Most of the times with multiple environments (like Prod Authoring, Preview, Rendering and more or less similar environments in staging and QA) , it is hard to keep track all configurations changes and also whether they are in are in sync across platforms
Recently had chance to work on VCE(Visual Configuration Explorer) Tool to identify whether portal environments are configured same and all configuration changes to up to date.
1. Pre-requisites
a)
Download & Install ISA workbench
b)
Install VCE plugin in the ISA workbench
c)
Download ISALite datacollector specific to
environment (Linux, Windows..etc)
2.
Config
data Collection
a)
Copy the “ISALite” tar.gz file into the
<DMGR> root directory
a.
/opt/IBM/WebSphere/DMGR/
b)
Extract .tar file, it will generate the ISALite
folder
a.
tar –xvf ISALite.tar
c)
Change
directory to </opt/IBM/WebSphere/DMGR/ISALite/.
d)
Run
runISALite.sh -console with portaladmin user (Would be better if you have X
windows enabled to use the GUI),
e) During the data collection process ,
it request lot of inputs choose the right options based on environment .
f) It will generate the .zip file with
configuration data
g) Similarly
collect config data from the desired environments
NOTE:
a) ISALite
for the Portal doesn’t contain the VCE tool data collection option , make sure
to download the ISALite for the websphere.
3. Comparing Configuration Files
a)
To launch the VCE From ISA Workbench “Launch
Activity àAnalyze
Problem à
select the VCE ”
b)
Add configuration data i.e .zip files for the
different environments
c)
Now you expand and compare configuration at cell
level.
d)
You can drill down and figure out the actual
difference.
Visual Configuration Explorer is
also very useful to generate and understand
the server topology diagrams like below ..
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