Websphere Commerce 64 bit Install

 

Very recently, WCS V7 FEP2 introduced support for 64 bit WAS, I decided to take a potshot at this on my Oracle Linux 6.3 VM, review the excellent article from IBM in "Further Reading" section if you want to weigh in the merits of 64 vs 32 bit WCS installation.

Pre-Install Task

Although we are working on a 64 bit install here, WAS and WCS installers still depend upon 32 bit OS libraries,  the installation will error out if you are missing 32 bit OS libraries.

By default "yum install" command will only install the 64 bit libraries if the host OS is 64 bit, to install a 32 bit version first execute the yum search to locate a library and then install it with .i686 extension. An example is shown here to install libstdc++ 32 bit version

yum search libstdc++

Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit, security
============================ N/S Matched: libstdc++ ============================
compat-libstdc++-296.i686 : Compatibility 2.96-RH standard C++ libraries
compat-libstdc++-33.i686 : Compatibility standard C++ libraries
compat-libstdc++-33.x86_64 : Compatibility standard C++ libraries
libstdc++.i686 : GNU Standard C++ Library
libstdc++.x86_64 : GNU Standard C++ Library
libstdc++-devel.i686 : Header files and libraries for C++ development
libstdc++-devel.x86_64 : Header files and libraries for C++ development
libstdc++-docs.x86_64 : Documentation for the GNU standard C++ library

Now install 32 bit version of compat-libstdc++-33 as follows.

yum install compat-libstdc++-33.i686
yum install gtk2.i686

For record, you will notice following error if 32 bit version of this library is missing from the host OS.

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: ic_jni (libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)

Installation Task

Begin with a 64 OS platform supported by WCS, I have tried this on Oracle Linux 6.3 , so these steps should work flawlessly on centos and redhat.
All of the silent install files, scripts etc.. are available in https://github.com/hariinfo/wcs_scripts

Step 1: Install Oracle 64 bit client
Make a note of the Oracle home directory and setup this is .profile or .bash_profile of wasuser and oracle user profile.
I usually make use of Oracle's excellent pre-install packege before installing Oracle client on the host OS
This package does all the magic needed to bring your host OS up to required configuration level for Oracle install.

yum install oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall

Step 2: Install  IHS and WAS
IHS version packaged in the 64 bit WAS ND software is 32 bit install in reality, only WAS and more importantly the JVM is 64 bit, so don't be surprised if you continue to see a 32 bit version of IHS after the installtion, begin installtion from the downloaded copy of WAS ND 64 bit.
Part number for IBM WebSphere Commerce V7.0 WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment V7.0 (64-bit) for Linux on AMD and Intel as of this writing is "CZFA3ML"

unzip the downloaded tar file and begin your silent install using following steps, or you can perform a GUI install as well.
CZFA3ML\WAS\disk1\IHS\install -options "/home/wasuser/ihs_install_response.txt" -silent
CZFA3ML\WAS\disk2\WAS\install -options "/home/wasuser/was_install_response.txt" -silent

Step 3:WAS 7.0.0.25 upgrade
Now update WAS, Plugin and IHS to 7.0.0.25 level.

Ensure that the 64 bit versions of both WAS and WCS installer is installed before the WAS upgrade.
Following were the latest version as of this writing
Install WAS update installer 7.0.0.29, download the 64 bit version
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24020446
7.0.0.29-WS-UPDI-LinuxAMD64.tar.gz

Install WCS update installer, download the 64 bit version
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24013502
download.updii.70071.linux.amd64.zip

<WAS_UPDATE_INSTALLER>/update.sh -options "/home/wasuser/ihs.update.response.txt" -silent
<WAS_UPDATE_INSTALLER>/update.sh -options "/home/wasuser/plg.update.response.txt" -silent
<WAS_UPDATE_INSTALLER>/update.sh -options "/home/wasuser/was.update.response.txt" -silent

Step 4: WCS Install
Install WCS V7, do note that WCS does not come in 32 or 64 bit flavor, so the installer you used for 32 bit should just work fine for 64 bit, but the support for 64 bit WAS was introduced in fix pack level 2 of WCS V7.

Step 5: WCS Fixpack 7
Upgrade WCS to fix pack 7 (this is the latest as of this writing, you need to be at fix pack 1 for 64 bit support)

Step 6: WCS Instance Creation
Create WCS instance and configure with Oracle database

Step 7: Federate WCS instance with DMGR

 Refer My previous blog on WAS, WCS, IHS installation which includes detailed steps for Step 4 through 7
http://techhari.blogspot.com/2013/01/installation-and-configuration-of-wcs-7.html

Post-Install Validation

./versionInfo.sh
Name                     IBM WebSphere Application Server - ND
Version                  7.0.0.25
ID                       ND
Build Level              cf251235.04
Build Date               8/30/12
Architecture             AMD (64 bit)

The version info output should display 64 bit as the WAS version.

Save and sysnchronize the DMGR, now stop and start the server, once the server is started grep the PID to validate the min and max heap size
ps -elf |grep server
you should notice following in the grep output, this indicates WAS was started with more than 2048 heap size, "-Xms1024m -Xmx3024m"

Further Reading

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/1112_genkin/1112_genkin.html

WCS install silent files and utility scripts
https://github.com/hariinfo/wcs_scripts