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 or .
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.