Installing WebSphere 8.5 on V7R1

Soumen

Soumen

Reputable Poster
Dear List,

We are planning on installing the WebSphere version 8.5 on a V7R1 iSeries box. This installation is purely for a Disaster Recovery purpose and is not to be used with the current production architecture.
This iSeries machine is also hosting our production Enterprise Server instance currently but our existing production WebSphere instance is on a Windows Server (2008 R2).

So basically we are trying to install an instance of WebSphere on iSeries for DR purposes only. Now my problem is based on this note from the MTR/Installation documents.

"NOTE: If you are running WebSphere 8.5 on V7R1, with either Tools 8.98.x or 9.1.x ,WebSphere should be configured to use JDK 1.7 and the Server Manager Agent which is managing it should use the 1.7 64-bit JVM ."


In our existing setup the Server manager agent on the iSeries is using JDK 1.6. I cannot change this to use 1.7 because that will throw the Agent JDK version off with the SM Console version. And changing the SM console to start using JDK 1.7 will mean changing all other nodes to 1.7 (for production servers), so that is a no-no.

In this scenario, what do you recommend? Has anyone configured WbSphere 8.5 with JDK version 1.6 32 bit? Does anyone know if that will work with some settings? If not what other options I have?

Thanks,
Soumen
 
You will definitely need a Java 1.7 SM and SM agent install to manage and deploy to WebSphere 8.5. In many cases upgrading does not affect your existing instances and you are fine. However I agree that it is naturally a risk and given that you are trying to standup a DR solution I see why you would rather leave your Prod setup alone. One option you might consider then is to install another Server Manager instance and use Java 1.7 64-bit on that. Further you can install an additional agent on the iSeries and use the 1.7 JVM. To easily recognize its QSH/smagent process from the other agent it is best to start the 2nd agent under a different user profile. The 2nd SM/SM agent pair can be used exclusively to manage the WebSphere 8.5 home. It is a bit of a pain but it will do that job.
 
Thanks for your reply. So basically I have 2 options here,

A. Go with WebSphere 7.0[Fix pack 19] and use the existing JDK 1.6 on SM, OR

B. Go with a separate SM instance with a different user profile.

Thanks,
Soumen
 
Quick fact check:

Can I keep 2 different instances of SM Agent pointing to 2 different SM homes on different JDK versions (1 on JDK1.6 and other on JDK1.7) running on a single iSeries box?
 
Back
Top