automate setup of IBM RAD and Websphere

Question

In a project we a forced to use IBM RAD and Webspher Application Server (6.1).

Setting up the development environment is currently described in about 10 pages of wiki documentation and takes about a day if you don't do any mistake. The main parts are:

Installing the IBM Installer; Use it to install RAD Install a patch to the Installer; use it to install half a dozen patches to RAD create a network drive pointing to ... checkout project source to ... install WAS configure the a WAS instance with two jdbc drivers, 6 datasources, a queue ...

I think you get the idea

I'd like to automate that process (or at lest 95% of it) to something like.

• start script x.
• On prompt enter a directory with at least yGB of memory available.
• Get yourself a cup of coffee
• start working.

What are the proper tools to get this working? Should I use something like puppet and chef? Or is that overkill and I can just zip the installation directory and change 2 registry entries?

Has anybody experience with this? Any pointers to get started?

Answer 1

You can script the configuration of WAS using wsadmin: http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.websphere.base.doc%2Finfo%2Faes%2Fae%2Fwelc6topscripting.html

It is some effort to learn how to do so but in the end it saves a lot of time. You need to use Jython or Jacl to do so.

WAS profiles can be created headless with a response file. Use manageprofiles.bat in bin directory of WAS to do so.

Regarding RAD installation you can install the IBM Installation Manager version you need to install the patches right away and then install everything in one shot. Add the fixes you need as Repositiories right from the beginning. The fixes will be installed instead of the old versions in this case. You should have the base images and all fixes on the local disk to do so.

The installation of RAD itself can also run in headless mode but I don't have any experience in doing this.

The configuration of the RAD workspace is the next thing you want to automate. This is not so simple to do. The simplest thing you can do is to export the workspace preferences of a workspace that contains all settings to an eclipse preference file (.epf). File -> Export

This is not a complete solution but may help you a bit. Be sure to keep all settings in just one file and import that into a fresh workspace.

Use Notepad++ TextFX plugin to sort the settings in the epf file. You can then figure out which settings you need just by looking at them.

More control over the workspace settings and automated conifiguration requires accessing eclipse internal APIs and some coding.

Regarding the the project sources it depends on the SCM you are using.