Source and destination environment compatibility

As part of your deployment planning, review the assets that you plan to move in both the source and destination environment. Understand any dependencies that might exist.

During the planning phase, reviewing object store information, change impact analysis, access rights, LDAP settings, and potential hardware and software requirements can help ensure source and destination environment compatibility. For more information, see Assets that need special consideration.

Review the equipment that is available

Review the hardware and software that is available for the FileNet® P8 destination system, and consider these questions:

Do the source environment and destination environment use similar databases and table spaces?
How much space does your application and its associated data need?
Can you access the destination environment from the development environment?
Is there an overlap of resources between the two environments? For example, can you use a different isolated region on the destination system for your development work?

For more information about the minimum supported levels of hardware and software, see IBM® FileNet P8 system requirements. For more information about the installation of FileNet P8 components, see Installing or upgrading FileNet P8.

Acquire the appropriate access rights

Acquire the appropriate access rights to deploy your application. At a minimum, you need the appropriate access rights to the following tasks:

Creating databases and table spaces, as needed, for the destination environment.
Installing software.

Ensure compatibility of the object stores

When you are preparing to migrate an application between environments, ensure that the source and destination object stores are compatible by considering the following information:

Ensure that add-on features that define classes or properties in the destination object store are the same as in the source object store.
Important: Be sure to consider any add-on feature that modifies the metadata for the default document class definition. Any document that is stored in the document class or a subclass of the document class is affected by that modification. This rule is true even if the document is not used by the product that installed the add-on feature. For example, the target object store in the development environment might also be configured as an IBM Enterprise Records records object store. In that case, a document such as an IBM Forms form template that is not intended to be managed as a record still has the additional IBM Enterprise Records properties after it is exported. If that form template is imported into a target environment that does not have the add-on feature for a records object store applied, an import error can occur.
Consider the release levels of the software and deployment tools to be used. For optimal results, deployment tools such as FileNet Deployment Manager must be at the same release level as the server they are connecting to. To avoid issues during the import process, the release level of the FileNet P8 products in the source environment must be the same as the products in the destination environment.
Verify that all content to be deployed is checked in before you start the import process.
Plan the corresponding administrative groups in the source and destination environments. The mapping between security principals in the source and destination is a task that is completed in the migration phase.
Ensure that any services required by the solution application are available in the destination environment before the solution and other associated assets are deployed.

For more information, see FileNet P8 asset deployment.

Review security principals and permissions

Review the LDAP settings on the destination system, and consider these questions:

Does the destination environment use the same LDAP server as the source environment? If not, what are the differences between the two environments? After you import application data to the destination environment, what changes are needed to the access control lists for the objects?
What users and groups use the destination application?

If possible, develop your FileNet P8 application in the destination LDAP domain. Otherwise, attempt to replicate the destination LDAP domain in the source environment. Keeping your LDAP environments the same, or as similar as possible, reduces the amount of manual clean-up required before you can transfer information between the source and destination environments.

If it is impractical to work in a source development environment with an identical LDAP domain as the destination environment, then you must use FileNet Deployment Manager to map security principals between the source and destination environments.

You can map multiple security principals in a source environment to a single security principal in a destination environment. For more information, see Many-to-one security principal mappings.

Restriction: Security principals that have administrator permissions in the source environment might not have the same administrative rights in the destination environment security context unless the permissions for those security principals are assigned based on their administrative group membership, rather than on an individual user basis. In any FileNet P8 environment, assign permissions on a group basis, rather than on a user basis. For more information, see Role-Based Security. Duplicating permissions by adding administrative users in the destination environment is difficult because duplicating those permissions requires permission updates to several objects (primarily class definitions) in the FileNet P8 environment.

For more information about user and group roles, accounts, and responsibilities that are required to install, configure, and maintain a FileNet P8 system, see Users and groups required by FileNet P8.

Use change impact analysis to find potential import errors

Preparing the destination environment can be an iterative process if complex dependencies between assets are present. The change impact analysis operation reports on potential import errors in the destination environment and the impact of the changes on the destination environment.

Examine the information in the change impact report to identify potential issues. These issues include add-on features or configurations that are missing from the destination environment, missing items that are required to be in the converted deployment data set, and unexpected items that are present in the converted deployment data set. These issues must be corrected before the deployment can proceed. Corrective actions might include the following options:

Installing and configuring third-party components that the solution application depends on.
Re-exporting the assets from the source with a more focused set of include options. This action ensures that the deployment data set contains both the needed assets and all the assets that are required to support them.

For more information, see Change impact analysis.

Review other related documentation

For more information about other aspects to consider in the deployment planning, see Assets that need special consideration and Common dependencies between objects.