Roadmap: Test or small production environment
A stand-alone server topology is ideal for a test or small production environment. In this roadmap, the web server, database, and user registry software are distributed to different physical servers.
Who should use this roadmap
Use this roadmap if you are an organization with the following requirements:
- An organization that needs an environment to test their applications and designs before they go live to the server.
- An organization that does not need a clustered environment for failover or high availability.
- An organization with limited server resources that wants to set up a department server or small website.
Topology diagram
A stand-alone server topology is versatile. It is the foundation for a portal farm, authoring environment, test or rendering environment, small department-level deployments, and more. A typical stand-alone portal server topology includes a remote database and LDAP server. For many environments, it also includes a web server to direct incoming traffic.
Preparing for the installation process
Gather information and software before you install HCL Digital Experience.
Procedure
- Check requirements.
- Documentation resource: HCL Portal detailed system requirements
- Get the software.
- Documentation resource: Getting the software
Installing prerequisite
You can use existing prerequisite software installations. Verify that your existing version is supported. If it is not, upgrade to the appropriate version. Otherwise, install a web server, database server, and user registry server. Typically the database and user registry servers are already installed and configured. However, there might be specific configuration steps that are required to integrate them with the portal server.
Procedure
-
Install a web server.
- Documentation resource: Preparing a remote web server
- Prepare a database server.
- Documentation resource: Installing and preparing the database software
- Prepare a user registry.
- Documentation resource: Preparing the user registry software
Installing the Exceptional Digital Experience
Installing HCL Digital Experience involves preparing your operating system, installing or upgrading the installation manager, and running the installation program.
About this task
Documentation resource: Installing HCL Digital Experience software
Applying the latest cumulative fix
Portal maintenance is delivered through two mechanisms: individual fixes (iFixes) and combined cumulative fixes. iFixes are provided, when necessary, for severe or security-related bugs. Combined cumulative fixes are delivered on a regular schedule. They provide a mechanism to deliver fixes faster, improve existing features, deliver new features, update documentation, and provide new documentation on a frequent basis. To deliver continuous improvements for your digital experience software, it is recommended that you apply the latest Combined Cumulative Fix to your environment.
About this task
Documentation resource: Roadmap: Applying maintenance
Setting up a stand-alone server
Start the configuration wizard to set up your stand-alone server. First, transfer your database. The Database Transfer configuration option in the Configuration Wizard assigns users and permissions, creates databases, obtains support for database collation, and transfers your database. After you transfer your database, enable your federated LDAP user registry.
Before you begin
http://hostname.example.com:10039/wps/portal,
where hostname.example.com is the fully qualified host name of the server where
Portal is running and 10039 is the default transport port that is created by WebSphere® Application Server. The port number might be different
for your environment.
Procedure
- To get the latest updates for the wizard,
apply the most recent Combined Cumulative Fix. For more information
about applying the latest fix pack, see HCL Portal
and Web Content Manager Combined Cumulative Fix strategy.
Note: Skip this step, if you have the most recent fix pack applied.
- Access the Configuration
Wizard. Go to http://your_server:10200/hcl/wizard.
Note: If working with HCL Digital Experience 8.5 or 9 software level prior to CF18, the wizard address will be: http://your_server:10200/ibm/wizard. After installing CF18, the configuration wizard will automatically be adjusted to http://your_server:10200/hcl/wizard.Restriction: There is a known issue with Chrome version 45.x and the Configuration Wizard. If you are experiencing difficulties, use a different browser when you access the wizard.
- Log in to the Configuration
Wizard with the administrative ID for the configuration
wizard profile, cw_profile.
Note: The wizard user interface might not be available in all languages. If the language is not currently supported, you might see the English version.
- Select .
- Provide information about your environment.
- Save your configuration settings.
- Choose one of the following options:
- Click Download Files to run the steps remotely.
- Click Run All Steps to run the steps locally.
- Optional: If you changed the context root during the installation or configuration of HCL Digital Experience, then you must complete the optional next step from the Configuration Wizard to update parameters with the new context path after you complete the Create a Deployment Manager configuration option. For more information about this configuration option and completing the next steps, see Create a deployment manager.
- Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that you have a working portal server.
- Select .Note: If you set Use Administrator IDs stored in your LDAP user registry to yes, the WebSphere® Application Server and HCL Portal user IDs and passwords are changed to the LDAP user ID and password. If you do not want to change both user IDs and passwords to match the LDAP user ID and password, set this value to no. After you configure your LDAP user registry, you can manually change the user IDs and passwords.
- Documentation resource: Updating user ID and passwords
- Provide information about your environment.
- Save your configuration settings.
- Choose one of the following options:
- Click Download Files to run the steps remotely.
- Click Run All Steps to run the steps locally.
- Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that you have a working portal server.
- Optional:
If you want to shorten your site URL for search engine optimization benefits, you can modify
your context root and remove navigational state information from your URL by using the
Modify Site URLs for Search Engine Optimization configuration option.
- Documentation resource: Configuration Wizard instructions: Modify site URLs for search engine optimization
Configuring the web server
Procedure
- Documentation resource: Web servers
Tuning the servers in your environment
Tuning the servers is important to the performance of your portal environment. HCL Digital Experience is not tuned for a production environment after installation and deployment. Your database needs tuning for improved performance. You can organize your database now or soon after you finish your configuration. You need to tune and maintain your database on a regular basis.
Procedure
- Run the performance tuning tool to complete an
initial tuning of your servers.
- Documentation resource: Portal server performance tuning tool
- Check the tuning guide for more instructions.
Use the tuning guide for the previous product version when the tuning
guide for the current release is unavailable.
- Documentation resource: Performance tuning guide
Next steps
Depending on the choices that you made during the installation and set up, there are additional tasks to configure your environment.
- Configure global settings
- Documentation resource: Configuring portal behavior
- Change the default portal Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)
- If you changed the context root on the Configuration for HCL Digital Experience: Profile configuration details: Advanced panel during installation: Completing the context root change started during installation
- Adapt the attribute configuration to match the LDAP server
- Documentation resource: Adding more attributes to VMM
- Configure syndication
- Documentation resource: Syndication
- Update your user registry
- Documentation resource: User registry
- Configure your search
- Documentation resource: Portal Search