Saturday, 14 March 2009

WebSphere Portal Express 6.1.0.1 and Lotus Domino 8.5 Together

As part of a recent piece of work, I had some fun n' games configuring WebSphere Portal Express 6.10.1 and Lotus Domino 8.5 to coexist.

According to: -

WebSphere Portal Express V6.1.0.1 hardware and software requirements - Microsoft Windows


this IS a supported configuration, and it definitely worked.

However, we did hit a few snags: -

  • setting the Base DN parameter IS a bad idea with Domino, as group distinguished names (DN) are never "qualified" with a domain name e.g. you'll never see cn=wpsadmins,o=ibm as a group name

    Never be tempted to set this parameter unless you're 100% sure that the group names ARE qualified

  • forgetting to qualify the user names for Bind distinguished name, Primary administrative user name and Primary Portal administration user name

    Always remember to qualify user names e.g. cn=wpsadmin, o=ibm as appropriate.

    If in doubt, use the LDAPSEARCH tool provided with Domino to check e.g. ldapsearch -h hostname cn=wpsadmin

  • The absolutely biggest mistake was failing to take advantage of the fact that we were running a VMware environment which provides the most useful snapshot facility.

    We had the capability AND FAILED TO USE IT.

    If in doubt, BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK UP

Ironically, my own installation ( on VMware Fusion on the Mac ) went as smooth as silk, and I didn't hit a single problem.

Still, a lesson learnt is a valuable lesson indeed ( and I'm hoping that my pain will spare you some pain )

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