MidVision RapidDeploy for Portal Server on Azure

Microsoft Azure Installation guide

This software is no longer available through MidVision on the Azure Marketplace 

Due to a change of ownership, MidVision is no longer able to offer images containing this software on the Azure marketplace.

1. Overview

This guide will provide step by step instructions how to start using the installed products on your Microsoft Azure instance.

This Azure Virtual Machine contains a ready-to-run WebSphere Portal Server + MidVision RapidDeploy image at the selected version The image contains the WebSphere Portal Server application deployed into a pre-configured WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment installation. 

By default this application is configured to use the internal default database. You may configure it yourself to use an external database, such as DB2, should you wish to do so. 

In order to use this image, you need to launch it with your selected type, and log in via SSH to change default passwords and manage your WebSphere Portal Server configuration

Visit the WebSphere Portal Server + MidVision RapidDeploy page on the Azure Marketplace
Launch IBM Portal Server from Azure

2. Launching an instance

In order to launch IBM WebSphere Portal Server + MidVision RapidDeploy, a few settings need to be configured on the Azure console as follows:

  1. Open new Azure Virtual Machine wizard;
  2. Select the IBM WebSphere Portal Server image based on your requirements from gallery;
  3. Choose VM name, size, Authentication user and credentials. The Standard DS2V2/General Purpose type or larger is recommended when running IBM WebSphere Portal Server. Larger instances may be required based on the throughput and number of Domains etc required and the expected resource use of each;
  4. Define cloud service DNS name, Regions and open endpoint ports.
Port 22 to connect via SSH (enabled by default) to the instance hosting the DataPower Virtual Edition, 

Port 10039 to reach the IBM WebSphere Portal Server Console, 
Port 10203 to reach the IBM WebSphere Application Server Console, 
Port 9090 to reach RapidDeploy web console

3. Initial login and setup

4. Accessing the Command Line & Web Consoles

4.1 Access the IBM WebSphere Portal Server Admin Console

4.2 Access the IBM WebSphere Application Server Admin Console

4.3 Access the RapidDeploy Web Console

RapidDeploy server and agent will start up automatically when you start your instance. You can access the web console on:

http://[publicip]:9090/MidVision

Note: make sure you have port 9090 open in your Security group when trying to access RapidDeploy web console. For the first time, you can set the password for the default username ” mvadmin “. You can prevent auto starting RapidDeploy on instance startup by removing it from the system chkconfig list.

5. Maintaining the installation

The following sections cover some of the activities you might want to perform after the instance has been started.
  • azureuser: This is the provisioned Azure user. The username can vary due to can be customised. It is permitted to use all SUDO rights. To switch to the midvision user, type “sudo su - midvision“.
  • midvision: This is the default user, which you can log in as. It is permitted to use all SUDO rights. To switch to the root user, type “sudo su“.
  • root: This is the superuser in linux systems. You can log in as any other user without using passwords. E.g: “su azureuser“, “su midvision“

The IBM WebSphere Portal Server Admin Console is initially configured so that you can log in to Portal Server console as “wpsadmin” using your ‘mvadmin‘ as password.

You can re-run the first run setup wizard at any time by issuing the following command:

sudo /home/midvision/firstrunsetup.sh

Red Hat Enterrpise Linux instances are shipped with a firewall by default to protect your machine. For security reasons, the instance is only accessible via SSH (port 22) at first, so further ports can be opened on the firewall as needed. You will need to open all the ports in this internal firewall, which you have open in your Security group. There is a script placed in the user home of midvision (/home/midvision), which is also the starting location when logged in. You will need to be the root user to run this script. Example usage:

[midvision@ ] sudo ./open-firewall.sh 9090
Open firewall port 9090 iptables: Saving firewall rules to /etc/sysconfig/iptables:[ OK ]
 

There are a few scripts and other files in midvision and root users home directory, which will need to remain unchanged in order to keep the provided scripts working. Files are placed under /root/ are required to change the password of IBM WebSphere profiles.
To change WebSphere ND profile password use

sudo expect /root/changeAppServerPassword.exp newPassword

To change WebSphere Portal WebConsole wpsadmin password use

sudo expect /root/changePortalServerPassword.exp newPassword

There are a set of scripts in midvision home directory. Those scripts are executed when logging into the instance controlled by .bash_profile, but you can also execute them manually whenever they are needed. There are some hidden files used as well,

.firstrun indicates that the setup wizard has already ran once,

.dontask indicates that the user will not be prompted again for running the setuphost script (if chosen not to ask again),

To restart RapidDeploy manually from the filesystem, use the rapiddeploy linux service. The RapidDeploy version is 5.0. RapidDeploy home is located at /var/rd/midvision Example usage:

[midvision@ ] sudo service rapiddeploystart start 
[midvision@ ] sudo service rapiddeploystart stop

The RapidDeploy server uses an in-memory database, so your RapidDeploy framework needs to be shut down properly to save your work. This happens when the instance is stopping or when calling the stop service manually from the command line. Note that on instance restart, unsaved data will be lost.

For security reasons, you will need to change the default password (default value is ‘mvadmin‘) for user mvadmin. This will be requested the first time only when you log in to the RapidDeploy server.

6. Troubleshooting

6.1 Session loss during setup

If you lose your SSH connection to the target instance during the first run setup script execution (e.g. as a result of a network problem), we advise you to delete and recreate the EC2 instance and run the script again.

6.2 Cannot access the IBM WebSphere admin console (ISC)

Check that  the default server is running, and you have correctly opened all the required ports on the firewall, and that your instance was created using a security group definition that allows TCP access to the instance on the required ports.

6.3 Contacting MidVision support

Please visit our support website.