Taking Notez – Island Pond Consulting

Last month IBM released Beta 1 of WebSphere Portal 8. Like a number of others I immediately downloaded it and like almost as many, it sat on my disk until last week. First of all, if you want to download the beta you can do it easily from https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/cc/earlyprograms/lotus/portalopenbeta/

Once the files had a chance to ferment on my disk, I expanded them as instructed in the accompanying readme file. The instructions in that file are very helpful and the process of expanding and launching the beta was relatively painless.

When I followed the guide and configured the IP address configuration I supplied a name and DNS domain of my own choosing. When I completed the task and started the portal it did not properly start. I won’t pretend to have been surprised. Since the guide did not explicitly state “what” I should name the machine I assumed I could use any name I liked. I was wrong bu in my own defense, I based this mistaken understanding on my experience with the AWS based developer’s solutions from IBM. In those experiences the software install script is executed as part of the provisioning process. Not so with the beta download. Note: If you want to avoid my mistake be SURE to name your machine wp8beta in the rtp.raleigh.ibm.com domain.

Other than needing to blow away my first instance and repeat the process of expanding the files, the experience proved to be very satisfying.

Next time I will write about my first impression.