IBM® Installation
Manager installs the IBM MobileFirst™ Platform Server files
and tools on your computer.
You run Installation Manager to install the binary files of MobileFirst Server and
the tools to deploy the MobileFirst Server applications
to an application server on your computer. The files and tools that
are installed by the installer are described in Distribution structure of MobileFirst Server.
You need IBM Installation
Manager V1.8.4 or later to run the MobileFirst Server installer.
You can run it either in graphical mode or in command line mode.
Two main options are proposed during the installation process:
- Activation of token licensing
- Installation and deployment of IBM MobileFirst Platform Application
Center
- Token licensing
-
Token licensing is one of the two licensing methods supported
by MobileFirst Server.
You must determine whether you need to activate token licensing or
not. If you do not have a contract that defines the use of token licensing
with the Rational® License
Key Server, do not activate token licensing. If you activate token
licensing, you must configure MobileFirst Server for
token licensing. For more information, see Installing and configuring for token licensing.
- IBM MobileFirst Platform Application
Center
-
Application Center is
a component of IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation.
With Application Center,
you can share mobile applications that are under development within
your organization in a single repository of mobile applications.
If
you choose to install Application Center with
Installation Manager, you must provide the database and the application
server parameters so that Installation Manager configures the databases
and deploys Application Center to
the application server. If you choose not to install Application Center with
Installation Manager, Installation Manager saves the WAR file and
the resources of Application Center to
your disk. It does not set up the databases nor deploys Application Center WAR
file to your application server. You can do this later by using Ant
tasks or manually. This option to install Application Center is
a convenient way to discover Application Center because
you are guided during the installation process by the graphical Install
wizard.
However, for production installation, use Ant tasks
to install
Application Center.
The installation with Ant tasks enables you to decouple the updates
to
MobileFirst Server from
the updates to
Application Center.
- Advantage of installing Application Center with
Installation Manager.
- A guided graphical wizard assists you through the installation
and deployment process.
- Disadvantages of installing Application Center with
Installation Manager.
- If Installation Manager is run with the root user on UNIX or Linux,
it might create files that are owned by root in the directory of the
application server where Application Center is
deployed. As a result, you must run the application server as root.
- You have no access to the database scripts and cannot provide
them to your database administrator to create the tables before you
run the installation procedure. Installation Manager creates the database
tables for you with default settings.
- Each time when you upgrade the product, for example to install
an interim fix, Application Center is
upgraded first. The upgrade of Application Center includes
operations on the database and the application server. If the upgrade
of Application Center fails,
it prevents Installation Manager from completing the upgrade, and
prevents you from upgrading other MobileFirst Server components.
For production installation, do not deploy Application Center with
Installation Manager. Install Application Center separately
with Ant tasks after Installation Manager installsMobileFirst Server.
For more information about Application Center,
see Installing and configuring the Application Center.
Important: The
MobileFirst Server installer
installs only the
MobileFirst Server binary
files and tools on your disk. It does not deploy the
MobileFirst Server applications
to your application server. After you run the installation with Installation
Manager, you must set up the databases and deploy the
MobileFirst Server applications
to your application server. For more information, see:
Similarly, when you run Installation Manager to update an existing
installation, it updates only the files on your disk. You need to
perform more actions to update the applications that are deployed
to your application servers. To apply an interim fix or fix pack,
see: