Installation Manager overview

IBM® Installation Manager is a single installation program that uses remote or local software repositories to install, modify, or update certain IBM products. Use this program to install, update, modify, roll back, and uninstall packages on your computer. The program locates and shows available packages, checks prerequisites and interdependencies, and installs or modifies the selected packages. You also use Installation Manager to uninstall the packages that you installed with Installation Manager.

Installing Installation Manager on your target machines

Before you install Installation Manager on your target machines, you must consider what mode you use to deploy packages. The primary difference between these modes is which users can start Installation Manager. The following modes determine how you install Installation Manager.
  • Administrator mode: Installation Manager can be installed only once per machine. This mode is required for packages that require administrator or root privileges to be deployed. Also, the user who starts Installation Manager must be a member of the Administrators group on Windows or have root privileges on UNIX, Linux®, IBM i, IBM z/OS®, and OS X operating systems.
  • Non-administrator mode: Installation Manager can be installed once per user. This mode is useful when users have their own copy of an application. Those copies are managed separately by the respective user accounts. However, in this mode, packages that require administrator access cannot be installed.
  • Group mode: Use this mode when you use multiple user accounts to manage the installed applications. In group mode, a group of users share packages. This mode is only available on Linux, UNIX, IBM z/OS, and OS X platforms. It is not available on Windows or IBM i. Packages must be enabled for group mode. Check the documentation for your package to determine whether the package is enabled for group mode.
Attention: Read the topic to ensure that you understand what mode you want to use. After you use a mode to install the product, your installation cannot be undone. For example, if you use the root installation, migrating the installation repository information from the root installation to a non-root installation is not supported. Also, if you change the content, files, or directories in the agent data location directory or subdirectories, you corrupt your product installation, forcing you to uninstall and reinstall your products.

After you use one user's account to install the product in nonadministrator mode, that installation cannot be transferred to another user's account.

Managing installations with Installation Manager

Wizards guide you through the steps that you must take to install, modify, update, roll back, or uninstall your IBM products. Use Installation Manager to install individual software packages on your local computer, or with IBM Packaging Utility to install software for an enterprise. For more information about the various methods that you can use to run the software, see Installation Manager modes.

Downloading Installation Manager

To download the installation files, go to the Installation Manager download links technical document and click the applicable download document link. The download document contains details about downloading the installation files.

Enterprise Installation articles

These Enterprise Installation articles provide information about how to use Installation Manager.