Installation Guidelines and Best Practices / Date: 06/05/2009
SWG - TIVOLI / ISM Installation Guidelines and Best Practices
Document Version: 1.2
Document Date: 07/1/2009
Document Control Information
Document Owner & Author: David Kulczar ISM Test Architect
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 5
1.1 Purpose 5
1.2 Content and Scope 5
1.2.1 Products Covered 5
2. Planning Exercises 8
2.1 Product Requirements 8
2.1.1 Platform Concerns 8
2.1.2 Compatibility Concerns 9
2.2 Sizing and Capacity Planning 9
2.3 Other Recommendations 9
3. Recommended Install Sequence 9
3.1 CCMDB 10
3.1.1 Integration Example Scenario (CCMDB-MAM-TAMIT-SRM-Fixpacks) 10
3.1.2 Sample Scenario from Multiple Customer Environments (CCMDB-SRM-TAMIT-Fixpacks) 11
3.2 SRM 12
3.2.1 Integration Example Scenario 1 (SRM-CCMDB-BCPM-ITRPM-Fixpacks) 13
3.2.2 Integration Example Scenario 2 (SRM-CCMDB-MAM-TAMIT-Fixpacks) 14
3.3 MAM 15
3.3.1 Integration Example Scenario 1 (MAM-TAMIT-CCMDB-SRM-Fixpacks) 15
3.4 TAMIT 17
3.4.1 Integration Example Scenario 1 (TAMIT-MAM-SRM-CCMDB-Fixpacks) 17
3.5 TPM 18
3.6 Other Process Manager Products (PMPs) 18
3.7 Fixpack and Interim Fix Considerations 19
3.8 Back-level and Mixed Product Version Support 19
4. Post-Install Activities 19
4.1 Installation Validation 19
4.1.1 Validating Package Deployment 19
4.1.2 Validating Installation Logs 20
4.2 Backup Recommendations 21
5. Known Deployment Issues 21
5.1 Common Middleware Configuration Issues 21
5.1.1 Database 21
5.1.2 Ldap 21
5.1.3 Application Server 22
5.2 Known Integration Issues 22
5.2.1 Integration Defect Analysis 22
5.2.2 Integrity Checker Issues 22
5.2.3 Migration Manager Issues 23
5.2.4 Fixpack and Interim Fix Considerations 23
6. Advanced Topics 23
6.1 Clustering 23
6.1.1 Vertical Clustering 23
6.1.2 Horizontal Clustering 24
6.2 WebLogic Support 25
6.3 Upgrade 26
6.3.1 Upgrade from 7.x releases 27
6.3.2 Upgrade from 6.x releases 27
7. Appendix 27
7.1 Source Documentation 27
1. Introduction
1.1 Purpose
The Installation Guidelines and Best Practices document is intended to provide detailed examples and recommendations on key deployment issues being faced during deployment of ISM-based applications. Specific focus will be given to installing multiple products on the same platform. It is meant to be an additional information source and reference document and should be used in tandem with the normal install documentation that is delivered with each product.
1.2 Content and Scope
The Installation Guidelines and Best Practices document will focus on installability and coexistence of the standard IBM Service Management (ISM) product offerings as defined in the next section. Content will include examples of successful deployment paths, known issues teams have seen during multi-product deployments, guidelines for validating successful installs and high-level coverage of advanced topics, such as clustering. In some cases, other documents will be referenced to provide more detailed information.
1.2.1 Products Covered
The product set that this document is intended to cover is the Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB), Service Request Manager (SRM), Maximo Asset Management (MAM), Tivoli Asset Management for IT (TAMIT), Tivoli Release Process Manager (ITRPM), Business Continuity Process Manager, (BCPM) and high-level information on Tivoli Provisioning Manager. More detailed information on the TPM product and other products that are capable of coexisting on the Tivoli Process Automation Engine (Tpae) base will be targeted for addition in future revisions of this document.
1.2.1.1 CCMDB
IBM Tivoli® Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB) software is a platform for storing deep, standardized enterprise data.
This CCMDB software from Tivoli automates data, workflows and policies, to align IT infrastructure management with business priorities.
· Aligns development and operations with new Rational Asset Manager integrations.
· Simplifies architectural complexity and reduces CCMDB incident and problem management costs.
· Provides a non-intrusive configuration and change management database for fast, automated application discovery, deep configuration detail, enterprise-class security and easy integration with other data sources.
· Includes a portal interface for creating, monitoring, and reporting about change requests and configuration items.
· Includes a toolkit for the creation of custom discovery library adapters and integration modules.
· Helps ensure compliance with internal and regulatory requirements by enforcing policies and tracking changes throughout your organization
Note: For the purposes of this document CCMDB focuses on the process layer of the application. CCMDB also ships the TADDM (Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery) application as part of the entire solution. That component is not covered in this document. See the TADDM infocenter for details on that product.
1.2.1.2 SRM
IBM Tivoli Service Request Manager provides an integrated service desk and catalog for a "one touch" IT experience.
This integrated service desk software unifies and automates key service support and asset management processes
· Manages both call-based and catalog-based requests in one solution with integrated service desk software and service catalog
· Takes problem and incident management software to another level with best practice incident and problem processing
· Enables users to obtain IT services through published service offerings
· Takes advantage of proven workflows and for fast time to market
· Employs change and configuration management software features, such as easy drag and drop screen, workflow customization and simple configuration tools for on-the-fly changes
· Combines upgradeability, easy configuration, customer-built customizations and data
1.2.1.3 MAM
IBM Maximo® Asset Management unifies comprehensive asset life cycle and maintenance management on a single platform.
This asset management software provides insight for all of your enterprise assets, their conditions and work processes, for better planning and control.
· Manages asset deployment, specifications, monitoring, calibration, costing and tracking from a single system
· Provides enterprise asset management software for long and short-term planning, preventive, reactive and condition-based maintenance, schedule management, resource optimization and key performance indicators
· Plans inventory to meet maintenance demand, making the right parts available at the right location when needed
· Manages vendor contracts with comprehensive support for purchase, lease, rental, warranty, rate, master, blanket and user-defined contracts
· Aligns service levels with business objectives by defining service offerings and establishing service level agreements (SLAs)
· Adapts to changing business requirements and connects with other enterprise systems through a flexible business process configuration
1.2.1.4 TAMIT
IBM Tivoli Asset Management for IT helps manage IT asset lifecycles in order to control cost and mitigate compliance risk.
Enables effective management of the IT asset lifecycle, to lower cost, mitigate license and regulatory compliance risk, and better align IT with business goals.
· Help control the cost of IT assets with a single solution that tracks and manages your hardware, software and related information throughout their life cycle.
· Optimize IT asset utilization and IT service levels: deploy not more, not less.
· Closely align IT with business requirements through IT asset cost and usage information.
· Reduce IT asset cost by redeploying underutilized assets and avoiding software overlicensing.
· Relevant contract, lease, warranty and license data minimizes procurement &maintenance expenses and helps negotiate contract renewals.
· Improve Service Desk quality & incident resolution time with accurate IT asset information.
1.2.1.5 ITRPM
IBM Tivoli® Release Process Manager provides a process-based solution to address the domain of Release Management as defined by Information Technology Infrastructure Library.
IBM Tivoli Release Process Manager automates complex deployments in the context of your overall release management process, allowing you to assess impact on your IT infrastructure and business critical functions before you release.
· Conserve valuable IT resources by assigning critical and time-sensitive releases to the proper person in the release chain.
· Speed completion dates and increase performance against service level agreements by making sure that releases related to business-critical functions and servers receive greater scheduling priority.
· Keep the workflow moving, support communication
1.2.1.6 BCPM
Tivoli Business Continuity Process Manager provides configurable processes to plan, test and execute IT service continuity.
Enables a comprehensive business continuity solution that integrates the management of people and process with the underlying technology solutions.
· Helps reduce the possibility of human error in recovery efforts for systems and applications.
· Improves alignment of employee work efforts with prioritized recovery tasks.
· Improves productivity through efficient, effective, and tested recovery plans for key business systems and applications.
· Reduces the impact of an outage by automating the execution of recovery tasks according to the requirements of specific business systems and applications.
· Provides automated process flow that is aligned to industry best practices and ITIL® standards.
· Reduces the possibility of Service Level Agreement (SLA) violations and the corresponding IT costs.
· Leverages the infrastructure provided by IBM Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database V7.1.1.
· Operating systems supported: Linux, Windows
1.2.1.7 TPM
IBM® Tivoli® Provisioning Manager software provides server, storage and network automation.
Built on a service-oriented architecture, this provisioning software from Tivoli enhances usability for executing changes while keeping server and desktop software compliant.
· Provides automated provisioning, improved resource utilization and enhanced IT service delivery through integration with IBM Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator
· Includes a development toolkit for building flexible, customized automation packages tailored to IT or business processes
· Works with your existing IT infrastructure and offers scalability for smoother transitions as your business needs change
· Simplifies automated provisioning and deployment software with a number of features that are easy to use and improve time-to-value, including a Web replay feature and a graphical user interface with role-based views
· Integrates with Rational Test Lab Manager to provide more value in test environments
· Operating systems supported: AIX, Sun Solaris, Windows
2. Planning Exercises
This section of the guide is meant to review some of the considerations that should be analyzed prior to attempting to integrate multiple products in a customer environment.
2.1 Product Requirements
2.1.1 Platform Concerns
Review the requirements in the product documentation for each product that will be included in the environment. Specific focus should be taken to make sure that the Hardware and Software that are targeted for deployment are supported on all products that are to be deployed and minimum requirements are met for all products. If any item is not supported on any one of the targeted products an issue may be encountered.
For instance, the CCMDB 7.x release does not explicitly support WebLogic, while many other products in the stack do provide this support. There is a workaround to enable CCMDB to work with WebLogic, (see Section 6) but prior planning is needed to define a strategy to deploy or problem are likely to be encountered.
Another common deployment consideration to be understood prior to beginning installation is ldap security support. Some products, like CCMDB 7.x, require that an ldap (generally IBM Tivoli Directory Server (ITDS) or Microsoft Active Directory (MSAD)) be used during deployment. If a product that does not require an ldap is the base product in the stack, some compatibility issues may be found during installation.
2.1.2 Compatibility Concerns
The next key consideration to evaluate prior to deploying multiple products is the levels and releases that are compatible with the specific version of the Tpae base that will be installed in the environment. Reference the following table to illustrate which products are compatible. This information is current through Tpae 7114. It also lists information for Tpae 7115, which will be delivered in June 2009.
Base levels of the applications mentioned in this spreadsheet can be downloaded externally from Passport Advantage or the Extreme Leverage (XL) Software download location for internal customers. All product patches and fixpacks can be download from the IBM support site at http://www.ibm.com/support.
2.2 Sizing and Capacity Planning
Sizing and Capacity planning should be well thought out when integrating multiple products in the customer environment. Lessons learned from current customer deployments have shown that capacity varies by ISM product despite the capabilities of the Tpae base infrastructure.
It is important to analyze the business processes that are being implemented as a function of the concurrent users expected in the environment. Once that information is obtained, cross-reference that data with the performance documentation from the key products that are responsible for those business processes. Integrating multiple products has not been seen to affect performance or capacity times of other deployed products, so this issue tends to be more of a single product concern.
This document is the comprehensive sizing document for the base version 7 Maximo product set and can be used as a general reference to get started with the sizing task.
2.3 Other Recommendations
It is highly recommended that some mechanism be used to take environment snapshots and backups during key sections of the deployment process. Prior to adding a new application or upgrading an existing application in the environment, a snapshot or complete backup should be performed.
3. Recommended Install Sequence
The purpose of this section is to document the common install paths that have been used in customer deployments and in internal IBM integration testing. These will be documented with each key product as the starting point in the deployment process. These recommendations are not meant to be the definitive list of what is supported but are only intended to document what integration strategies have been executed successfully by current teams.
These instructions should server as high level guidelines. For specific product installation details, the product documentation should be reviewed for each product during the install process.
3.1 CCMDB
Installation scenarios where CCMDB is the first product deployed. Example scenarios have been successfully executed in customer environments or in internal integration testing.
3.1.1 Integration Example Scenario (CCMDB-MAM-TAMIT-SRM-Fixpacks)
Scenario was copied directly from the November 2008 integration scenarios.
1) Install latest version of CCMDB 711
· Open the CCMDB Launchpad
· Click the ‘Launch the CCMDB installer’ link
· Enter correct information in all panels (see product docs for details)