Installing side-by-side versions of InfoSphere Information Server (Linux and UNIX)

If you are not ready to uninstall the previous version of InfoSphere® Information Server, you can have both installations, side-by-side, on the same Linux® or UNIX computer or computers. Side-by-side installations are not supported on Windows computers.

Review the benefits and requirements for side-by-side installation. To make the second installation successful, you must consider issues such as the system requirements, disk space constraints, and potential port conflicts for IBM® Db2®, IBM WebSphere® Application Server, and InfoSphere Information Server. Any conflicts or restraints will be identified during the prerequisite checks that are performed during installation.

Leave your original installation running during the installation wizard overview through both sets of system requirement checks so that the installer can accurately detect all ports that are in use. If your system has only the minimum memory requirements for the new installation, once you have completed the second system requirements check, shut down the original system during the installation process. Then, open the new ports in your firewall as required. For more information about opening ports in your firewall, see Configuring your network.

Below is prerequisite information for each tier related to side-by-side installation.

Repository Tier

If you are installing a second copy of Db2 using the InfoSphere Information Server suite installer, you can ignore the following prerequisite error messages:

WARNING: There should be no active Db2.processes that might 
disturb the installation. 
WARNING: Delete the file global.reg in use by the current installation. 
FAIL - Ensure directory /var/db2 is empty or does not exist.

Services Tier

If you are installing IBM WebSphere Application Server as part of the InfoSphere Information Server suite installation, verify that Customize WebSphere Application Server profile ports is checked and the selected ports do not reuse ports from your existing installation. You can ignore this prerequisite error message:

FAIL - The IBM WebSphere Application Server installation directory 
/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer must not be present in the 
WebSphere Application Server registry files.

If you plan to use a pre-installed IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, do not use the same installation as your source version even if that version is supported by InfoSphere Information Server version 11.7. If you install a new copy of IBM WebSphere Application Server to a different path, it will be easier to distinguish which processes map to each version of InfoSphere Information Server. This approach uses a bit more disk space, but that space is returned when you uninstall the original computer after the validation is complete.

Engine Tier

Before you install InfoSphere Information Server version 11.7, remove the /.dshome file. This file defines the default location for the InfoSphere Information Server engine on the current system. When you have multiple engines installed on the same system, its existence can cause administrative tasks to be run against the wrong engine. Also the /.dshome file has to be removed again after installing InfoSphere Information Server, Version 11.7. You should also remove the automatic setting of the DSHOME environment variable and the sourcing of the previous version of the dsenv file if you added that to the dsadm profile. You should not add any InfoSphere version specific settings to the dsadm profile unless you use different user IDs for the InfoSphere DataStage® administrator for each version. You can create a version 11.7 script, as well as a script for the previous version of InfoSphere Information Server, and source the appropriate version based on the current task. You must source the correct dsenv file prior to any administrative tasks.

An ITAG value needs to be specified for the InfoSphere Information Server engine. This is a three character hexadecimal value. Do not select fff, ace, or dcd.

The InfoSphere Information Server suite installer automatically checks for ports that are in use, as well as and ports that are registered in the services file. The job monitor is not registered in the services file and if it is not running, the port conflict will not be identified. To avoid conflicts for the parallel job monitor select unique ports on the installation panel that are above 13401. You can ignore this prerequisite error message:

WARNING: No processes of the IBM InfoSphere Information Server-Engine 
can run on the target computer

See the following topic for complete information about installing Version 11.7: Installing InfoSphere Information Server by using the wizard (graphical mode).

Note: When you invoke the installer for a side-by-side installation, add the -force option to the command line. This allows you to ignore prerequisite check failures that are acceptable for a side-by-side installation. WARNING or FAIL messages that can be ignored are documented in the tiers to which they apply.