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HCL Digital Experience roadmap: Portal farm

A server farm offers a simple way to build and maintain a highly scalable, highly available server environment.

Remember

Ensure that you configure the web server plug-in after you transfer your database.

Who should use this roadmap

Use this roadmap if you are an organization with the following requirements:

  • An organization that requires a simple way to build and maintain a highly scalable, highly available server environment
  • An organization that requires an elastic environment where servers can be added or removed dynamically without much effort
  • An organization that does not want to depend on a Deployment Manager for deployments

Topology diagram

The topology includes a network load balancer to direct incoming traffic to the farm. Each stand-alone server has a database for JCR and Release domains. The JCR and Release domain cannot be shared between portal servers in a farm. However, the Community, Customization, LikeMinds, and Feedback portal database domains can be shared. The share portal database domains are depicted on a common database server.

Farm topology depicts a network load balancer directing incoming traffic to a farm of four stand-alone portal servers

Preparing for the installation process

Gather information and software before you install HCL Digital Experience.

  1. Check requirements. See Detailed system requirements.

  2. Get required software. New and current users must sign up or register at HCL Software and download their preferred HCL Digital Experience package.

Installing prerequisite software

You can use currently installed prerequisite software. However, verify that your current version is supported. If it is not, upgrade to a supported version. Otherwise, install a web server, database server, and user registry server. Typically, the database and user registry servers are already installed and configured. However, you might have to complete specific configuration steps that are required to integrate the software with the portal server. For more information, see "Installing and preparing the prerequisite software."

Installing HCL Digital Experience

Installing HCL Digital Experience involves preparing your operating system, installing or upgrading the installation manager, and running the installation program. See Installing the HCL Digital Experience software

Applying the latest cumulative fix

Maintain the portal by deploying individual Fixes and Combined Cumulative Fixes (CFs), which are suggested according to your environment. See HCL Digital Experience roadmap: Applying maintenance.

Setting up a stand-alone server

To set up your stand-alone server, start the configuration wizard. First, transfer your database. Click the Database Transfer configuration option in the wizard, and it assigns users and permissions, creates databases, obtains support for database collation, and transfers your database. After you transfer your database, enable your federated LDAP user registry.

Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that the portal works:

http://<hostname.example.com>:<10039>/wps/portal

where: - hostname.example.com is the fully qualified host name of the server where the portal is running - 10039 is the default transport port that is created by DX Application Server. The port number might be different for your environment.

To set up a stand-alone server:

  1. If you have the most recent fix pack applied, skip this step. Get the latest updates for the wizard, and apply the most recent Combined Cumulative Fix. For more information about applying the latest fix pack, see Apply Combined Cumulative Fix for more topic information.

  2. Open the Configuration wizard. Go to http://your_server:10200/hcl/wizard.

If you are working with an HCL Digital Experience V8.5 or 9 software at a level earlier than CF18, the wizard address is http://your_server:10200/ibm/wizard. After installing CF18, the configuration wizard automatically changes to http://your_server:10200/hcl/wizard.

!!!important
    There is a known issue with Chrome version 45.x and the Configuration Wizard. If you are experiencing difficulties, use a different browser when you access the wizard.
  1. Log in to the Configuration wizard with the administrative ID for the configuration wizard profile, cw_profile.

If the language is not currently supported for the user interface, you might see the English version. For details about supported languages and the language codes for all of the HCL Digital Experience user interfaces, see Language support.

  1. Select Set Up a Stand-alone Server > Database Transfer.

  2. Provide information about your environment.

  3. Save your configuration settings.

  4. Choose one of the following options:

    • Click Download Files to run the steps remotely.
    • Click Run All Steps to run the steps locally.

  5. If you changed the context root during the installation or configuration of HCL Digital Experience, then you must complete the optional next step from the Configuration wizard to update parameters with the new context path after you complete the Create a Deployment Manager configuration option. For more information about this configuration option and completing the next steps, see Create a deployment manager.

  6. Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that the portal server works.

  7. Select Set Up a Stand-alone Server > Enable Federated Security.

    Note

    If you set Use Administrator IDs stored in your LDAP user registry to yes, the and HCL Digital Experience user IDs and passwords are changed to the LDAP user ID and password. If you do not want to change both user IDs and passwords to match the LDAP user ID and password, set this value to no. After you configure your LDAP user registry, you can manually change the user IDs and passwords. See Updating user ID and passwords.

  8. Provide information about your environment.

  9. Save your configuration settings.

  10. Choose one of the following options:

    • Click Download Files to run the steps remotely.
    • Click Run All Steps to run the steps locally.

  11. Log in to HCL Portal to verify that the portal server works.

  12. To shorten the site URL for search engine optimization, you can modify your context root and remove navigational state information from the URL by using the Modify Site URLs for Search Engine Optimization configuration option. See Configuration Wizard instructions: Modify site URLs for search engine optimization

Configuring the web server

Move the web server plug-in from the WebSphere Application Server to the web server. See Web servers.

Tuning the servers in your environment

Tuning the servers enhances the performance of your portal environment. HCL Digital Experience is not tuned for a production environment after installation and deployment. Your database must be tuned for improved performance. You can organize your database now or soon after you finish your configuration. Tune and maintain your database regularly.

  1. Run the performance tuning tool to initially tune your servers. See Portal server performance tuning tool.
  2. Check the tuning guide for more instructions. Use the tuning guide for the previous product version until the tuning guide for the current release is unavailable. See Performance tuning guide.

Choosing the type of portal farm

You can choose from two supported portal farm configurations when you set up your portal farm. You can set up a unique installation where each farm has a unique installation or you can set up one instance that is shared between multiple farm instances.

Configure a farm instance with a shared configuration.

Configuring an HTTP server

Use a web server to handle load balancing across your portal farm. Set up the HTTP server plug-in on the portal farm.

HCL Digital Experience provides two distinct search capabilities. You can use both types of search capabilities in a portal farm environment.

  • Configure a remote search.

  • Configure a JCR search.