General steps to upgrade your WebSphere on the ITCAM Managing Server.

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If you want to upgrade your WebSphere running on your MS to a higher level, say from WAS 7 to WAS 8.5.5 or higher, then please follow these general steps to do so:

1.  Backup your existing MS customization first:

Before you kick off the uninstall, you will need to make a backup of any customization you have made on your MS.  Usually this is the Groups and Users you've created.  To preserve these customizations and others that you may have made, do not uninstal the octigate database during the MS uninstall phase.  This will preserve your existing customization.

Hence, to save your customizations, when uninstalling the MS, set the dbInstall.activeForUninstall = false (so that the database remains, and is not uninstalled) in your response file (see step 2 below).  This will preserve your data (users/groups/servers) and you will not need to install the database again.

(Note:  Its generally recommended that you uninstall your DC's before you remove the MS, but you don't have to if you have a lot of monitored DCs.  So, when you install the MS later on, your existing DC's will connect back again to the MS, but you may find duplicate DC entries, which can be cleaned up later.)

2. Uninstall the Managing Server:

First you will need to uninstall the MS as you cannot upgrade the WAS to a higher level without first uninstalling the MS.  Now that you have made a backup, you can proceed to uninstall the MS.  See the link here for uninstalling the MS.  Set the dbInstall.activeForUninstall = false as indicated in step 1.

3.  Upgrade the WAS on the MS system:

You can upgrade your existing WAS to a higher version, or would it be easier to simply uninstall your WAS and reinstall a higher version, say WAS 8.5.5.0 or higher.  This will be much easier and quicker to do.  After you have installed the base code of WAS you can download and put on the WAS Fixpacks from here.  Restart your WAS server after you have put on the new WAS base code + fixpacks.  Note: You must create a default profile; otherwise you won't be able to reinstall the MS.

4. Install any missing RHEL Library packages:

If you are using RHEL6 or RHEL7 64-bit systems, you will need certain 32-bit and 64-bit RHEL packages installed before you install the MS in GUI mode.  The most common 32-bit and 64-bit libraries required are glibc, compat-libstdc++, libstdc++, libXp, libXrender, libXtst, libXmu amongst others, depending on your RHEL environment.  See this link and this link for more info on the required packages.  These packages are required to be installed before you use the silent (or GUI) install of the MS, otherwise the MS will fail with a graphical error.   After you have installed the 32-bit and 64-bit packages, you can install the MS.

5. Install the MS:

You will install the base code MS v7.1.0.0 that you download from Passport Advantage.  When installing the MS, do not install the octigate database, only the components: Visualization Engine and the MS files.  After you have installed the MS base code, you will need to put on FP4 and IF01, then restart the MS one more time.

6. Observe DCs connect back to the MS:

Your DC's will now discover the new MS v7.1.0.4.1 running on the new WAS 8.5.5.x or higher that you just installed, typically in about 15 to 25 minutes server.  If you have a lot of DC's (say more then 100), then this can take up to 1 hour the very first time.  Subsequent connections will be almost immediate.   Note: After your DCs have connected back again to the MS, you may see duplicate DCs show up on the Enterprise home page.  You can easily clean this out by going into the SERVERS table in your octigate database, identifying the old DCs by the controller id and removing them from this table.  No restart of the MS is required after clean up.

Good luck. 

Noel Lewis

ITCAM / APM L2 Support team

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