal dashboard scenario. You are prompted for the installation location for database scripts. The installation will generate scripts. If you select the option to create the database, the installation will also run the scripts to create the database. Similar to the monitor server example, if you select DB2 for z/OS, you do not have the option to create the database. If you select Oracle, the installation will only create the monitor database artifacts in the existing Oracle database instance.

After you select the database product and enter the installation directory, click Next.

The additional database configuration panel is displayed, as shown in Figure 33.

This database configuration panel is also different from the one in the monitor server or portal dashboard scenario. On this panel, you need to provide only database-authentication information for this scenario. (The panel in the monitor server or portal dashboard flow also needs to collect information for creating data source.)

After you enter the authentication information, click Next.

Figure 34 shows the federated repositories provider panel.

The federated repositories provider information is needed for the installation program to create the database table for the action manager. In WebSphere Application Server 6.1, federated repositories provider information is used to get the virtual member manager (VMM) service.

Federated repositories provider hostname is the IP address or host name of WebSphere Application Server.
Federated repositories provider port is the BOOTSTRAP_ADDRESS port of WebSphere Application Server.

Action manager uses the VMM service to complete a user query when adding or updating the notification template.

The federated repositories provider panel displays in this scenario only because the federated repositories provider information is automatically filled by the installation program in other scenarios.

After you enter the host name and port information, click Next. You will then go through the installation summary and installation results panels as usual.

In this scenario, the installation will lay down only the database scripts in the directory specified. Neither registry entry nor uninstaller will be created.

Summary

In this article you learned about the many advanced installation options supported by the WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1 installer. WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1 components can be installed separately or together, depending on your network topology. Because the installer is flexible, many different topologies can be supported, allowing you to deploy WebSphere Business Monitor to meet or exceed your business and performance requirements.

Several WebSphere Business Monitor installation walk-throughs showed how to install and configure the components and why the information is needed. Portal-based dashboards, for example, need database-configuration information if the AlphaBlox features are installed with the portal-based dashboards.

Stay tuned for the next part in this series, which will take you through an advanced installation into a distributed server topology—an example of an actual WebSphere Business Monitor production environment.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1 install team for their innovation and commitment: Aimee Silva, Lea Leite, Miriam Celi, Nick Metianu, Paritosh Patel, Ron Swan, Soonthorn Ativanichayaphong, and Xiaoming Wang.

Resources

• Check out the other parts of this series:
  • Part 1, "What's new in WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1" (developerWorks, Dec 2007)
  • Part 2, "WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1 installation improvements" (developerWorks, Jan 2008)
  • Part 3, "Improved Unit Test Environment in IBM WebSphere Business Monitor Development Toolkit V6.1" (developerWorks, Feb 2008)
  • Part 4, "Use the Integrated Test Client to improve iterative development with WebSphere Business Monitor V6.1" (developerWorks, Mar 2008)
  • Part 5, "Managing failed and unrecoverable events In IBM WebSphere Business Monitor V6.1" (developerWorks, Apr 2008)
  • Part 6, "Combine high-level monitor models from IBM WebSphere Business Modeler with low-level monitor models from IBM WebSphere Integration Developer" (developerWorks, Apr 2008)
  • Part 7, "Creating user-defined XPath functions for IBM WebSphere Business Monitor V6.1" (developerWorks, Apr 08)
  • Part 8, "Enabling IBM WebSphere Business Monitor V6.1 to receive events from WebSphere MQ" (developerWorks, Apr 08)
  • Part 9, "Empowered authoring of monitor models with IBM WebSphere Business Monitor development toolkit for 6.1" (developerWorks, May 08)
  • Part 10, "Improved data handling with IBM WebSphere Business Monitor 6.1" (developerWorks, Jun 08)
  
  
• Browse the IBM WebSphere Business Process Management information center.
  
  
• Learn about WebSphere Business Monitor features and benefits, system requirements, library, services, news items, and more.
  
  
• WebSphere Business Monitor education lists IBM WebSphere Business Monitor classes.
  
  
• The IBM AlphaBlox Library has more information about clustering AlphaBlox.
  
  
• Learn more about IBM WebSphere Application Server V6.1.
  
  
• Visit the WebSphere zone on developerWorks for more information about business process management.
  
  
• Browse the technology bookstore for books on these and other technical topics.
  
  
• Browse the Jump-start business activity monitoring (BAM) series for a wealth of how-to information and samples.
  
  

About the authors

Gerald McCobb is technical director of multimodal technology at Openstream, Inc. He was an IBM software engineer specializing in developing fix packs for IBM WebSphere Business Monitor. He holds a masters degree in computer science from the University of Miami.

Yan Li has worked as a software engineer with IBM for the past six years on product development. She has worked on IBM WebSphere Business Monitor installation since March, 2007.

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Table of contents

• Introduction
• Prerequisites
• Overview of scenarios
• Monitor server installation
• Portal dashboard installation
• Monitor server and Portal dashboard installation
• Information center installation
• Installing only Monitor database
• Summary
• Acknowledgments
• Resources
• About the authors
• Comments

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